Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rocksanne!entire!news
From: news@entire.UUCP (Usenet Administrator)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: news.admin, some moderation would be useful
Summary: Not Usenet-wide Moderation, rather local Moderation
Message-ID: <3234@entire.UUCP>
Date: 1 Aug 88 15:37:01 GMT
References: <12636@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <173@sulaco.UUCP> <979@acornrc.UUCP>
Organization: Entire Inc, East Rochester, NY
Lines: 57

In article <979@acornrc.UUCP>, bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes:
> This newsgroup is news.admin.  It is supposed to be about the administration
> of Usenet news.  ...........................................................
  :
> I'd prefer it if this group's description read
> 
> news.admin		Discussions among news administrators (moderated).
> 
> Look.  This newsgroup has been almost completely subverted in recent weeks,
> lowering its signal-to-noise ratio to the point where any useful postings
> are likely to be lost in the shuffle.

In fact it is already out of hand.

> We news admins need a newsgroup in which to exchange information .......
  :
> Anyone for moderation?  I am not proposing censorship, just filtering.

I am in agreement with Bob, WRT to the need for some form of moderation, however
the moderation should be handled on the local level.  Only the site news admins
should be allowed to post into news.admin.  Similar to how USENET wide
moderation works now, when inews receives an article, if it does not contain
the Approved: "<news admin>" line, it should be mailed to the admin, for 
approval.  This way the news admin can post to the group without the worry of
the current signal/noise ratio "drowning" out the article.  Also if a user
wishes to post to the group, the news admin has to be involved.  

I am not the first person to come up with this, however I do think that it is a 
good idea.  The only flaw, is that I am at this time unable to creat the
necessary "patches" to make it work.  I know that 2.11 uses "m" for moderated,
could it use "l" for local moderation ?.  Also there was some discussion with
"C" news or Rev 3, and local posting permissions for groups, can this concept
be used to handle "local moderation".  It would really need to be implemented
on a complete scale, I would hate to have 2.11 sites suddenly start mailing all
the articles in news.admin to the administrator, it's bad enough to have to
read all of them once :-{.  

This is not a call for the admins to start moderation of all the groups comming
out of their machine, that is asking for too much, and it is not necessary. 
It is a request to try and increase the signal/noise ration, in the only useful
group that admins have to get information pertaining to the day-to-day
operations of keeping a USENET node up and running.  News.admin is the first
group that I read in the morning, and with my limited time, juggling Unix, SCSI
and firmware I hate to have to wade through all the "chaf" just to read the 
useful articles.

Is this a useful idea?  What about other admins would you be willing to handle
the concept of local moderation for news.admin at your site ?  It has the
potential of cleaning up one of the more abused groups on the net.
-- 
John A. Gallant                 UUCP:  {..}!rochester!rocksanne!entire!news
Defacto Usenet News Administrator      news@entire.uucp
Entire Inc.

    Get your facts first,
	and then you can distort them as much as you please.
    Mark Twain