Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!ames!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!gatech!mcnc!ecsvax!bch
From: bch@ecsvax.uncecs.edu (Byron C. Howes)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: comp.women -- moderated groups and the naming hierarchy
Message-ID: <5288@ecsvax.uncecs.edu>
Date: 16 Jun 88 12:37:19 GMT
References: <5274@ecsvax.UUCP> <9686@e.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: bch@ecsvax.UUCP (Byron C. Howes)
Organization: UNC Educational Computing Service
Lines: 44

In article <9686@e.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.e{u (David Herron) writes:
>>Someone facetiously suggested bringing back the mod.* distribution.  I
>
>in a word,        ****NO****

Well, that's concise but not necessarily polite!

>Yes they are generally better than unmoderated groups.  However there isn't
>a good reason to seperate them off in another hierarchy and mess up the
>nice tree we have now.

That's the problem.  The naming hierarchy is elegant but it does not
serve the purposes of the news network -- making selection of articles
on the basis of distribution simpler and encouraging high signal groups.
It is -- typically -- a programmer's solution to a political problem.

The current conflagration suggests that it is not functional, no matter
how nice it may be.

>You don't have to do all that.  Instead you open up the current
>copy of Usenet Version B Installation, flip to the flags section,
>and see that there is a flag which passes only moderated groups.
>Have your news feed use that flag for feeding you all moderated
>groups.  Very simple.  They might end up having two sys file entries
>for you -- one for unmoderated groups and the other for moderated.
>Big deal.

This has been explained to me.  It does not, however, accomplish what I
see as the explicit purpose of essentially creating a backbone for the
passage of moderated groups (if I may take the liberty of equating the
distribution with a backbone as has been done with the alt.* groups.)
What is desireable is to explicitly encourage the propagation of
moderated groups in preference to their brothers -- the current
hierarchy does not accomplish this.

Sure.  I can set up the sys file(s) as indicated and probably will, but
it does nothing in terms of the current problems whereas a technical
means of encouraging distributions of moderated groups might.

I always bridle when programmers' sensibilities get in the ways of
users' needs, convenience and workability of the system.

-- 
Byron C. Howes			  UNC Educational Computing Service
bch@ecsvax.uncecs.edu   |   bch@ecsvax.uucp   |   bch@ecsvax.bitnet