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From: kyle@xanth.UUCP (Kyle Jones)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: comp.sources.wanted useless?  (was: A rehash ...)
Message-ID: <2205@xanth.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 21-Aug-87 00:59:24 EDT
Article-I.D.: xanth.2205
Posted: Fri Aug 21 00:59:24 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 22-Aug-87 16:15:42 EDT
References: <7130@e.ms.uky.edu>
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Xref: mnetor news.admin:873 news.groups:1380

I agree that comp.sources.wanted is not an appealing newsgroup to
read, but I cannot condone posting "wanted" messages in other
newsgroups either.  comp.sources.wanted has to be made less of a waste
of time for the reader.  To put it bluntly, the group needs to be
moderated.

I envision an electronic "classified-ads" where each ad is a short
phrase stating what is type of program is desired and an e-mail
address to contact.  Ads requesting the same software or same type of
software could be coalesced into one ad with a list of contacts.

This "classified" page could be posted weekly.

Such a system would solve all the problems that I see with the current
scheme, that is:

  * multiple (or repeated) requests for software
  * articles too long (subject lines, if concise,  should be enough)
  * one article per request (have to type 'n' too often)

If the format of the newsgroup were palatable, I believe more people
would read it.  Some organization and a lot less individual articles
would be a good start.

Comments?

kyle jones   <kyle@odu.edu>   old dominion university, norfolk, va