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From: rgreene@wild.rice.EDU (Robert D. Greene)
Newsgroups: news.groups,alt.sys.sun
Subject: Re: comp.sys.sun performance
Message-ID: <4579@brazos.Rice.edu>
Date: 5 Feb 90 20:54:06 GMT
References: <15966@well.UUCP>
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Reply-To: rgreene@wild.rice.EDU (Robert D. Greene)
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In <15966@well.UUCP>, jef@well.UUCP (Jef Poskanzer) said:

| 	comp.sys.sun		310		1 to 3 WEEKS

I don't think this is a fair evaluation, I'd say this is more of a
"worst case" scenario. The average posting delay for my entire
moderatorship has been approx 3 days, and as quick as hourly
for some articles. I realize that most of the readers of this
group are not sympathetic to this fact (that's why you are 
reading this one, right? :)), but I think it's been fairly reasonable.

|  Some others are his
| tendency to drop messages in the bit bucket instead of returning them
| with a rejection note (or sometimes dropping them for no reason at
| all), and the general uselessness of his moderation. 

Harsh criticism for one who hasn't even begun to contemplate the work
that moderating this newsgroup is. Poskanzer attempts to portray the
moderation of the newsgroup as a "2 minute a week job" where it actually
ends up taking many many hours each day. My moderation is more than just
simple editing and what Jef constantly refers to as "dropping messages
in the bit bucket". When I receive messages, each one goes through a 
lengthy process before it actually appears in published form - first
I screen out all the junk that should be on other groups {misc.forsale,
comp.unix.*, etc}, then I do a lengthy cross reference on the contents of
the article to try to find out if it has already been answered previously
on comp.sys.sun. If, in many cases, it has, I directly send that information 
to the poster instead of reposting the same thing over and over. I also do
checks on general spelling, grammar, etc and then the final thing is broken
into it's subgroups and posted. 

The main criticism that started this whole controversy was that Jef was
irritated that his article explaining a problem with the earlier posting
about the Sparc audio connector was not posted and anothers was. I have 
repeatedly tried to explain to Jef that:

(a) When several people all submit answers that are fairly similar, I make
    a judgement call on which one to post. Sometimes, I'm wrong, but I'm a 
    human, and I make mistakes every now and then :) It's not meant as a 
    personal insult to the poster whose article is not sent.

(b) The particular article in question was never successfully submitted to 
    comp.sys.sun. I know, we all have this ideal of a perfect network, but
    let's face it, things do go into the bit bucket in the sky once every
    blue moon. It's not really my fault for not posting something that I 
    never got.

Finally, I would beg of everyone here that feels compelled to reply to this,
including Jef, to mail directly to me. I feel that this discussion is best
limited to private email and not to the net in general.
 
Bob Greene                           Sunspots (comp.sys.sun) Moderator
RGREENEB@RICEVM1.BITNET              ONCS, Information Services, Rice
University
RGREENEB@RICEVM1.RICE.EDU          all), and the general uselessness of
his moderation.   Houston, Texas, USA
...!psuvax1!rice!ricevm1!rgreeneb