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From: geoff@desint.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d,news.admin
Subject: Getting serious about moderation
Message-ID: <687@desint.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 13-Jun-87 17:05:29 EDT
Article-I.D.: desint.687
Posted: Sat Jun 13 17:05:29 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 14-Jun-87 05:45:17 EDT
Reply-To: geoff@desint.UUCP (Geoff Kuenning)
Distribution: world
Organization: Interrupt Technology Corp., Manhattan Beach, CA
Lines: 29
Xref: utgpu comp.sources.d:770 news.admin:465

I just finished skipping over the fourth or fifth comp.soources.misc
posting from someone who thought their judgement justified posting a
childish opinion in a group that was supposed to be for sources.  So much
for automatic archiving systems.

It used to be that we could count on peoples' good sense to keep them from
posting in moderated groups, even though it's been obvious for years that
it was possible to forge a posting (see, for example, the great April Fools'
posting in mod.announce this year).  Apparently, as the net expands and
the lower life forms (:-) join in, this system will no longer work.

Although I am of mixed feelings regarding the net.sources/comp.sources.misc
controversy, in general I like the moderation system and don't want it
to break down because of an irresponsible few.

I'd like to suggest a new, password-based form of moderation approval.  I
envision a backwards-compatible system based on encryption.  I'm not a
real crypto whiz, so I'm not sure of the best method, but my thought
is to make the "Approved: " line into a message-ID-based password which
would be compared with a list of legal moderators from a /usr/lib/news file.
Ideally, the moderator would be specified in the newgroup message and checked
by checkgroups.  If a lot of the backbone sites ran software that rejected
moderated articles with improper passwords, then at least they would be
limited to a small part of the net.

All you knee-jerk types out there please take note that this is *not* a
call for net.fascism, nor for further moderation of unmoderated groups.
-- 
	Geoff Kuenning   geoff@ITcorp.com   {uunet,trwrb}!desint!geoff