Xref: utzoo news.groups:5093 news.admin:3228
Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!watdcsu!dmcanzi
From: dmcanzi@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (David Canzi)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: RFC: moderation of 2 newsgroups
Summary: The old cross-posting problem
Keywords: noise
Message-ID: <4953@watdcsu.waterloo.edu>
Date: 5 Aug 88 22:55:40 GMT
References: <1573@edison.GE.COM> <979@acornrc.UUCP> <980@acornrc.UUCP>
Reply-To: dmcanzi@watdcsu.waterloo.edu (David Canzi)
Followup-To: news.admin
Organization: U. of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 39

[Followups to news.admin]

In article <980@acornrc.UUCP> bob@acornrc.UUCP (Bob Weissman) writes:
>In article <1573@edison.GE.COM>, rja@edison.GE.COM (rja) writes:
>> The newsgroups news.admin and news.sysadmin have an awful lot of noise in
>> them these days. ...
>
>I propose a program which would filter postings to news.admin and
>news.sysadmin based on whether the poster's name was found in the posting
>site's map entry.  ...

The recent noise problem in news.admin is only a special case of the
old cross-posting problem.  All you need to do to cause massive chaos
and disruption is write an article guaranteed to start flame wars and
cross-post it to a group where it belongs, and some group where it
doesn't, such as news.admin.  Then people who read the article in the
group where it belongs will respond to it, usually without removing the
excess group names from the newsgroups line, or even *noticing* that
the article is cross-posted.  (If your first article doesn't push
enough people's buttons, you may have to repeat the procedure by
posting something even more offensive.)  Voila!  You now have a
cross-posted flame war.

Any attempt to deal with the problems that result by protecting only
one or two newgroups at a time is inadequate.

The trouble is that, when people follow up a cross-posted article, they
receive no warning that they are about to cross-post.  Even if they
were warned, human laziness being what it is, many people wouldn't do
anything about it.  What is needed is a solution that makes use of the
reader's laziness:  when a followup would be cross-posted, the news
software should list the newsgroups the article would be posted in, and
require the user to type in the names of the newsgroups he wants his
article to be posted in.  Once software implementing this policy has
been distributed to enough sites, cross-posted flame wars will quickly
restrict themselves to newsgroups where they belong.

-- 
David Canzi