Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!hao!ames!sdcsvax!sdcc6!sdcc8!py21 From: py21@sdcc8.ucsd.EDU (akkana) Newsgroups: news.misc Subject: Re: Newsgroup vote counting: a proposed modifacation Message-ID: <751@sdcc8.ucsd.EDU> Date: Mon, 9-Nov-87 19:10:44 EST Article-I.D.: sdcc8.751 Posted: Mon Nov 9 19:10:44 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 12-Nov-87 22:48:08 EST References: <4965@oberon.USC.EDU> <6695@ut-ngp.UUCP> <1578@haddock.ISC.COM> <171@uwspan.UUCP> Distribution: na Organization: University of California, San Diego Lines: 119 In article <171@uwspan.UUCP>, root@uwspan.UUCP (John Plocher) writes: > +---- Shane Looker writes in <375@tardis.cc.umich.edu> ---- > | +--- Karl Heuer writes: > | | It should be emphasized that posted votes NEVER count. Even if you tried a > | | direct reply first, and it failed, that isn't sufficient justification. > | > | I don't think it is right to keep me from voting for a group I want just > | because there is a brain-dead mailer between my machine and your machine. > > Sure it is. If the poster of the request for votes doesn't give a valid > path from a well known site (pick one of: utzoo, uunet, rutgers, sun, umich, > decwrl, gatech, ucb, et al) then s/he won't get many votes at all > and the group won't be created. Someone who takes the responsibility of > starting a group should *be expected* to know something about the net, mailers > and the like. If s/he doesn't know enough to give a valid mailing address then Yeah -- but giving a "valid path from a well-known site" isn't always enough. Fr'instance, I've had a lot of people post things because they were unable to mail them to me, when I thought I was giving sufficient information in my .signature. My .signature gives the following information: akkana%infidel@lanl.gov hp@lanl.gov ihnp4!lanl!hp Now, when I wrote that I thought it was sufficient. There are two address which should be accessible from any non-braindamaged ARPA machine, plus a UUCP route through a very common machine (lanl talks to a few other places, but nobody else as easily accessible as ihnp4) for people who absolutely can't find any way to get to the nearest UUCP-ARPA gateway (of which there are quite a few). Nevertheless, people don't seem to be able to deal with it. Seems to me that administrators should set things up so that users can type something like "mail foo@bar.arpa" or "mail foo@bar.bitnet", even if they're on a UUCP-only machine, and the sendmail.cf should take care of the rest. I know I've always set things up that way on machines for which I was responsible. But there are a lot of machines out there (mostly student machines at universities) where the mail system is not set up in that manner, and where there's no place to go for help (when you were a student, did the computer center -- if students even had access to net mail -- have someone who would be able to tell you "Oh, if you want to get mail to the ARPAnet you have to route through maincampusmachine!nearbycompany!ucbvax, so the address should look like this ..."? Last time I was a student, mail from the student machine to an ARPA host had to go through a berknet link ("c:restofaddress"). How can somebody who's posting a request for votes possibly take into account vagaries of local mailers? > If you don't know how to get mail to some place, try asking your SA > (mail root ...) or if you are the SA, try asking your uucp neighbors > (mail neighbor!root ...). Please spend some of *your* time learning about > the system before you waste *our* time with inapropriate things like votes! Good ideas all, but there are a lot of sites where they won't work -- sometimes even finding out who those UUCP neighbors are can be difficult. And why should users have to learn about their mail system before being allowed to vote? Personally, I find the mail system interesting, but there are a lot of people who might be interested in voting for a new group but don't have the time/interest to understand their local mail system. Ideally, the remote user should be able to hit 'r' after reading the request for votes and have vnews or rn send a message to the proper place, but that depends on adequate local sendmail.cf's and working news software, neither of which can be counted on (I know that every time I've replied by mail to a news article I've had to manufacture the UUCP path by looking at the article if the .signature didn't provide a path -- vnews doesn't do it for you). > In closing, ignorance (of net-etiquette, of how to send mail, ...) is no > excuse for posting votes. I agree that ignorance of nettiquette is no excuse -- everyone should have read the newusers announcement (though it seems that very few people have). Why are users penalized for ignorance of how to send mail? It's not like there's a book a user can take out of a library somewhere which will explain how the mail system works (is there? There should be, but I've never heard of one which J. Random User could understand). > Posted Votes NEVER Count (ever!) That's true -- it says so in the newusers documents. It's unfortunate, though, since it means that everyone who wants a new group (not just advocates of comp.mail.wizards, but also advocates of rec.tv.dallas) need to drop what they're doing and go spend a year or two playing with mail to get a feel for how it works. I assume the goal of this rule is to avoid cluttering the net with vote postings (it doesn't succeed very well at this), but what it really does is ban lots of people from voting and ask for clutter of another sort "Excuse me, I know I'm not supposed to vote on the net but I really want to vote and our braindamaged mailer can't make it there, so this is a posting asking for information on how to get to foo!bar!votetaker". > -John (rutgers!uwvax!uwspan!plocher, or plocher@uwspan.uucp) .. ...Akkana akkana%infidel@lanl.gov hp@lanl.gov ihnp4!lanl!hp (Incidentally, this is going to change in a few weeks anyway) Is the above enough? What more can I say about how to send mail? Especially since I'm trying to keep my signature to two lines (more nettiquette, you know)? I mean, I could say something like: ARPA: akkana%infidel@lanl.gov BRAINDAMAGED-ARPA: hp@lanl.gov NAMESERVER-ARPA: akkana@infidel.lanl.gov UUCP: {ihnp4,cmcl2,unm-la}!lanl!hp ARPA-FROM-A-UUCP-SITE: {ucbvax,sun,etc.}!"akkana@infidel.lanl.gov" BITNET: akkana%infidel.lanl.gov@lanl.gov@wiscvm.bitnet (or maybe that's wrong -- I certainly have no way of testing it) etc. ... Trouble is -- there are quite a few people who wouldn't even know which address applies to their machine ("Excuse me, Mr. Site Administrator ... is our site a braindamaged ARPA site?") ...