USENET evaluation - misuse
Nicolaas Vroom
certain issues that bother me, but let me try.
First of all the whole structure of USENET (allowing all people
to discuss all issues) is the best on the market.
What makes it so powerfull is the only one ASCI line subject
statement and the one ASCI line message statement.
Those two concepts make it very easy to see what is happening in
time in a certain group versus in a certain discussion.
However there are two major problems with USENET. Sadly
enough they are with the two basics: all people and all issues.
If you go to the newsgroup: comp.arch you will see what I mean:
The subjects of the discussions is mostly not computer architecture,
may be only 5 percent it is.
A second one is the newsgroup: new.groups.
This is a serious unmoderated group where issues like I'am
discussing here should be discussed.
However this newsgroup often shows messages which only
has url's to advertising. The subject are in capitol letters and there
is no discussion.
A third one is: comp.parallel.
If you post to this newsgroup you get no reply.
The moderator: Mike Bigrigg: big...@cs.pitt.edu is not available
What I mean is that there is sadly a lot of misuse going on
with USENET. The results are that many people and organisations
starts there own forums. As such there are already may Physics
forums. And that is not what I want and I hope also many other
people. What I want is to discuss issues which all people and not
with the owner of a blog or the subscribers of a magazine.
In my opinion what should be done is to make two USENETS.
One moderated and one unmoderated.
What this mean is first to copy all unmoderated newsgroup
from USENET and to an USENET-UNMODERATED
A second step is to delete most of the unmoderated newsgroup
from USENET and to keep some and make them lightly
moderated.
Each USENET newsgroup should have a FAQ or charter.
Moderation means: when a subject of a posting is clearly outside
the charter the posting should not be made public.
What makes this whole issue so tricky that in some unmoderated (?)
newsgroups there is no misuse at all.
Nicolaas Vroom
http://users.pandora.be/nicvroom/
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> In my opinion what should be done is to make two USENETS.
> One moderated and one unmoderated.
> What this mean is first to copy all unmoderated newsgroup
> from USENET and to an USENET-UNMODERATED
> A second step is to delete most of the unmoderated newsgroup
> from USENET and to keep some and make them lightly
> moderated.
> Each USENET newsgroup should have a FAQ or charter.
> Moderation means: when a subject of a posting is clearly outside
> the charter the posting should not be made public.
I appreciate the energy you put into this. So please, don't feel
discouraged by my remarks. But your suggestions raise at least two
obvious questions:
We don't have enough volunteers to maintain the status quo. So
where should the manpower to moderate all those groups come from?
There are a lot of newsservers out there that don't care about
checkgroups compliance. How do you want to convince them that
wholesale renaming of the hierarchy is whortwhile?
--
host -t mx moderators.isc.org
Steve Bonine
> I do not know if this is the right group to discuss
> certain issues that bother me, but let me try.
>
> First of all the whole structure of USENET (allowing all people
> to discuss all issues) is the best on the market.
It'd say it's the only on the market. One of the most important aspects
of Usenet is that when you submit an article to an unmoderated newsgroup
no one has control over it. Even in an umoderated web forum, the owner
can remove material if desired.
...
> Moderation means: when a subject of a posting is clearly outside
> the charter the posting should not be made public.
The phrase "clearly outside the charter" sounds so simple. You started
your submission with "I do not know if this is the right group". It
could be argued that your submission is "clearly outside the charter" of
news.groups.proposals. It's a judgment call, and there are always
submissions that could be called either way.
Moderated newsgroups have advantages but unmoderated newsgroups are the
essence of Usenet. Take away unmoderated newsgroups and you have
removed the single attribute that makes Usenet unique.
Rather than try to change Usenet, we need to educate potential users as
to what it is and why they care.
D. Stussy
news:T8IMo.4966$M94...@newsfe22.ams2...
> I do not know if this is the right group to discuss
> certain issues that bother me, but let me try.
"Usenet2" tried and failed a while (a decade or more) ago.
KalElFan
> Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
>
>> I do not know if this is the right group to discuss
>> certain issues that bother me, but let me try.
>>
>> First of all the whole structure of USENET (allowing all people
>> to discuss all issues) is the best on the market.
>
> It'd say it's the only on the market. One of the most important aspects
> of Usenet is that when you submit an article to an unmoderated newsgroup
> no one has control over it. Even in an umoderated web forum, the owner
> can remove material if desired.
Right.
>> Moderation means: when a subject of a posting is clearly outside
>> the charter the posting should not be made public.
>
> The phrase "clearly outside the charter" sounds so simple. You started
> your submission with "I do not know if this is the right group". It
> could be argued that your submission is "clearly outside the charter" of
> news.groups.proposals. It's a judgment call, and there are always
> submissions that could be called either way.
Right again, but I think the OP and ensuing discussion is actually squarely
on topic here as a potential paradigm I'll get to. I dealt with it generally
in the response to Alexander, and will get more specific here on the
Optional Moderation concept.
> Moderated newsgroups have advantages but unmoderated newsgroups are the
> essence of Usenet. Take away unmoderated newsgroups and you have
> removed the single attribute that makes Usenet unique.
Basically, I strongly agree with that in principle. Preserving the underlying
Unmoderated nature of Usenet is essential, even if a successful Optional
Moderation tool is offered. The Unmoderated version remaining there is
a kind of safety valve. If those running the Optional Moderation effort
in a particular group begin abusing their "power," their lack of power
is only a click away. Users can turn off the Optional Moderation and
again see the glorious Cesspool that Usenet can be, if a return to that
Cesspool is preferable to the tyranny of Moderation Run Amuck.
> Rather than try to change Usenet, we need to educate potential users as
> to what it is and why they care.
Disagree strongly in terms of the thinking behind that, because if you think
about it it's counter to your first point. We shouldn't be trying to moderate
people's thinking while singing the praises of unmoderated postings. It's
fundamentally very hypocritical. Who decides what "education" they
need and what "education" is right, for example? It's in essence not much
better, if at all, than just handing the keys to a decent moderator, group
by group.
No, the only potential solution is the Optional approach, and the Board
and anyone else should be focused exclusively on that. When you start
by saying "I got no power, feel free to ignore me or tell me to frak off,"
rather than busily doing Moderator "Investigations" and defining some
"approved" checkgroups lists and "educating" people, it's a completely
different scenario. When it's Optional, you'll still have nitwits whining
about it but you can justifiably tell *them* to frak off if they don't like
it because no one is forcing them to go along with your suggestion, or
use the tool you're offering them.
So back to the resource issue, this is where I think the Board could get
the ball rolling along with others. You could try a Pilot project first, for
a group or a few groups that are well suited to it. Get some moderator
volunteers who have the best record of impartiality, and ask them to
take shifts on the pilot groups. Develop the protocols for the optional
moderation. Define when robo-moderation gets used, what software
might be used for that, when an offending poster might be removed
from whitelists, what site or process might be available to them if they
care to try to remedy that and so on. The Board could be very useful
in developing this kind of underlying infrastructure, if you will, for
Optional Moderation.
Don't hestitate to get news admins involved as well, especially with
the bigger providers and those that charge for news access specifically.
Have one or some or many of them on board for the pilot project(s)
when they launch. Perhaps have moderation shifts staffed by three
volunteers not one, so posts don't get backlogged and there might
even be 2-1 votes for manually moderated posts or whitelist adding/
removal decisions.
The actual functioning of the system would probably mimic that on
the better web boards, where there are several moderators and in
some cases a dozen or more. In fact the distinction is already very
blurry and has been for years, with Google Groups for example like
a Giant Usenet Web Board with minimal robo-moderation. It won't
let binaries through for example. If and when a functioning Optional
Moderation capability were available, they might well offer that to
their users. In signing up they'd just ask a user if they wanted all
of the groups they subscribe to, or perhaps they choose Yes or No
by individual groups, to be Optionally Moderated. FAQs then give
a brief or more delatiled description of how that works.
>From a user perspective, as more and more news servers and admins
offer it as an Optional_Tool as I think they would, for the groups it's
avalable for, it's then just a simple decision. If they don't want it
then they get the standard unmoderated Usenet with everything
in it. If they opt in, they get the best moderation that the Board
and volunteer moderators and anyone else who contributes to
developing and building that infrastructure can provide.
Is there any "danger" here? Hell, yeah, if you have some kind of
religious or philosophical belief that Usenet Must Be a Cesspool,
i.e. that everyone should have to suffer all the crap and shouldn't
be allowed to even subscribe to Optional Moderation, which only
mimics the kind of filtering and killfiling tools some can develop
themselves. The vast majority don't of course, they just see the
cesspool and run like hell to the web boards and that's the main
reason Usenet fell out of favor. If we (Usenet users) had the big
selling point that you can one-click your way to filtering out the
crap in the cesspool, a heckuva lot more folk will be drinking the
cool, clear Optionally Moderated Usenet water.
A few years from now on Optionally Moderated successful groups,
signal to noise and on-topic posting volume will be through the
roof. You might be getting hierarchy split proposals again, which
haven't generally been seen for more than a decade or two. But
the dynamic will be that Old Cesspool Usenet is basically replaced.
It exists and it's available for those purists (oh, the irony) who like
the cesspool ambience for whatever reason. But it'll be the Usenet
Undernet, with the vast majority opting to filter out the Undernet
crap. New users will more and more opt for Usenet as a result of
this new Optional Moderation tool being available.
For it to work best, the robomoderation protocols, the guidelnes,
and perhaps most of all the volunteer moderator objectivity will
be key. Ideally, no moderator volunteer ever even moderates a
group he/she participates in. The Volunteer Moderators just take
a shift here or there on group(s) they DON'T participate in and
can therefore more objectively implement moderation guidelines
in respect of. There are unmoderated groups where cliques are
more than ready to abuse even an Optional Moderation concept
if they're allowed to get their claws into it. So don't allow it with
the Big 8 Optional Moderation Pilot Project or whatever you want
to call it. Give Optional Moderation the best development and
implementation effort you can, and turn Usenet around because
it *WILL* blow the web board fiefdoms and their often wannabe
little despot owners off the map.
The preceding just some thoughts for any of the Board No-Powers
That Be or others under 55 still around these Usenet parts, before
it dies out completely and one of you turns out the lights. Usenet
can survive and thrive, but exclusively as a Continuing Cesspool
it never will. With an Optional Moderation tool, everything will
change and those who don't like it, tough beans. You don't run
Usenet and you don't control the evolution it will take if users
choose to provide an Optional Moderation tool.
If the Board and some other volunteers come forward and like
the concept enough to start developing it, I'd be willing to also
provide some input on specific issues, documentation, guidelines
and the like.
KalElFan
> Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
>> [...]
>> In my opinion what should be done is to make two USENETS.
>> One moderated and one unmoderated.
>> What this mean is first to copy all unmoderated newsgroup
>> from USENET and to an USENET-UNMODERATED
>> A second step is to delete most of the unmoderated newsgroup
>> from USENET and to keep some and make them lightly
>> moderated.
>> Each USENET newsgroup should have a FAQ or charter.
>> Moderation means: when a subject of a posting is clearly outside
>> the charter the posting should not be made public.
>
> I appreciate the energy you put into this. So please, don't feel
> discouraged by my remarks. But your suggestions raise at least two
> obvious questions:
>
> We don't have enough volunteers to maintain the status quo. So
> where should the manpower to moderate all those groups come from?
Undeniably this is the key issue, but I think the OP was at least on
to something with the "One moderated and one unmoderated" point.
That issue, and specifically whether the moderation is mandatory or
optional, is key. If it's mandatory, forget it. It's completely contrary
to everything Usenet is about to simply try to eliminate or shuffle
off to the side all the unmoderated groups and replace them with
some Approved Moderated Groups.
So likewise this point is actually not really the issue either:
> There are a lot of newsservers out there that don't care about
> checkgroups compliance. How do you want to convince them that
> wholesale renaming of the hierarchy is [worthwhile]?
The best way would be for the Board or whatever it's now called to
just completely abdicate as "official" arbiters of what Usenet or even
the Big 8 should or shouldn't be. Don't hold yourselves out as any
kind of official authority, at least make it crystal clear that you are
not that. Stop trying to judge whether a group should be on any
official list of checkgroups, or whether a news admin should be
paying any attention to your list.
Instead, completely redefine yourselves as an OPTIONAL source of
advice or recommendations or tools for news admins and users.
Completely abdicate on proclamations or investigations or group
removals and all the rest, in favor of the optional, advisory role.
Once you did that, there'd be applause throughout Usenet and
you might start getting more people volunteering for what can
potentially be a more worthwhile effort on their part and yours.
Optional Moderation is the Holy Grail, and the only obstacle is
really that first point you raised about the resources to do it. The
prerequisite for dealing with that, though, is to clear the decks of
all the offensive, pretentious "authority" behind whatever it is
you're putting out. The best way to do that is to just stop putting
it out. If you concede upfront, for everyone to see including the
newbies that are necessary for Usenet to be revived and survive,
that you have no power and aren't trying to enforce anything,
people look at you differently. They can more readily take a look
at if not accept what you're offering, or failing that Just Say No
and maybe look at your next idea.
No one needs anyone's permission to put forward a suggestion.
Technically I think we do to post to this news.groups.proposals
group if it's moderated, as I believe it is. But I could slap a META
tag on a post like this and propose Optional Moderation for any
unmoderated group I like, in a post to that unmoderated group.
Or I could just set up an Optional Moderation feed of that group
and offer it to any users that want it. No one could control it or
prevent it, the users that want it would simply have it.
A more specific proposal in my response to Steve in this thread,
a post accompanying this one.
Rob Kelk
wrote:
<snip>
>The best way would be for the Board or whatever it's now called to
>just completely abdicate as "official" arbiters of what Usenet or even
>the Big 8 should or shouldn't be. Don't hold yourselves out as any
>kind of official authority, at least make it crystal clear that you are
>not that. Stop trying to judge whether a group should be on any
>official list of checkgroups, or whether a news admin should be
>paying any attention to your list.
Checkgroups lists for groups have nothing to do with the content of the
groups. For example, ONAG maintains an official checkgroups list for
ott.*, but we do not control what's posted to the unmoderated ott.*
groups (except on our own servers where we set the rules for all groups,
not just the ott.* groups). We can make suggestions to Google and
Individual.net and Giganews and the other news service providers by
issuing checkgroups messages, but it's up to the NSPs' mews admins
whether they want to listen to those suggestions.
ONAG can also make suggestions to other news admins as to which posts
they carry in the ott.* groups by issuing cancel messages, and the other
news admins are free to ignore those suggestions. Some do, some don't.
>Instead, completely redefine yourselves as an OPTIONAL source of
>advice or recommendations or tools for news admins and users.
>Completely abdicate on proclamations or investigations or group
>removals and all the rest, in favor of the optional, advisory role.
Which, in reality, is what they are now - no news admin is required to
pay any attention to what any other news admin does. (Although I find a
loose correlation to which news admins pay attention to the B8MB and
which news servers carry all those spam posts that the OP was
complaining about, so they appear to be performing a useful function.)
<snip>
--
Rob Kelk Personal address (ROT-13): eboxryx -ng- tznvy -qbg- pbz
Any opinions here are mine, not ONAG's.
ott.* newsgroup charters: <http://onag.pinetree.org>
Any Usenet message claiming to be from me but posted from any server
other than individual.net is a forgery. Please filter out such
messages if you have the capability.
Rob Kelk
wrote:
<snip>
>Basically, I strongly agree with that in principle. Preserving the underlying
>Unmoderated nature of Usenet is essential, even if a successful Optional
>Moderation tool is offered. The Unmoderated version remaining there is
>a kind of safety valve. If those running the Optional Moderation effort
>in a particular group begin abusing their "power," their lack of power
>is only a click away. Users can turn off the Optional Moderation and
>again see the glorious Cesspool that Usenet can be, if a return to that
>Cesspool is preferable to the tyranny of Moderation Run Amuck.
This sounds to me as if you're re-inventing Cleanfeed.
Those who want what you call "optional moderation" are free to obtain
their news feed from a server that runs Cleanfeed, while those who do
not want it are free to obtain their news feed from a server that does
not.
Alan J Rosenthal
>First of all the whole structure of USENET (allowing all people
>to discuss all issues) is the best on the market.
It's not on the market. But anyway,
>In my opinion what should be done is to make two USENETS.
>One moderated and one unmoderated.
I agree. And that's what we have now. Some newsgroups are moderated and
some aren't.
Nicolaas Vroom
"Steve Bonine" <s...@pobox.com> schreef in bericht
news:8mit64...@mid.individual.net...
>
> Moderated newsgroups have advantages but unmoderated newsgroups are the
> essence of Usenet.
I think there is something terribly wrong with Usenet
Have a look at news.groups and you will see what I mean.
Have a look at comp.arch. I think 1 year ago they tried to clean
this newsgroup but it is now completely out of control.
Have a look at comp.parallel there is no moderator.
(Ofcourse the problem can be different)
Why is there a newsgroup called 1.aardvark ? (1 response in 2010)
Why is there a newsgroup called news.news.groups ( 1 response in 2006)
Why sci.physics.string ? (no response in 2009 and 2010)
This are just examples that there are too many newsgroups.
> Take away unmoderated newsgroups and you have removed the single attribute
> that makes Usenet unique.
Again you are correct, however I prefer made instead of make
Usenet can still be very valuable if you make certain changes.
IMO you cannot continue as it presently is.
> Rather than try to change Usenet, we need to educate potential users as to
> what it is and why they care.
I wish it was so easy.
There are many people who want to express there "opinion" completely
out of order in the way the Usenet community wants.
They just do not want to stick to the rules.
I have the impression that for each (?) forum used on the internet if you
want to
participate (send a message) you have to log in.
I think that people take that for granted.
Nicolaas Vroom
Doug Freyburger
> "KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>
>>Basically, I strongly agree with that in principle. Preserving the underlying
>>Unmoderated nature of Usenet is essential, even if a successful Optional
>>Moderation tool is offered. The Unmoderated version remaining there is
>>a kind of safety valve. If those running the Optional Moderation effort
>>in a particular group begin abusing their "power," their lack of power
>>is only a click away. Users can turn off the Optional Moderation and
>>again see the glorious Cesspool that Usenet can be, if a return to that
>>Cesspool is preferable to the tyranny of Moderation Run Amuck.
>
> This sounds to me as if you're re-inventing Cleanfeed.
Just to be clear what is probably meant here - Cleanfeed removes all
spam, all trolls, all threads that have turned into flame wars, that is
to say everything that would be rejected by generous and unbiased
moderators? It removes abuse "on" UseNet in addition to abuse "of"
UseNet? Very many users have left UseNet because it lacks that. The
price of allowing abuse "on" UseNet is simple - Posters moved to places
that do not.
I would sign up for such a service in a flash but I know that's not what
Cleanfeed does.
Theo Markettos
> The actual functioning of the system would probably mimic that on
> the better web boards, where there are several moderators and in
> some cases a dozen or more. In fact the distinction is already very
> blurry and has been for years, with Google Groups for example like
> a Giant Usenet Web Board with minimal robo-moderation. It won't
> let binaries through for example. If and when a functioning Optional
> Moderation capability were available, they might well offer that to
> their users. In signing up they'd just ask a user if they wanted all
> of the groups they subscribe to, or perhaps they choose Yes or No
> by individual groups, to be Optionally Moderated. FAQs then give
> a brief or more delatiled description of how that works.
I think your idea has some merit, in part of a larger strategy:
1. Usenet seriously needs to embrace the web. So far the web clients have
been, frankly, terrible. A client with the fluidity of GMail or Facebook
would make things a lot more user friendly, particularly if it was designed
to enforce Usenet conventions (sensible quoting etc). This would be a way
to bring in new blood, which is something particularly lacking in many
groups.
Ideally such a client would be open source (like Livejournal), but would
primarily be offered as a hosted solution. So no need to find a newsserver
and configure a client, just register for an account and get going [1]
2. Ideally the hosted newsserver would have a reasonable back-archive of
articles so search would be sensible (but enforce conventions, such as not
replying to articles that are years old)
3. Such a client (and other traditional clients so-modified) can have a
'report as spam' button. Articles with a sufficient number of crowdsourced
clicks can be tagged in the 'cleanfeed' as spam, their author's spammer
rating increased, whatever[2].
4. Users can potentially choose to see a 'clean' or a 'dirty' feed or
somewhere in between. Experimentally, users could be allowed to create
their own 'clean' feeds to which users can subscribe (so the 'dirty' group
receives all articles, the 'clean/fred' group receives fred's idea of clean
articles, the 'clean/xyzmods' groups receives the idea of clean articles
produced by that team of users). In essence this is a shared killfile.
[1] Here be issues with spam, but there are countermeasures
[2] Here be issues with abuse, but there are countermeasures
TBH, I think 1. is something that needs to be addressed before worrying too
much about spam. It's the lack of signal rather than the surplus of noise
that's the problem in many groups.
Theo
Kathy Morgan
> "Steve Bonine" wrote in message news:8mit64...@mid.individual.net...
>
> > Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
> >
> >> First of all the whole structure of USENET (allowing all people
> >> to discuss all issues) is the best on the market.
> >
> > It'd say it's the only on the market. One of the most important aspects
> > of Usenet is that when you submit an article to an unmoderated newsgroup
> > no one has control over it. Even in an umoderated web forum, the owner
> > can remove material if desired.
>
> Right.
>
> >> Moderation means: when a subject of a posting is clearly outside
> >> the charter the posting should not be made public.
>
> Basically, I strongly agree with that in principle. Preserving the underlying
> Unmoderated nature of Usenet is essential, even if a successful Optional
> Moderation tool is offered. [...]
>
> No, the only potential solution is the Optional approach, and the Board
> and anyone else should be focused exclusively on that. [...]
We already have many moderated groups where the moderators have
disappeared or ceased to care about their groups, and a lack of
volunteers to take them over. Where are all these moderator volunteers
to come from?
> Don't hestitate to get news admins involved as well, especially with
> the bigger providers and those that charge for news access specifically.
Unfortunately some of those are the ones least likely to help in any
way. Most of the bigger providers want to advertise that they have huge
numbers of groups available, never mind that most of the groups they
carry are bogus and have little to no traffic of value.
> From a user perspective, as more and more news servers and admins
> offer it as an Optional_Tool as I think they would, for the groups it's
> avalable for, it's then just a simple decision. If they don't want it
> then they get the standard unmoderated Usenet with everything
> in it. If they opt in, they get the best moderation that the Board
> and volunteer moderators and anyone else who contributes to
> developing and building that infrastructure can provide.
I for one like the idea of having a choice of seeing a raw newsgroup or
a version moderated by a trusted editor, but it requires large numbers
of volunteers and history shows that those volunteers are not likely to
step forward. NoCeM's are existing technology that will do what you
want, but most newsreaders don't support them and as far as I know there
aren't volunteers providing the NoCeM notices.
> Ideally, no moderator volunteer ever even moderates a
> group he/she participates in. The Volunteer Moderators just take
> a shift here or there on group(s) they DON'T participate in and
> can therefore more objectively implement moderation guidelines
> in respect of.
Ooh, really bad idea! If the subject is something in which I'm not
interested enough to participate, I'm probably also not knowledgeable
enough to implement the moderation guidelines. I speak here from
personal experience; as one of the volunteer moderators willing to help
with moderation on any group that needs it, I agreed to help moderate
ba.broadcast.moderated when it first started up. Quite often I was not
able to tell whether or not a post was on charter; for starters, it's
been almost 50 years since I've been in the Bay Area and I don't know
what towns and communities are part of the Bay Area. Likewise, I would
not be able to moderate many of the sci.* or soc.* groups due to
unfamiliarity with the subject area--and it would be disastrous for me
to try to help with a history group.
> Give Optional Moderation the best development and
> implementation effort you can, and turn Usenet around because
> it *WILL* blow the web board fiefdoms and their often wannabe
> little despot owners off the map.
That sounds like you're volunteering other people to do the work. Can
you develop the tools to do what you're suggesting? If you aren't able
to do the coding yourself, do you know of a candidate who is able and is
willing to donate the time and effort?
> The preceding just some thoughts for any of the Board No-Powers
> That Be or others under 55 still around these Usenet parts, before
> it dies out completely and one of you turns out the lights. Usenet
> can survive and thrive, but exclusively as a Continuing Cesspool
> it never will. With an Optional Moderation tool, everything will
> change and those who don't like it, tough beans. You don't run
> Usenet and you don't control the evolution it will take if users
> choose to provide an Optional Moderation tool.
You're a user. If you build a tool that can easily be used by the
majority of participants, I'll help you advertise it and disseminate it.
Don't expect, though, that some other volunteer is likely to jump to
working on it; that just isn't a realistic expectation. On Usenet, if
you want something, you have to be willing to do all or most of the
work.
To be successful, the tool would need to be free, available for
download, and compatible with the majority of newsreaders without
requiring the user to jump though a lot of hoops or invest a huge amount
of time learning to set up and configure the tool. If they were willing
to invest that much time and effort, they'd just learn to use a
newsreader with good killfiling and tagging ability.
Unfortunately, I don't believe such a tool can be built. It would need
to work with all the commonly used newsreaders on all major systems,
such as Windows (many flavors), MacOS (many flavors), and *nix (also
many flavors).
--
Kathy, speaking just for myself
KalElFan
news:ie3doh$ju1$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Rob Kelk wrote:
>
>> "KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ... Basically, I strongly agree with that in principle. Preserving the
>>> underlying Unmoderated nature of Usenet is essential, even if a
>>> successful Optional Moderation tool is offered. The Unmoderated
>>> version remaining there is a kind of safety valve. If those running
>>> the Optional Moderation effort in a particular group begin abusing
>>> their "power," their lack of power is only a click away. Users can
>>> turn off the Optional Moderation and again see the glorious
>>> Cesspool that Usenet can be, if a return to that Cesspool is
>>> preferable to the tyranny of Moderation Run Amuck.
>>
>> This sounds to me as if you're re-inventing Cleanfeed.
>
> Just to be clear what is probably meant here - Cleanfeed removes all
> spam, all trolls, all threads that have turned into flame wars, that is
> to say everything that would be rejected by generous and unbiased
> moderators? ...
No it doesn't and it appears you were just making that point as you
noted later:
> I would sign up for such a service in a flash but I know that's not
> what Cleanfeed does.
You're right, it's not...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanfeed_(Usenet_spam_filter)
(anyone clicking that may have to add the final close-bracket in
their browser)
My server news.individual.net probably already runs Cleanfeed
or more likely uses even better filters. It's still not even close to
what genuine Optional Moderation would involve.
There are all kinds of "unwanted" things many complain about
beyond genuine spam, binaries and the like. These included off-
topic postings, insulting posts and flame wars, neverending chat-
like threads, quoting 100 lines for a one- or two-line response,
profanity, insincere or troll posts, top postings, pure copyright
violations, fan fiction and various other things that a group isn't
intended for or that a charter prohibits.
These are things that just can't be robo-moderated the way an
anti-spam or binary filter can. They can be robo-moderated to
some degree by whitelisting. That may be possible based on a
poster's history, or by inviting posters who care enough about
the concept to review the protocols that Optional Moderation
would follow and adding them to the whitelist if they're willing
to agree to that, i.e. to at least try to abide by those. If a post is
moderated out they could consent to be informed of the reason
and be given a chance to resubmit it.
>> Those who want what you call "optional moderation" are free
>> to obtain their news feed from a server that runs Cleanfeed...
Again, Cleanfeed is nothing like what Optional Moderation would
be.
Kathy Morgan
> Organization: telenet.be (snip)
>
> "Steve Bonine" <s...@pobox.com> schreef in bericht
> news:8mit64...@mid.individual.net...
> >
> > Moderated newsgroups have advantages but unmoderated newsgroups are the
> > essence of Usenet.
> I fully agree with you and I wish it was.
> I think there is something terribly wrong with Usenet
> Have a look at news.groups and you will see what I mean.
No, I don't think I will. What I see in news.groups is a group with
almost no postings, but most that I do see are at least somewhat on
topic. The primary news server that I use is Individual.net, which does
a good job of filtering out the spam and honors pgp-signed control
messages from managed heirarchies, so they do not carry any bogus Big 8
newsgroups.
> Have a look at comp.arch. I think 1 year ago they tried to clean
> this newsgroup but it is now completely out of control.
This is an unmoderated group. If you're seeing a lot of offtopic
traffic, there's not much that can be done about that other than
learning to use your killfiles. If you're seeing a lot of spam, the
best solution is to change to a different news service provider, one
which uses Cleanfeed or other effective spam filtering.
> Have a look at comp.parallel there is no moderator.
> (Ofcourse the problem can be different)
> Why is there a newsgroup called 1.aardvark ? (1 response in 2010)
> Why is there a newsgroup called news.news.groups ( 1 response in 2006)
1.aardvark is not a Big 8 newsgroup, so it is outside the management of
the Big 8 and off topic here--I suspect that it probably is either an
error or a joke group. news.news.groups is a bogus group; it does not
appear on the list of groups carried by well-run news servers. I
believe you're using Highwinds, which is not well run. If you switch to
a well-run server, you'll see a much different--and shorter--list of
groups, and within groups you will see far fewer messages, since the
spam and widely crossposted cr*p will not appear.
I mostly use Individual.net, which is very well run and is a great
Netizen (they operate one of the moderation relays). It costs 10 Euros
per year, which I feel is a real bargain.
Albasani.net is another very well run news server and great Netizen, and
the price there is even better--it's free.
I'm also told that Eternal-september.org is also good, although I don't
have personal experience using it. It also is free.
> Why sci.physics.string ? (no response in 2009 and 2010)
> This are just examples that there are too many newsgroups.
This is a moderated news group, so it's possible that the moderators
have abandoned the group or that there just haven't been appropriate
submissions to the group.
KalElFan
On Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:24:26 CST, "KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com>
wrote:
>> ... The best way would be for the Board or whatever it's now
>> called to just completely abdicate as "official" arbiters of what
>> Usenet or even the Big 8 should or shouldn't be. Don't hold
>> yourselves out as any kind of official authority, at least make
>> it crystal clear that you are not that. Stop trying to judge
>> whether a group should be on any official list of checkgroups,
>> or whether a news admin should be paying any attention to
>> your list.
>
> Checkgroups lists for groups have nothing to do with the
> content of the groups.
Right, but to many the checkgroup lists are more offensive than
the concept of moderation, and even more so this:
> ONAG can also make suggestions to other news admins as to
> which posts they carry in the ott.* groups by issuing cancel
> messages, and the other news admins are free to ignore those
> suggestions. Some do, some don't.
Yeah, you'd know more about ott.* because it's so regionally
niche. Maybe your "some do, some don't" characterization is
an entirely fair description of how cancels get handled for that
specific hierarchy. For wider Usenet of course, successfully
playing God with cancel messages probably stopped working
20 years ago. Today it speaks to the mentality of the poster
(admin, control freak, whatever) but nothing much beyond
that. That's basically my "prerequisite" point on the Optional
Moderation. I think whoever puts such a concept forward
has to more or less disavow all forms of control freakishness
upfront.
My suggestion is the Board disband as a body that's issuing the
checkgroups, or cancels (if they're doing so individually), or
moderator investigations, or group removals, or anything else
that screams control freakishness and all that many hate about
that kind of thing. Sure, any news admin can ignore it and 99%
of Usenet users don't even know it exists, or have purged that
and its predecessor(s) from their news.groups memories going
back to the mid-1990s or earlier. But...
Even though it's correct to say they have no power or that fewer
news admins even take their suggestions, to the average new
or potential new user it never looks that way. They see or hear
the "Board" word, and the checkgroups, and investigations, and
group removals, and approvals of new groups, and the talk about
the cancel attemps and so on, and to say all that is not entirely
user friendly is an extreme understatement. That's just not the
way that kind of thing is perceived by users.
It goes back to the bad old days of news.groups, where the No
votes were allowed by any poster. The average Usenet user and
especially new user, if they even knew of the process, would see
it as some sort of kabuki cyber-theatre where the biggest Usenet
wannabes and self-important control freaks indulged themselves
in their neuroses. It was a bastardization of Usenet, yet at the
time it did impact what new groups got formed in the Big 8.
Few cared then, and virtually nobody cares now. I just happened
to be subscribed to this group, noticed the OP, and thought I'd
just propose a different approach. Maybe the timing is right. It
has no real downside, because Usenet is as close to dead as it's
ever been and what used to happen in news.groups had a lot
to do with its decline. So just make a clean, permanent break
from that mentality and try to develop something much more
constructive.
Or not. Obviously it's each individual's call and it needn't be
done at all via this group or news.groups or any other group.
Maybe Google or any of the NSP pay providers will do it one
day. I could do it if I felt like devoting all my time to it, which
I don't. But the Board and other posters to this group have
already demonstrated some volunteerism when it comes to
Usenet, so maybe some of them have had enough of what
hasn't really amounted to much, and are willing to at least
aim higher.
KalElFan
news:roi*5+...@news.chiark.greenend.org.uk...
> KalElFan <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>
>> The actual functioning of the system would probably mimic that on
>> the better web boards, where there are several moderators and in
>> some cases a dozen or more. In fact the distinction is already very
>> blurry and has been for years, with Google Groups for example like
>> a Giant Usenet Web Board with minimal robo-moderation. It won't
>> let binaries through for example. If and when a functioning Optional
>> Moderation capability were available, they might well offer that to
>> their users. In signing up they'd just ask a user if they wanted all
>> of the groups they subscribe to, or perhaps they choose Yes or No
>> by individual groups, to be Optionally Moderated. FAQs then give
>> a brief or more delatiled description of how that works.
>
> I think your idea has some merit, in part of a larger strategy:
>
> 1. Usenet seriously needs to embrace the web. So far the web clients have
> been, frankly, terrible. A client with the fluidity of GMail or Facebook
> would make things a lot more user friendly, particularly if it was designed
> to enforce Usenet conventions (sensible quoting etc). This would be a way
> to bring in new blood, which is something particularly lacking in many
> groups.
>
> Ideally such a client would be open source (like Livejournal), but would
> primarily be offered as a hosted solution. So no need to find a newsserver
> and configure a client, just register for an account and get going [1]
I agree with all that, but I think the Wild West element is a disincentive to
get web hosting, an extreme disincentive in fact. It's the same reason
almost all the major ISP providers have dropped Usenet, though its disuse
has been a chicken and egg issue in some respects. If Usenet can be saved
and made more appealing to larger numbers via Optional Moderation,
then not only is web hosting more viable but the ISPs might start carrying
at least the Optional Moderation feeds of Usenet groups again.
> 2. Ideally the hosted newsserver would have a reasonable back-archive of
> articles so search would be sensible (but enforce conventions, such as not
> replying to articles that are years old)
That could be part of 1 and the user interface issue for Usenet on the web.
Again, I think the underlying problem of no moderation being available as
an option needs to be solved first. Pointing to moderated groups misses
the point. These have never been popular on Usenet and still aren't. As
an optional feed, initially of the test or pilot groups and ultimately the
most popular groups, it can work and expand participation.
> 3. Such a client (and other traditional clients so-modified) can have a
> 'report as spam' button. Articles with a sufficient number of crowdsourced
> clicks can be tagged in the 'cleanfeed' as spam, their author's spammer
> rating increased, whatever[2].
Yes, But. The But is that I think the appeal of the concept is much, much
greater if it doesn't move one iota to that No-vote mania that existed on
news.groups. By all means have the "Report as..." button, not just for
spam but any post that someone thinks should have been moderated
out. But have the impartial moderator(s) make the call, never the mob.
> 4. Users can potentially choose to see a 'clean' or a 'dirty' feed or
> somewhere in between. Experimentally, users could be allowed to create
> their own 'clean' feeds to which users can subscribe (so the 'dirty' group
> receives all articles, the 'clean/fred' group receives fred's idea of clean
> articles, the 'clean/xyzmods' groups receives the idea of clean articles
> produced by that team of users). In essence this is a shared killfile.
Basically, yes though again I don't ever see this as "Fred's Feed" or the
like. Having a box to click each type of thing you want screened out
though, from that list of examples I gave in another post in this set,
sure.
> It's the lack of signal rather than the surplus of noise that's the
> problem in many groups.
Definitely, though the first is what often breeds more of the second
and renders a group unusable.
The other possible approach to this (i.e., Optional Moderation) would
be to make it an exclusively web-based initiative. Conceptually, it'd
be unnecessary to even mess with nntp. Just let Usenet die as it's
doing. But start up new group hierarchies and then offer it to web
sites or existing boards that want that. So for example every TV show
could have its own group as in the alt.tv.* hierarchy now, and the
gazillion TV or show sites out there may choose to pick up the one(s)
they're covering. Existing moderators on some web boards might
become moderators for the Intenet Discussion Boards (or whatever
it's called) hierarchy.
Those with a soft spot for Usenet, though, might like to see it take
the lead on something like this rather than just sit and watch it die.
Hence my posts!
David E. Ross
>
> I agree with all that, but I think the Wild West element is a disincentive to
> get web hosting, an extreme disincentive in fact. It's the same reason
> almost all the major ISP providers have dropped Usenet, though its disuse
> has been a chicken and egg issue in some respects.
The major ISPs dropped all NNTP (newsgroup) services because they were
threatened with prosecution for hosting a vehicle for child pornography.
Actually, the pornography was limited to some alt.* newsgroups and
occasional off-topic Big8 newsgroups. Rather than implement reasonable
filters to block pornography, the ISPs decided that it would be cheaper
to merely eliminate newsgroup services.
--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>
Anything I post in this newsgroup is my personal
opinion and does not reflect the official position
of the Big8-Usenet Board.
Charles Lindsey
>On Sun, 12 Dec 2010 11:23:27 CST, "KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com>
>wrote:
><snip>
>>Basically, I strongly agree with that in principle. Preserving the underlying
>>Unmoderated nature of Usenet is essential, even if a successful Optional
>>Moderation tool is offered. The Unmoderated version remaining there is
>>a kind of safety valve. If those running the Optional Moderation effort
>>in a particular group begin abusing their "power," their lack of power
>>is only a click away. Users can turn off the Optional Moderation and
>>again see the glorious Cesspool that Usenet can be, if a return to that
>>Cesspool is preferable to the tyranny of Moderation Run Amuck.
>This sounds to me as if you're re-inventing Cleanfeed.
Well, there's another way to clean up specific groups, making them both
moderated and unmoderated at the same time. And that is to use NoCeMs.
If someone sets himself up as the "guardian" of the group (there might
even be several competing guardians) and, probably with the aid of
botware, sees all articles as soon as they are posted and issues NoCeMs
for those that are off-topic, then users can implement somehting like
NoCeM-on-spool which will enable them to see the group without the
clutter.
Essentially, each user coould then configure his reader to accept NoCeMs
from whichever "guardian(s)" of the group he chose to respect. It would be
necessary to adopt a convention that the NoCeMs themselves were posted to
the group (you can easily filter them out if you don't want to see them),
so that you can see exactly what the guardian is up to.
This scheme has the advantage that it could be introduced on a group by
group basis as the need arose, and it also has the great advantage that it
still leaves Usenet as the "almost-free-for-all" institution that by
convention it has always been.
--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At Home, doing my own thing------------------------
Tel: +44 161 436 6131 Web: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: c...@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 5 Clerewood Ave, CHEADLE, SK8 3JU, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14 A4 AB A5
Charles Lindsey
>"Steve Bonine" <s...@pobox.com> schreef in bericht
>news:8mit64...@mid.individual.net...
>>
>> Moderated newsgroups have advantages but unmoderated newsgroups are the
>> essence of Usenet.
>I fully agree with you and I wish it was.
>I think there is something terribly wrong with Usenet
>Have a look at news.groups and you will see what I mean.
>Have a look at comp.arch. I think 1 year ago they tried to clean
>this newsgroup but it is now completely out of control.
>Have a look at comp.parallel there is no moderator.
>(Ofcourse the problem can be different)
>Why is there a newsgroup called 1.aardvark ? (1 response in 2010)
>Why is there a newsgroup called news.news.groups ( 1 response in 2006)
>Why sci.physics.string ? (no response in 2009 and 2010)
>This are just examples that there are too many newsgroups.
Yes, the management board is doing a fairly good job of removing dead
moderated groups, but it is probably time they started on cleanng up the
almost empty unmoderated ones (often by combining them with similar groups
in the same sub-hierarchy).
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
>Yes, the management board is doing a fairly good job of removing dead
>moderated groups, but it is probably time they started on cleanng up the
>almost empty unmoderated ones (often by combining them with similar groups
>in the same sub-hierarchy).
I believe that is on Alexander's agenda.
Cleaning up dead moderated groups is relatively easy.
Re-organization of hierarchies is more touchy, but doable.
What we really need there is someone who cares about that
sub-section to drive the process. The voice of established
posters carries more weight (in my view) than that of "outsiders."
Marty
--
Member of the Big-8 Management Board (B8MB) <http://www.big-8.org>
Unless otherwise indicated, I speak for myself, not for the Board.
Nicolaas Vroom
"David E. Ross" <nob...@nowhere.invalid> schreef in bericht
news:ZbWdnYF8QqwfKJjQ...@iswest.net...
> On 12/12/10 4:37 PM, KalElFan wrote [in part]:
>>
>> I agree with all that, but I think the Wild West element is a
>> disincentive to
>> get web hosting, an extreme disincentive in fact. It's the same reason
>> almost all the major ISP providers have dropped Usenet, though its disuse
>> has been a chicken and egg issue in some respects.
>
> The major ISPs dropped all NNTP (newsgroup) services because they were
> threatened with prosecution for hosting a vehicle for child pornography.
>
> Actually, the pornography was limited to some alt.* newsgroups and
> occasional off-topic Big8 newsgroups. Rather than implement reasonable
> filters to block pornography, the ISPs decided that it would be cheaper
> to merely eliminate newsgroup services.
Go to comp.arch. There are roughly 10 messages of 13/12/2010.
9 Are clearly misuse.
Go to comp.dsp. The same
Go to news.groups. 2 out of 2 messages of 13/12/2010 are misuse.
Sci.astro 4 out of 11 of the last 11 messages are outside chapter.
alt.comp.virus 10% outside chapter
comp.multimedia & sci.physics okay.
I think the advice to use filters by the users is clearly wrong.
The advice to use filters by the ISPs is also not very practical.
How many ISPs are there that have a copy of each message ?
IMO the Usenet community either should use moderation or some
filters before they put a message onto the internet.
(I agree that there is some lack of knowledege on my side of all what
is involved in this whole issue)
One action the Usenet community should do is not to create
new unmoderated newsgroups.
Nicolaas Vroom
http://users.pandora.be/nicvroom/
Doug Freyburger
>> > Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
>
>> >> First of all the whole structure of USENET (allowing all people
>> >> to discuss all issues) is the best on the market.
>> >
>> > It'd say it's the only on the market. One of the most important aspects
>> > of Usenet is that when you submit an article to an unmoderated newsgroup
>> > no one has control over it. Even in an umoderated web forum, the owner
>> > can remove material if desired.
Note the two different definitions of the market. One is a user
oriented definition where web foras compete and are therefore a part of
the market in which UseNet works. One defines the market as the set of
inherently unmoderated groups.
>> >> Moderation means: when a subject of a posting is clearly outside
>> >> the charter the posting should not be made public.
A nit - That's one definition for good moderation. Moderation on UseNet
means having the power to reject any article on your newsgorup for any
reason.
>> Basically, I strongly agree with that in principle. Preserving the underlying
>> Unmoderated nature of Usenet is essential, even if a successful Optional
>> Moderation tool is offered. [...]
My competing theory - The unmoderated nature of most UseNet groups has
performed yet another demonstration of the trajedy of the commons. By
excess free speech they drew enough abusers to drive off most regulars.
The environment has been a long standing war of attrition by the worst
posters against the newest posters. The result has been a long standing
decline in the quality of postings and a gradual erosion of on topic
traffic in exchange for off topic traffic.
>> From a user perspective, as more and more news servers and admins
>> offer it as an Optional_Tool as I think they would, for the groups it's
>> avalable for, it's then just a simple decision. If they don't want it
>> then they get the standard unmoderated Usenet with everything
>> in it. If they opt in, they get the best moderation that the Board
>> and volunteer moderators and anyone else who contributes to
>> developing and building that infrastructure can provide.
>
> I for one like the idea of having a choice of seeing a raw newsgroup or
> a version moderated by a trusted editor, but it requires large numbers
> of volunteers and history shows that those volunteers are not likely to
> step forward. NoCeM's are existing technology that will do what you
> want, but most newsreaders don't support them and as far as I know there
> aren't volunteers providing the NoCeM notices.
Which readers support NoCeM's? At one point when I started using the
google web interface because I was travelling and then continued using
it for a while out of inertia plus a wish to see what UseNet newbies see
I liked their rating system and their ability to complain. But they did
not act of complaints and the rating system never removes an abusive
post from view nor blocks an abusive poster.
If NoCeM's can act as a content based filter for abuse "on" UseNet then
I want to switch to a newsreader that uses them and I want to start
using them.
>> Ideally, no moderator volunteer ever even moderates a
>> group he/she participates in. The Volunteer Moderators just take
>> a shift here or there on group(s) they DON'T participate in and
>> can therefore more objectively implement moderation guidelines
>> in respect of.
I participate in the groups I moderate. It's because I have enough
interest in those groups to post that I have enough interest to help
moderate. The best I can do is not approve my own posts when other
members of the team are active in the next few days.
> Ooh, really bad idea! If the subject is something in which I'm not
> interested enough to participate, I'm probably also not knowledgeable
> enough to implement the moderation guidelines. I speak here from
> personal experience; as one of the volunteer moderators willing to help
> with moderation on any group that needs it, I agreed to help moderate
> ba.broadcast.moderated when it first started up. Quite often I was not
> able to tell whether or not a post was on charter; for starters, it's
> been almost 50 years since I've been in the Bay Area and I don't know
> what towns and communities are part of the Bay Area. Likewise, I would
> not be able to moderate many of the sci.* or soc.* groups due to
> unfamiliarity with the subject area--and it would be disastrous for me
> to try to help with a history group.
In a lot of groups expertese is not really needed. Telling abuse and
lunacy is not difficult. But who has enough interest to help moderate
those groups they don't have knowledge of? One of the great strengths
of UseNet is the extremely deep expertese present in an active group's
set of regulars.
> That sounds like you're volunteering other people to do the work.
Always tempting. Rarely an effective idea.
Thor Kottelin
> I think the advice to use filters by the users is clearly wrong.
> The advice to use filters by the ISPs is also not very practical.
> How many ISPs are there that have a copy of each message ?
> IMO the Usenet community either should use moderation or some
> filters before they put a message onto the internet.
This is somewhat like saying that email spam should be prevented at the
source rather than filtered by its victims: the idea is fair but
impracticable.
In other words, there is a conflict between ideality and reality. Abusers
will find a point where they can inject their messages, and -- as someone
noted previously in this thread -- Usenet2, with its concept of "sound
sites", has been underwhelming in terms of success.
--
Thor Kottelin
http://www.anta.net/
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
>One action the Usenet community should do is not to create
>new unmoderated newsgroups.
There is no "Usenet community," considered as a single
entity capable of making its mind on your policy suggestion.
There are dozens of independent hierarchies.
In those hierarchies, there are thousands, perhaps even
tens of thousands of communities.
alt.* alone has tens of thousands of newsgroups.
The Big-8 (for which n.g.p is a specially moderated group)
is only a small part of Usenet, despite its grandiose name.
Speaking only for myself, I'm not willing to vote to adopt
your recommendation for the Big-8. I'd rather consider
each RFD on its own merits, FWIW.
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
> ... as someone
>noted previously in this thread -- Usenet2, with its concept of "sound
>sites", has been underwhelming in terms of success.
Yes. I think it came and went before I got involved in
moderating a newsgroup (1998).
The thought of riding herd on the entire torrent of all
posts made to Usenet strikes me as humanly impossible,
based on a cost-benefit analysis.
As Doug said in another post, it's a whole new example
of the "tragedy of the commons."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
It sure would be nice if everyone was nice; but that's
not how humans are, in general.
Kathy Morgan
> Go to comp.arch. There are roughly 10 messages of 13/12/2010.
> 9 Are clearly misuse.
My server is showing a different picture of comp.arch. I find 19
articles for Dec 13, of which 2 are offtopic. I know nothing about
computer architecture, so it may be that more of them are offtopic, but
none were spam or advertising or obvious trolls; and all but the two
seemed to me to be at least somewhat ontopic.
That I saw twice as many messages for the day could just be the result
of checking the group later in the day, after more messages had been
posted. (There is also the problem of defining the date: do we use your
time zone? Mine, which is probably about 10 hours different from yours?
Zulu time? I ended up counting any messages that included 13 Dec 2010
in the Date header.) I did not, however, see 9 messages that were to me
clearly misuse.
> Go to news.groups. 2 out of 2 messages of 13/12/2010 are misuse.
In news.groups I found 3 messages for that date and none of them were
misuse.
If the problem that you see with the Usenet is the result of using a
poorly-run news server, no amount of reform is likely to fix what you
see. If that's the case, switching to a better-run server would fix the
problem without any changes. Likewise, if it is that your idea of
misuse includes messages that most of us think are acceptable, you are
unlikely to get consensus on the messages that you want removed.
--
Kathy, speaking only for myself.
Kathy Morgan
> Which readers support NoCeM's? [...]
>
> If NoCeM's can act as a content based filter for abuse "on" UseNet then
> I want to switch to a newsreader that uses them and I want to start
> using them.
My understanding is that they can, but I don't know which newsreaders
support them or how one can implement them. Maybe Charles Lindsey could
elucidate further? What is NoCeM-on-spool?
Volunteers would have to be willing to issue the NoCeM's for a given
group; I suspect if more of us knew how to issue and use them, the
volunteers would surface.
--
Kathy
Stephen Powers
Some people become enraged over spam or posts that are designed to annoy a
newsgroup. The trolls are easy enough to control. Simply use the filter.
Spam, whether it's email or news is simple to get rid of. Click and delete.
I don't like to use the SpamBox because too often real mail ends up there so
you have to keep an eye on it which ends up being twice the work. I
moderated a group for 5 years, got tired and retired. Some people are just
unreasonable and some just won't be moderated. Just move on is the best
advice for both.
An ISP cannot be responsible for spam, unwanted mail or news. There are
folks out there who spend $1000 or more for a computer but won't buy
anti-virus or anti-spam/mal/adware and expect to pay for it once and have
eternal protection. I found businesses with computers so full of trojans
they stopped working altogether. That's the owners fault, not the computer
or the provider. AV is even free today - the new MSE and Avast seem to rate
very high.
SP - from the time of 500 newsgroups....when that was enough.
Alexander Bartolich
> Doug Freyburger <dfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Which readers support NoCeM's? [...]
>>
>> If NoCeM's can act as a content based filter for abuse "on" UseNet then
>> I want to switch to a newsreader that uses them and I want to start
>> using them.
>
> My understanding is that they can,
A NoCeM notice is very similar to a cancel control in that anybody can
issue you them, but nobody is forced to execute them. The main difference
is that NoCeMs are digitally signed using PGP/inline. This has the advan-
tage that NoCeMs can be trusted. And the disadvantage that you require a
full blown PGP or GnuPG installation to use them.
> but I don't know which newsreaders support them
As far as I know Gnus is the only one. (Gnus is a LISP program running
on top of Emacs, which is a text editor.)
> or how one can implement them. Maybe Charles Lindsey could
> elucidate further? What is NoCeM-on-spool?
Cancelmoose originally envisioned NoCeM to be a service from users to
users. Publication of a NoCeM should have been just as easy as the
"cancel" feature provided by newsreaders, and subscription to a NoCeM
series should have been similar to the subscription of news groups.
"NoCeM-on-spool" turns this idea on its head by executing NoCeMs on
the server.
> Volunteers would have to be willing to issue the NoCeM's for a given
> group; I suspect if more of us knew how to issue and use them, the
> volunteers would surface.
Been there, done that, didn't even got a T-shirt.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~rosalind/nocemreg/nocemreg.html
Ciao
Alexander.
Nicolaas Vroom
"Kathy Morgan" <kmo...@spamcop.net> schreef in bericht
news:1jtfm6d.1cgslwtpfrqx7N%kmo...@spamcop.net...
> Nicolaas Vroom <nicolaa...@telenet.be> wrote:
>
>> Go to comp.arch. There are roughly 10 messages of 13/12/2010.
>> 9 Are clearly misuse.
>
> My server is showing a different picture of comp.arch. I find 19
> articles for Dec 13, of which 2 are offtopic. I know nothing about
> computer architecture, so it may be that more of them are offtopic, but
> none were spam or advertising or obvious trolls; and all but the two
> seemed to me to be at least somewhat ontopic.
>
> That I saw twice as many messages for the day could just be the result
> of checking the group later in the day, after more messages had been
> posted. (There is also the problem of defining the date: do we use your
> time zone? Mine, which is probably about 10 hours different from yours?
> Zulu time? I ended up counting any messages that included 13 Dec 2010
> in the Date header.) I did not, however, see 9 messages that were to me
> clearly misuse.
>
11-12-2010: POLO TSHIRT, super trade by paypal, paypal cash, A.M.G. SOLO *
12-12-2010: SUHASINI, cntrade08, www.brandtrade66.com, jersey-2009
13-12-2010: POLO TSHIRT, amy, Ranimuklharjee, brandtrade, Skybuck Flying *,
SUHASINI, devi, paypal cash
Only the two messages with a * are related to computer architecture. All the
other ones are misuse.
> If the problem that you see with the Usenet is the result of using a
> poorly-run news server, no amount of reform is likely to fix what you
> see.
How do you know that my news server is poorly run ?
>If that's the case, switching to a better-run server would fix the
> problem without any changes.
How do I know that if I switch that the new one is any better ?
Remember I expect that many / many people have the same problem
> Likewise, if it is that your idea of
> misuse includes messages that most of us think are acceptable, you are
> unlikely to get consensus on the messages that you want removed.
I think that ther are a million people who will agree that the following
message
has nothing to do with comp architecture:
"CLICK AND GET INSTANT $500 PALPAY DOLLARS"
"new men's clothing wholesale"
>
> --
> Kathy, speaking only for myself.
>
I think there is somewhere something totally wrong.
Nicolaas Vroom
Theo Markettos
>
> This is my FROM list:
> 11-12-2010: POLO TSHIRT, super trade by paypal, paypal cash, A.M.G. SOLO *
> 12-12-2010: SUHASINI, cntrade08, www.brandtrade66.com, jersey-2009
> 13-12-2010: POLO TSHIRT, amy, Ranimuklharjee, brandtrade, Skybuck Flying *,
> SUHASINI, devi, paypal cash
>
> Only the two messages with a * are related to computer architecture. All the
> other ones are misuse.
There's still 15 mins of 13 Dec left here at GMT+0, and I see 31 messages
posted to comp.arch, of which two 'There's no more C left in Cyber War' (or
something like that) are spam. The rest are followups to existing threads.
I see none of the posts that you list above.
My site runs cleanfeed, which pulls out a lot of posts of the type you
indicate. I had a quick poke through the logs and couldn't see those
messages you list above, but there's plenty of a similar nature. Mostly
they're being blocked for excessive multi-posting.
> How do you know that my news server is poorly run ?
By the amount of spam you see. And other things, like whether new groups
are picked up.
> How do I know that if I switch that the new one is any better ?
>
> Remember I expect that many / many people have the same problem
I agree this isn't easy for the average user but, like many things,
reputation and trial&error are probably the best way.
> I think that ther are a million people who will agree that the following
> message
> has nothing to do with comp architecture:
> "CLICK AND GET INSTANT $500 PALPAY DOLLARS"
> "new men's clothing wholesale"
I was actually pleasantly surprised by the volume of on-topic traffic on
comp.arch: I don't think unmoderated 'academic' groups work too well on
today's Usenet. Academic work is typically comparatively slow and doesn't
produce anything noteworthy until a big bang at the end (the paper gets
published, a new idea comes to mind, etc). Also it's harder to dash off a
response - you have to go read the paper, prove the equations for yourself,
whatever, before you can hold a sensible conversation about it. All this
can easily get swamped by even a small amount of daily spam (or on-topic
kooks, just see sci.crypt or sci.geo.geology which each have their own
flavour).
'Technical' groups, where the questions are more like 'how do I do X with
tool Y?' tend to generate much more traffic to drown out the spam.
Theo
Alexander Bartolich
>> poorly-run news server, no amount of reform is likely to fix what you
>> see.
> How do you know that my news server is poorly run ?
In this special case: because you see spam messages that we don't see.
In the general case: your Usenet provider specializes in binaries. This
means huge traffic, gigantic volume, and customers that don't use news-
readers but harvesters. They care only about retention and completion,
but not about spam. So why should they install filters?
>>If that's the case, switching to a better-run server would fix the
>> problem without any changes.
> How do I know that if I switch that the new one is any better ?
*sigh*
Text-only Usenet requires comparatively few resources. In fact it is
possible to run a text-only Usenet server on commodity hardware. There
are quite a few people who do this in their spare time. A handful of
them even gives out NNTP accounts free of charge. I am one of them.
<EVIL ADVERTISING BEGINS HERE>
You can test my server with a read-only account.
Username: readonly
Password: readonly
Server : reader.albasani.net
See also the FAQ at http://albasani.net/wiki/FAQ_(English)
If you want an account with write permissions please send me a mail
or use the contact form at http://albasani.net/user/contact.cgi
</EVIL ADVERTISING IS OVER>
As I said there are other servers. One of the many server lists is at
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/News_Service_Providers
(search for "free"). The only other server one where I have first-hand
experience about the excellent quality of spam-filtering is
http://www.eternal-september.org/
> Remember I expect that many / many people have the same problem
So what is your suggestion?
--
host -t mx moderators.isc.org
Rob Kelk
<snip>
>Go to comp.arch. There are roughly 10 messages of 13/12/2010.
>9 Are clearly misuse.
>Go to comp.dsp. The same
>Go to news.groups. 2 out of 2 messages of 13/12/2010 are misuse.
>Sci.astro 4 out of 11 of the last 11 messages are outside chapter.
comp.arch: 33 messages between 00:01 EST and 21:00 EST 13/12/2010. 30
on-topic, 3 "conversational", 0 abuse.
comp.dsp: 72 messages between 00:01 EST and 21:00 EST 13/12/2010. I
don't know enough about digital signal processing to know what's on- or
off-topic.
news.groups: 15 messages between 00:01 EST and 21:00 EST 13/12/2010. 7
on-topic, 2 off-topic but related, 2 "conversational", 4 abuse of
another poster.
sci.astro - you didn't say when you were posting, so I can't confirm or
deny your claim.
>alt.comp.virus 10% outside chapter
The news admins that I know don't think "off-topic" and "abusive" are
synonyms. The regular posters to a group form a community, and they
decide how much off-topic "conversational" content they're willing to
tolerate - usually by generating that off-topic content themselves.
>comp.multimedia & sci.physics okay.
<snip>
--
Rob Kelk Personal address (ROT-13): eboxryx -ng- tznvy -qbg- pbz
Any opinions here are mine, not ONAG's.
ott.* newsgroup charters: <http://onag.pinetree.org>
Any Usenet message claiming to be from me but posted from any server
other than individual.net is a forgery. Please filter out such
messages if you have the capability.
Kathy Morgan
> <EVIL ADVERTISING BEGINS HERE>
>
> You can test my server with a read-only account.
>
> Username: readonly
> Password: readonly
> Server : reader.albasani.net
>
> See also the FAQ at http://albasani.net/wiki/FAQ_(English)
> If you want an account with write permissions please send me a mail
> or use the contact form at http://albasani.net/user/contact.cgi
>
> </EVIL ADVERTISING IS OVER>
ROTFL! Your tags are wrong, though. It should be <BENEVOLENT
ADVERTISING BEGINS HERE> and </BENEVOLENT ADVERTISING>.
--
Kathy
Nicolaas Vroom
"Alexander Bartolich" <alexander...@gmx.at> schreef in bericht
news:ie6dna$45q$1...@four.albasani.net...
> Nicolaas Vroom wrote:
>
>> Remember I expect that many / many people have the same problem
>
> So what is your suggestion?
>
IMO the most important thing is to know if there will
be a change in philosophy of how big 8 is running big 8.
The question is are they willingly to do something about spam
and misuse.
One way is to change many of the newsgroups to moderated.
For example to add .moderated.
See also the discussion in news.groups: HTML debate
If they don't then I hope that they change the text in:
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups
They should add a paragragh about Spam like:
6.1 Spam
The philosophy of the big 8 board is to support and make available
an open and free discussion between individuals.
The disadvantage of this openess is spam. It is away of life
and we have to live with it.
There are however three ways to eliminate this.
1. Convince your News Service Provider to install a filter.
The best filters on the market are: etc etc etc.
2. If your News Service Provider not willingly to install
a filter than select an other NSP.
A list of free NSP's which do not show spam are:
etc etc etc
3. If you do not want to change from NSP you can
also install a filter on your own PC.
The best filters on the market are: etc etc etc.
(cleanfeed)
I'am not in favour of this and I expect most readers
and users of USENET are not.
Also most readers and users do not want to be bothered
with filters and technical details (and misuse)
> --
> host -t mx moderators.isc.org
Nicolaas Vroom
Alexander Bartolich
> "Alexander Bartolich" wrote:
>> [...]
>> So what is your suggestion?
>
> IMO the most important thing is to know if there will
> be a change in philosophy of how big 8 is running big 8.
>
> The question is are they willingly to do something about spam
> and misuse.
> One way is to change many of the newsgroups to moderated.
> For example to add .moderated.
You mean, if we just set all those groups to moderated then they
(i.e. the moderators) will come?
--
seq 100 | sed 's/.*/Romani Ite Domum./'
Mark Kramer
Alexander Bartolich <alexander...@gmx.at> wrote:
>A NoCeM notice is very similar to a cancel control in that anybody can
>issue you them, but nobody is forced to execute them. The main difference
>is that NoCeMs are digitally signed using PGP/inline.
The main difference is that cancel control messages are defined in the
standard for news transmission and NoCems are not. While one may be signed
and the other not, that is not the main difference.
This difference implies that a well-run server will honor cancel control
messages because they are the means used by an author to cancel his
own messages. This is a process defined by the standard, but now rarely
enabled in servers. This mean that an author is prevented from using a
standard method of removing an article that is incorrect or should no
longer be distributed.
>Cancelmoose originally envisioned NoCeM to be a service from users to
>users. Publication of a NoCeM should have been just as easy as the
>"cancel" feature provided by newsreaders, and subscription to a NoCeM
>series should have been similar to the subscription of news groups.
>"NoCeM-on-spool" turns this idea on its head by executing NoCeMs on
>the server.
"On it's head" implies breaking the concept in some radical way.
NoCem on a spool merely moves the action up a level in the hierarchy.
Mark Kramer
Steve Bonine <s...@pobox.com> wrote:
>It'd say it's the only on the market. One of the most important aspects
>of Usenet is that when you submit an article to an unmoderated newsgroup
>no one has control over it.
Other than the operator of the news site it is on and anyone who issues
a NoCem that is received by a site that runs NoCem-on-spool. I think
this is a bit different than "no one".
>Even in an umoderated web forum, the owner can remove material if desired.
And in a moderated Usenet forum, nobody sees anything if the moderator
decides not to let it pass. Bad in one forum, bad in another, no?
>Moderated newsgroups have advantages but unmoderated newsgroups are the
>essence of Usenet. Take away unmoderated newsgroups and you have
>removed the single attribute that makes Usenet unique.
Those who don't understand Usenet tend to misidentify the "unique"
attributes. "Distributed store-and-forward messaging system with redundant
transmission paths" would be a better unique attribute, although Fido was
there with the same thing at the same time. It is a better differentiator
from "web groups" becaue the web groups can be unmoderated if they choose
but they will not be distributed store-and-forward systems.
>Rather than try to change Usenet, we need to educate potential users as
>to what it is and why they care.
We can educate users to what it is, if we can correctly describe it,
but have no reason to educate them to "why they care". If they don't,
that's ok. We don't have to be all things to all people, or even one
thing to all people.
David E. Ross
>
> The main difference is that cancel control messages are defined in the
> standard for news transmission and NoCems are not. While one may be signed
> and the other not, that is not the main difference.
>
> This difference implies that a well-run server will honor cancel control
> messages because they are the means used by an author to cancel his
> own messages. This is a process defined by the standard, but now rarely
> enabled in servers. This mean that an author is prevented from using a
> standard method of removing an article that is incorrect or should no
> longer be distributed.
Cancel messages were often being forged. This resulted in the removal
of newsgroup postings that the actual authors did not want removed.
Such forgeries were a tactic used during heated, contentious newsgroup
discussions. One side would use forged cancels to suppress the comments
of the other side. As a result, many (most?) news service providers
(NSPs) now ignore cancel messages.
--
Dr J R Stockton
st.net>, Mon, 13 Dec 2010 03:23:51, David E. Ross
<nob...@nowhere.invalid> posted:
>The major ISPs dropped all NNTP (newsgroup) services because
Is your knowledge of that world-wide, or limited to US ISPs, or what?
--
(c) John Stockton, nr London, UK. ?@merlyn.demon.co.uk Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Web <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/> - FAQqish topics, acronyms and links;
Astro stuff via astron-1.htm, gravity0.htm ; quotings.htm, pascal.htm, etc.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.
Dr J R Stockton
Dec 2010 08:41:21, Charles Lindsey <c...@clerew.man.ac.uk> posted:
>Yes, the management board is doing a fairly good job of removing dead
>moderated groups, but it is probably time they started on cleanng up the
>almost empty unmoderated ones (often by combining them with similar groups
>in the same sub-hierarchy).
That process is needed also in non-Big-8 hierarchies.
--
(c) John Stockton, nr London UK. replyYYWW merlyn demon co uk Turnpike 6.05.
Web <http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/tsfaq.html> -> Timo Salmi: Usenet Q&A.
Web <http://www.merlyn.demon.co.uk/news-use.htm> : about usage of News.
No Encoding. Quotes precede replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Mail no News.
David E. Ross
> In news.groups.proposals message <ZbWdnYF8QqwfKJjQnZ2dnUVZ_vCdnZ2d@iswe
> st.net>, Mon, 13 Dec 2010 03:23:51, David E. Ross
> <nob...@nowhere.invalid> posted:
>
>> The major ISPs dropped all NNTP (newsgroup) services because
>
> Is your knowledge of that world-wide, or limited to US ISPs, or what?
>
U.S. ISPs. The threat of prosecution began with the attorney general
(now the governor) of New York. But then I was replying to someone who
posted through a U.S. connection.
Thomas Hochstein
> The question is are they willingly to do something about spam
> and misuse.
They don't have to. Server administrators can and already do.
> One way is to change many of the newsgroups to moderated.
Oh, that's simple. Finding moderators and setting up a working
moderation workflow isn't.
-thh
Charles Lindsey
>Doug Freyburger <dfre...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>> Which readers support NoCeM's? [...]
>>
>> If NoCeM's can act as a content based filter for abuse "on" UseNet then
>> I want to switch to a newsreader that uses them and I want to start
>> using them.
>My understanding is that they can, but I don't know which newsreaders
>support them or how one can implement them. Maybe Charles Lindsey could
>elucidate further? What is NoCeM-on-spool?
NoCeM-on-spool is an add-on to news servers. It certainly works on CNews,
probably on INN (or maybe it is built in there). For people who, for
convenience, run their own mini-news-spool that is fine but does not help
newsreaders.
For newsreaders, I would suggest that some front-end NoCeM filter could be
written that would work with any newsreader. It really is a chicken and
egg problem. If NoCeMs were widely published, suitable software would soon
appear. If suitable software was already available, NoCeMs would be widely
published.
>Volunteers would have to be willing to issue the NoCeM's for a given
>group; I suspect if more of us knew how to issue and use them, the
>volunteers would surface.
Sure, but that is an activity that could be organized by the denizens of
each group (and might be easier than finding full-fledged moderators).
Moreover, if a moderator goes AWOL, the group stops working. If a NoCeM
"guardian" goes AWOL, the worse that happens is that the trolls reappear.
I think the way to get this started would be for someone to start it on
some group, publish the NoCeMs to that group, and initially people could
apply them manually. You don't need PGP if you are prepared to take them
on trust, or until the trolls start issuing forged NoCeMs for on-topic
articles.
Note the NoCeMs were originally intended to fight spam, not trolls, and as
such they were to be (and indeed are) applied by news providers who would
indeed check the PGP. They are better than cancels because they cannot be
forged, and because they can be issued in batches, which saves bandwidth.
BTW, did anybody ever discover the true identity of Cancelmoose?
Nicolaas Vroom
than that group should be deleted and all its off springs.
Its task should be taken over by its parent group.
However before it comes to that, you should take one important
step: the task to write a clear document which describes:
all what it means and all what it takes to become
and to be a moderator (and all what is involved)
See: http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups
5. The moderator then process the post using various techniques.
Many pass the post to moderation software that does an initial evaluation
of the post.
6. If the post is approved, a special header is added to it.
7 The post is sent to an NNTP server and is then circulated through Usenet.
All those steps should be much better and more reader friendly be described
in a pdf or word document. In fact new moderators should use that document
in order to become a moderator just by performing the steps outlined
in that document.
The concept of 25 questions is not very user friendly.
I see now that I also have to read 10 documents
I just started to read The moderators Handbook by Kent Landfield:
http://moleski.net/newsgroups/landfield/
My first impression is that this is an excellent document.
But why are there 10 ?
(May be some one should add two or three lines of comments with each book
The order of the documents should be in some logical order)
Any way if this is the book to read why not eliminate all the 25 questions ?
I also see that there are also 8 different software packages available.
I hope that the above book explains them all
or quide me with a "flowchart"
What also should be done is that the charters of the different groups
should be made more clearly. Starting point should here clear names
of the groups.
Nicolaas Vroom
http://users.pandora.be/nicvroom
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
>Generally speaking if there is no moderator for a group
>than that group should be deleted and all its off springs.
I don't know how to identify the offspring of a moderated
group. If they are related groups that are still actively
moderated, then they are grown-ups that can stand (or fall)
on the their own. The sins of the parent will not be held
against them.
>However before it comes to that, you should take one important
>step: the task to write a clear document ...
Thanks for the suggestions. It's still on my list of
Things To Do Any Day Now. I've copied your recent suggestions
to my file.
>The concept of 25 questions is not very user friendly.
Agreed. All I did was throw things on that page as the
questions were asked. It very definitely needs some
reorganization.
That, to me, is one of the great things about a wiki.
Incremental improvements accumulate.
>I see now that I also have to read 10 documents
>I just started to read The moderators Handbook by Kent Landfield:
>http://moleski.net/newsgroups/landfield/
>My first impression is that this is an excellent document.
It's a classic. We were afraid that it was going to disappear,
which is why I set up a copy in my own wiki. Kent gave us
permission to use it. Some day I hope to translate it into
MediaWiki and place it on the b8mb site. That should help
it survive.
>But why are there 10 ?
Because different people wanted to add their two cents worth?
>(May be some one should add two or three lines of comments with each book
>The order of the documents should be in some logical order)
That's good advice.
>Any way if this is the book to read why not eliminate all the 25 questions ?
If I get Kent's article on the wiki, we could have interwiki links
to where he answers the questions.
>I also see that there are also 8 different software packages available.
>I hope that the above book explains them all
>or quide me with a "flowchart"
No, it doesn't.
>What also should be done is that the charters of the different groups
>should be made more clearly. Starting point should here clear names
>of the groups.
I don't understand what this means. Some groups have charters;
some don't. For moderated groups, it is the responsibility of
the moderators to remind their users of where information about
the charter, as presently understood and employed, may be found.
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Charters
I also don't understand what you mean by "clear names of the
groups." I thought that they were readily available through
Checkgroups:
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Checkgroups
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
<JL2dnYwb-tNR05XQ...@iswest.net>:
>On 12/14/10 6:53 PM, Dr J R Stockton wrote:
>> In news.groups.proposals message <ZbWdnYF8QqwfKJjQnZ2dnUVZ_vCdnZ2d@iswe
>> st.net>, Mon, 13 Dec 2010 03:23:51, David E. Ross
>> <nob...@nowhere.invalid> posted:
>>> The major ISPs dropped all NNTP (newsgroup) services because
>> Is your knowledge of that world-wide, or limited to US ISPs, or what?
>U.S. ISPs. The threat of prosecution began with the attorney general
>(now the governor) of New York. But then I was replying to someone who
>posted through a U.S. connection.
FWIW, I tried to track the ISPs brought to our attention when the
big crackdown started in 2008 here in the U.S.:
http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Changes_in_ISP_Usenet_Policies_%282008%29
I doubt that the table is up to date. I modify it when, by accident,
I get new information.
Doug Freyburger
>
> Generally speaking if there is no moderator for a group
> than that group should be deleted and all its off springs.
> Its task should be taken over by its parent group.
At this point you are asking all existing ISPs to make a major revision
of their technical practices based on your own personal request, and you
are in a situation where you do not have sufficient knowledge of how
UseNet works to suggest a plan for how that would happen.
It is time for you to learn enough about how UseNet works and then come
back again - On UseNet every service is independently owned and operated
without any binding central authority. For your plan to work you would
have to figure out how to convince every major NSP and most of the minor
ones. At this point in this discussion it is time for you to do that.
We are well past policy discussions that can work.
Putting no my NGP moderator hat - Policy discussion has been declared on
topic for NGP. Endless looping has not been declared on topic. Please
understand that you have started looping. So far the discussion was
educational. Looping is not educational.
> However before it comes to that, you should take one important
> step: the task to write a clear document which describes:
> all what it means and all what it takes to become
> and to be a moderator (and all what is involved)
> See: http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Moderated_Newsgroups
> 5. The moderator then process the post using various techniques.
You are asking for moderators in every group. The pool of volunteer
moderators at this time is so small existing moderated groups are being
deleted. How do you propose to expand the pool? How do you propose to
get trusted moderators knowledgable enough to do the work?
> What also should be done is that the charters of the different groups
> should be made more clearly. Starting point should here clear names
> of the groups.
While I agree with you on this point I know enough of how UseNet works
to understand there is no workable mechanism to change or impose
charters.
David E. Ross
> Generally speaking if there is no moderator for a group
> than that group should be deleted and all its off springs.
> Its task should be taken over by its parent group.
There are far more individuals who are on-topic participants in a
newsgroup than there are individuals who are capable of being
moderators. Should an active newsgroup -- currently unmoderated with a
low lever of spam and other noise -- be removed merely because no one
is willing to moderate it? I participate in 5 such groups. I don't
consider myself to be a capable moderators.
Nicolaas Vroom
"David E. Ross" <nob...@nowhere.invalid> schreef in bericht
news:me2dnRGQ4KYvipTQ...@iswest.net...
> On 12/15/10 9:10 AM, Nicolaas Vroom wrote [in part]:
>> Generally speaking if there is no moderator for a group
>> than that group should be deleted and all its off springs.
>> Its task should be taken over by its parent group.
>
> There are far more individuals who are on-topic participants in a
> newsgroup than there are individuals who are capable of being
> moderators. Should an active newsgroup -- currently unmoderated with a
> low lever of spam and other noise -- be removed merely because no one
> is willing to moderate it? I participate in 5 such groups. I don't
> consider myself to be a capable moderators.
The subject we are discussing here is in chapter 4 of the above mentioned
book: http://moleski.net/newsgroups/landfield/mod04.html
IMO that particular page should be modified with the following
text: (after: not suitable for posting)
In case of rejected a simple message MISUSE as outlined in .....
is enough.
(MISUSE meaning clearly 100% outside the scope of the chapter)
In fact what this mean if a moderator posts all articles except in the
case of MISUSE he already does a good job.
To do a better job a moderator should evaluate the text with the chapter
of different groups, closely related.
A case in point does this posting belong to: news.groups,
news.groups.proposals or news.announce.newgroups. (See also chapter 3)
IMO the last group should have been called: news.groups.announce
to amplify a three structure and dependency
To solve this you should have one document which describes the purpose
(i.e. what is discussed) of each to make it easier for the user to select.
(and for the moderator to review)
IMO you can also be a very good moderator even if you never
have posted anything just to guide the discussion.
The questions to ask is what are reasons that people do not
want to become a moderator ?
Because of principle ?
Because of certain fears ?
Because they do not know what worse can happen ?
Because of technical issues ?
Because of lack of knowledge ?
Nicolaas Vroom
http://users.pandora.be/nicvroom/
Nicolaas Vroom
"Martin X. Moleski, SJ" <mol...@canisius.edu> schreef in bericht
news:8v-dnceGKZ92bJXQ...@supernews.com...
> On Wed, 15 Dec 2010 11:10:23 CST, "Nicolaas Vroom"
> <nicolaa...@telenet.be> wrote in
> <854Oo.33983$sA4....@newsfe28.ams2>:
>
>>Generally speaking if there is no moderator for a group
>>than that group should be deleted and all its off springs.
>
> I don't know how to identify the offspring of a moderated
> group. If they are related groups that are still actively
> moderated, then they are grown-ups that can stand (or fall)
> on the their own. The sins of the parent will not be held
> against them.
Part of this issue is also discussed in my reply to David E Ross
>>The concept of 25 questions is not very user friendly.
>
> Agreed. All I did was throw things on that page as the
> questions were asked. It very definitely needs some
> reorganization.
>
> That, to me, is one of the great things about a wiki.
> Incremental improvements accumulate.
Personnal I do not think that the Wikipedia way of work
produces excellent reading documents.
See also:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8222397.stm
IMO for each document you need an editor (or technical writer)
The owners are the users.
In fact the contents of each document should be closely watched by
the readers and users.
>>I see now that I also have to read 10 documents
>>I just started to read The moderators Handbook by Kent Landfield:
>>http://moleski.net/newsgroups/landfield/
>>My first impression is that this is an excellent document.
>
> It's a classic. We were afraid that it was going to disappear,
> which is why I set up a copy in my own wiki. Kent gave us
> permission to use it. Some day I hope to translate it into
> MediaWiki and place it on the b8mb site. That should help
> it survive.
It should be more. "We" should become the owner.
(That is presently impossible becomes it is copy write protected)
>>But why are there 10 ?
>
> Because different people wanted to add their two cents worth?
Again some one should make a decission which one the most usefull is.
Each moderator should not spend a lot of time to figure this out.
>>Any way if this is the book to read why not eliminate all the 25 questions
>>?
>
> If I get Kent's article on the wiki, we could have interwiki links
> to where he answers the questions.
I do not know if this is really that important. The index is already
some sort of list of questions.
If you copy the whole document into a word document the links
are there almost automatically.
>>What also should be done is that the charters of the different groups
>>should be made more clearly. Starting point should here clear names
>>of the groups.
>
> I don't understand what this means. Some groups have charters;
> some don't. For moderated groups, it is the responsibility of
> the moderators to remind their users of where information about
> the charter, as presently understood and employed, may be found.
>
Please read also my reply to David E. Ross
> http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Charters
This document showing to opinions should be merged in one.
> I also don't understand what you mean by "clear names of the
> groups." I thought that they were readily available through
> Checkgroups:
>
> http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Checkgroups
Also this document is very reader unfriendly.
It shows one piece of a puzzle, but have no idea what the overall
picture is.
> Marty
> --
> Member of the Big-8 Management Board (B8MB) <http://www.big-8.org>
> Unless otherwise indicated, I speak for myself, not for the Board.
Nicolaas Vroom
Steve Bonine
> The questions to ask is what are reasons that people do not
> want to become a moderator ?
> Because of principle ?
> Because of certain fears ?
> Because they do not know what worse can happen ?
> Because of technical issues ?
> Because of lack of knowledge ?
There have been a number of moderated groups removed recently because no
one was willing to moderate them. A moderation platform has been
offered at no cost to anyone who is willing to use it. The obvious
conclusion is that people are unwilling to invest the time it would take
to revive a long-dead newsgroup.
It's not just a question of cranking up your browser and approving
articles from the flood of submissions. Some of these newsgroups failed
because the level of submissions declined; in other cases the moderator
just disappeared. They've been moribund for long enough that
significant effort is required to publicize the newsgroup, attract
participants, and encourage development of useful discussion. Only
someone who cares about the topic is likely to be willing to do this work.
"Attract participants" is especially problematic. Even if you could
contact the people who loved the newsgroup years ago when it was active,
most of them have found other outlets for their discussion energy . . .
and in most cases you can't contact them anyway. The only thing that
will attract new participants is an interesting discussion or
information that they can't get anywhere else, and establishing that
with no participants is a challenge.
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
>The subject we are discussing here is in chapter 4 of the above mentioned
>book: http://moleski.net/newsgroups/landfield/mod04.html
>IMO that particular page should be modified with the following
>text: (after: not suitable for posting)
>In case of rejected a simple message MISUSE as outlined in .....
>is enough.
>(MISUSE meaning clearly 100% outside the scope of the chapter)
>In fact what this mean if a moderator posts all articles except in the
>case of MISUSE he already does a good job.
We're not in a position to rewrite Kent's text. It belongs to him,
not to us. It is what it is. Where I have edited out links or
modified it, I've made that clear.
I'm also not sure that "MISUSE" is not already covered by
the scope of what we expect from moderators.
>To do a better job a moderator should evaluate the text with the chapter
>of different groups, closely related.
No. That's an unfair burden to place on moderators. They are
responsible for the way THEIR group runs. They answer to no
one else and to no other group. They own their group and do
as they please.
Kathy Morgan
> "Martin X. Moleski, SJ" <mol...@canisius.edu> schreef in bericht
> news:8v-dnceGKZ92bJXQ...@supernews.com...
>
> > http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Charters
>
> This document showing to opinions should be merged in one.
I disagree. Each author provides useful but different information about
the problems with archiving and accessing current charters, and for
those who have been in news.groups for an extended period of time the
attribution showing whose opinion is expressed is important.
> > I also don't understand what you mean by "clear names of the
> > groups." I thought that they were readily available through
> > Checkgroups:
> >
> > http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Checkgroups
>
> Also this document is very reader unfriendly.
> It shows one piece of a puzzle, but have no idea what the overall
> picture is.
I guess I don't completely understand what the question or issue is. The
information on <http://www.big-8.org/wiki/News_FAQ_(periodic_posting)>
may be helpful. I think perhaps the hierarchical group naming
conventions are not immediately clear to new users. Basically, the Big
8 newsgroups are arranged into 8 hierarchies:
comp.* Computer topics, both hardware and software.
news.* Administration of the Big 8; Usenet; Netnews; etc.
sci.* Science and technology.
humanities.* The humanities.
rec.* Recreation: music, sports, games, outdoor, hobbies,
crafts, etc.
soc.* Socializing, society, and social issues.
talk.* Endless discussion, largely about politics.
misc.* Miscellany, often about the practical aspects of everyday
life.
When a new group is created in the Big 8, it has to fit under one of
those categories, preferably somewhere near any other group that
discusses a related topic, but people don't always agree on the best
name for a group. For example, take the names of groups for discussion
of games: there is rec.games.video.microsoft.xbox360. If I remember
correctly, the proponent originally wanted a more general group, without
the ".xbox360" but the consensus was that most people would look for a
group with "xbox" in the name, so the name chosen was a compromise.
Also, sometimes there are groups with related topics that just don't fit
within the same hierarchy, such as rec.arts.int-fiction and
rec.games.int-fiction. The first is for discussion about authoring
interactive-fiction games; the second is for discussion of the games
themselves. Many people who read one of the groups also reads the
other, but the topics are not exactly the same.
Also, there is a tradition that when a group is created for discussion
of a new topic, it should be a general group; more specific subgroups
are created later only if discussion is so great that separate groups
are needed. New users, however, tend to search on the newsgroup name
and if they don't find the specific subject they're interested in, they
go away without checking the general group. As an experiment, we
created misc.phone.mobile and misc.phone.mobile.iphone at the same time.
It should have been sufficient to create only the misc.phone.mobile
group and later split it if the iphone discussion was overwhelming; but
in practice it turns out that no one wanted to use the general group and
the .iphone group has been a success from the beginning.
Basically, there just is no one right way to name groups.
--
Kathy, speaking just for myself
Doug Freyburger
>
> The questions to ask is what are reasons that people do not
> want to become a moderator ?
It is a thankless task done for the love of the topic and/or the love of
UseNet.
> Because of principle ?
I suggest that many who play the principle card are those who post
enough abusive material their posts would often be rejected. UseNet is
an experiment in unlimited free speech and it predictably follow the
path of the trajedy of the commons in its unmoderated groups. Those who
want such noise say it's a matter of principle.
> Because of certain fears ?
Some new moderators draw plenty of complaints. That's part of it being
a thankless task.
> Because of technical issues ?
> Because of lack of knowledge ?
There is a minimum level of knowledge required. Moderating a UseNet
group does not resemble moderating a web forum or mailing list.
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
>Personnal I do not think that the Wikipedia way of work
>produces excellent reading documents.
YMMV.
>See also:
>http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8222397.stm
>IMO for each document you need an editor (or technical writer)
>The owners are the users.
Morally speaking, the board "owns" the domain name and the wiki.
Technically, they are held in trust by board members on behalf
of the board.
All the authors on our wiki are either board members or folks
whom we trust to work on it on our behalf.
>In fact the contents of each document should be closely watched by
>the readers and users.
I appreciate feedback and have made (and intend to make) many
changes based on comments like yours. The wiki is always a
work in progress.
>>>I see now that I also have to read 10 documents
>>>I just started to read The moderators Handbook by Kent Landfield:
>>>http://moleski.net/newsgroups/landfield/
>>>My first impression is that this is an excellent document.
>>
>> It's a classic. We were afraid that it was going to disappear,
>> which is why I set up a copy in my own wiki. Kent gave us
>> permission to use it. Some day I hope to translate it into
>> MediaWiki and place it on the b8mb site. That should help
>> it survive.
>It should be more. "We" should become the owner.
>(That is presently impossible becomes it is copy write protected)
Exactly. Kent gave permission for us to USE it, but not to
OWN it.
>>>But why are there 10 ?
>> Because different people wanted to add their two cents worth?
>Again some one should make a decission which one the most usefull is.
>Each moderator should not spend a lot of time to figure this out.
They don't have to if they don't want to. If they're interested
in the background, the 10 links may be helpful. "Caveat emptor."
>Please read also my reply to David E. Ross
>
>> http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Charters
>This document showing to opinions should be merged in one.
I just can't make sense out of that sentence. "Two opinions"?
There isn't any dogma on charters that I know of. Opinions
differ about their content, structure, function, and worth.
>> I also don't understand what you mean by "clear names of the
>> groups." I thought that they were readily available through
>> Checkgroups:
>> http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Checkgroups
>Also this document is very reader unfriendly.
>It shows one piece of a puzzle, but have no idea what the overall
>picture is.
Me neither, I guess. If you want to draft a suggestion for what
should be on that page to make it reader friendly, post it here.
Steve Bonine
> There is a minimum level of knowledge required. Moderating a UseNet
> group does not resemble moderating a web forum or mailing list.
I rather think the similarities far outweigh the differences.
Sure, from a _technical_ sense, they're much different. The act of
"approving" a submission results in injecting an article into Usenet,
adding pages to a web forum, or sending email to the participants of a
mailing list. But from the point of view of the person doing the
moderating, it boils down to deciding that the submission is appropriate
and clicking to approve it.
In a broader sense, the person or group we're calling "moderator" is
responsible for the health of the discussion. The job isn't much
different whether the discussion is carried on via a Usenet newsgroup, a
web forum, a mailing list, or a group of people in a conference room.
The success of the moderator is tempered by the participants in the
discussion; if they all go away the discussion will die. But it's part
of the job of the moderator to engage them so that they stick around and
invite more participants.
Not that many years ago, Usenet was the only place to go for information
and answers to questions. It was populated by the people who had that
information and those answers. It didn't take much skill to moderate a
Usenet newsgroup because there was no shortage of users with questions,
answers, and opinions. It was enough to guide the discussion; you
didn't have to nurture it.
Things have changed.
KalElFan
news:ie5lgq$j4a$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Kathy Morgan wrote:
>
>> KalElFan <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> ... Preserving the underlying Unmoderated nature of Usenet is
>>> essential, even if a successful Optional Moderation tool is
>>> offered. [...]
>>
> My competing theory - The unmoderated nature of most UseNet
> groups has performed yet another demonstration of the [tragedy]
> of the commons. By excess free speech they drew enough abusers
> to drive off most regulars. The environment has been a long
> standing war of attrition by the worst posters against the newest
> posters. The result has been a long standing decline in the quality
> of postings and a gradual erosion of on topic traffic in exchange
> for off topic traffic.
There've been a lot of great posts to the thread and I've been reading
them all. I just didn't have time to respond so far this week but I've
been drafting a fair bit of response material. I decided to start back
with a response to the above.
I don't see yours as a competing theory at all, in fact you've pretty
much nailed the decline of Usenet over the last 10 to 15 years. I
think the OP by Nicholas also reflects the frustration many users
have over this. It's just that there are fewer and fewer such users
who even care enough to post about it anymore.
The thing is, and it's my task to try to make the case in this thread,
Optional Moderation really would be the Holy Grail solution to the
problem. There's a natural tendency to try to find precedents like
Cleanfeed or NoCeMs, but the Optional Moderation concept is so
unlike either of those things, indeed so fundamentally different,
that it only reflects how at cross purposes the discussion can get
as a result. So I'm going to try to work off your great Tragedy of
the Commons analogy and then, in a separate response to Kathy
in this same subthread, provide more detailed examples of what
Optional Moderation would involve.
Though the TotC analogy works superficially, we're talking about
cyberspace and the key resource is fundamentally a virtual not a
physical one. Yes there are physical resources if we think of the
moderator volunteer issue, or bandwidth back in the day and
even now if we were talking about massive binary groups (which
we aren't). There's also the computers and monitors and other
equipment, but fundamentally Usenet and web boards and the
like are all about virtual discussion. That's what we have to look
at as the product or service or resource in this instance.
Now let's consider the variables you cited, in particular (i) "excess
free speech," (ii) "abusers" or "worst posters," (iii) "decline in
the quality of postings," and (iv) erosion of on topic traffic in
exchange for off topic traffic. What's most conspicously obvious
about all these things (variables, parameters, whatever we want
to call them) is how massively subjective they are. One person's
excess free speech is another's Beauty of Usenet. An abuser and
worst poster are in the eye of the beholder, and from their point
of view are simply exercising their free speech. Decline and erosion
into off-topic traffic is not that for those who like any particular
form of off-topic discussion. And so on. It's entirely subjective.
Because it's entirely subjective, and because the underlying issue
is virtual, there is no Tragedy of the Commons destiny here. None.
Nada. It simply doesn't follow. All that's necessary are the right
filtering tools, and I agree that is a practical issue and problem
to develop and implement. It is not a practical solution to say
to 95% of prospective users, for example, that they need to learn
to use a killfile and keep adding text strings or poster names to
block out what they consider massive noise on a group. Nor, for
the vast majority of even existing Usenet users, is it a practical
solution to say we give up the unmoderated nature of Usenet
and completely moderate everything. If that's all there is or is
going to be on Future Usenet, it loses its distinctiveness and one
of its biggest if not only selling points.
The only way to truly bridge the two objectives, (i) users wanting
a simple way to filter what to them, subjectively, is noise, but
(ii) preserve the fundamentally unmoderated nature of Usenet,
is Optional Moderation, with massive emphasis on the Optional
part of that term.
Cleanfeed is just a small, very specific subset filter that's fairly
condusive to robomoderation. NoCeMs are basically ad-hoc
cancels of messages, not a filter per se at all, and not condusive
to a user-friendly system. How does the average newbie or even
longtime poster know whose NoCeM messages to trust? Answer:
the question is irrelevant because he/she doesn't have the option
or ability to trust in this instance, the news admin of their server
does the trusting. So how does the user find the server that trusts
the right NoCeM issuer(s), or convince the admin to accept NoCeM
issuer(s) they trust? Answer: They don't. They're long gone to a
web board because all this Usenet nonsense has now become too
complicated. They don't even want to know what Cleanfeed is or
what a NoCeM is. They just want a single button or a one-time
menu click of some boxes that will filter out what they don't like,
so they can get to the good stuff and participate in that.
What they want is Optional Moderation. They want a system
that doesn't impose mandatory moderation or cancels on any
other users, or have control freaks in charge of what they see.
If they get the sense the latter is happening, they want to have
the ability of turning off the control freak and seeing Usenet in
all its unmoderated glory, or unclicking a specific box on the
filtering menu so whatever they've decided they'd like to see
can pass through to them. They want to be in control and they
want it to be as simple as possible.
The next temptation is to say that's not possible, or at least not
feasible. But that's ridiculous. Of course it's possible. There
are some web boards that have dozens of volunteer moderators.
Web-wide on any particular given topic, there are probably at
least dozens and possibly hundreds or potential moderators. If
they got wind of a new effort to provide an inter-site discussion
board capability that would offer a well moderated version or
feed as an option, many would probably say "great idea" and
be willing to volunteer for a moderation shift.
Then any of us could tell them that Usenet is basically the kind
of inter-site, worldwide discussion board capability that could
have and should have become that great idea. But it couldn't
or didn't because its dwindling numbers of participants let it
become like the Tragedy of the Commons, even though it needn't
have. It'll be much more a story of the Tragedy of Inaction than
any no-can-do rationale for Usenet's demise.
Some more Optional Moderation specifics in the response to
Kathy in a bit.
KalElFan
news:1jtdp2l.1sn3xfnnpbvb9N%kmo...@spamcop.net...
> KalElFan <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>> ... Preserving the underlying Unmoderated nature of Usenet is
>> essential, even if a successful Optional Moderation tool is offered...
>
> We already have many moderated groups where the moderators
> have disappeared or ceased to care about their groups, and a lack
> of volunteers to take them over. Where are all these moderator
> volunteers to come from?
This issue is related to two others that you mention later in your
post so I'll just quote those now as well, with a two-line summary
in square brackets of my point that you were responding to. Then
I'll respond to all three points at once, with many examples.
[re a group being moderated by impartial/objective volunteers who
don't actually participate in that group]
> Ooh, really bad idea! If the subject is something in which I'm not
> interested enough to participate, I'm probably also not knowledgeable
> enough to implement the moderation guidelines. I speak here from
> personal experience; as one of the volunteer moderators willing to help
> with moderation on any group that needs it, I agreed to help moderate
> ba.broadcast.moderated when it first started up. Quite often I was not
> able to tell whether or not a post was on charter; for starters...
[re my call for Optional Moderation and belief that once it's fully
developed it'd be better than owner-operated web board fiefdoms]
> That sounds like you're volunteering other people to do the work. Can
> you develop the tools to do what you're suggesting? If you aren't able
> to do the coding yourself, do you know of a candidate who is able and
> is willing to donate the time and effort?
So to summarize, the combined issue is where would these moderators
come from, especially if they're not interested enough to participate
themselves in the group they would moderate, and BTW if I want this
Optional Moderation tool I'd probably have to develop it myself and
if I can't code it get someone who can.
It's best to start with the latter point and give some specific examples.
I already did a lot of work on the Optional Moderation concept back
in 2002 or thereabouts I think it was, in any case soemwhere in that
2001-2004 period. The impetus was the alt.tv.enterprise group, not
a Big 8 group but we're discussing the issues and policies generally
so I think it's still a very relevant example.
The a.t.e predecessor's group, for the Voyager series, had been
overrun by what was basically an off-topic chat group, and the same
clique had gradually overrun the Enterprise group as well. Many
good posters had come and gone, some complaining before they
left, and/or they'd get run off by the clique. The clique would almost
all, at least nominally, make an on-topic post once in a blue moon,
some more than others. But inevitably threads would degenerate
into neverending one- or two-line responses to the accumulated
chat streams on what they ate for dinner or whatever other chat.
The clique leader's name was Steve. He's dead, I think. In fact I'm
pretty certain of it because if he isn't dead another poster I respect
very much participated in his Ultimate Hoax by citing his obituary.
Why would I even think it might be a hoax? Because Steve had
actually run a death hoax a year or two prior, involving another
sock puppet he'd created. In fact he created not just the poster
who he'd later announced had died, but he created that poster's
wife as well.
It was the "wife" who posted the news of her husband's death in
a botched variety store robbery. She'd rummaged through his
computer files and discovered his online "life," which she'd never
known about before. Heartfelt sympathy postings ensued. It
may be hard not to laugh looking back on it, for those who may
have been there and read the postings or for anyone here on
this group reading about it for the first time. But a lot of those
posters were very gullible, easily influenced and subject to this
guy's Steve's manipulation and that of a few of his deputies.
Many posters felt bad for the sock puppet, or rather supposed
wife of the supposed dead guy who was just a sock puppet all
along. Steve got outed soon thereafter and owned up to it.
So within a few or several years later, one of two things happened.
The Clique Leader pulled an Ultimate Version of the same hoax
by getting an obit published in a major newspaper and having an
entirely third-party respected poster cite it. Or else Karma Struck
With a Vengeance when the guy really died, quite young as in his
early 40s I think it was.
Another great Stevism was that all Usenet groups were like a
cocktail party. One could be named after Enterprise and posters
might have some common interest in that, but they could and
should all talk or chat about whatever they like. Everything was
on topic.
There was also the Real Life intrigue and gossip. Clique Leader
met a fellow clique member in Vegas once and grabbed her aSS.
The security guard nearby darn near had him arrested. Then
there was the guy down in Florida who'd invite some new
female clique member down for a visit. Clique Leader and him
or another guy once agreed that the importance of the Cocktail
Nature of Usenet, and the alt.tv.enterprise group in particular,
was that it was necessary to bring in new blood for the clique.
As in maybe come down for a visit to Florida or have an a$$-
grabbing visit to Vegas new blood?
Fun times, and I'm not making this up. Most of it is all still on
Google via other posters, but not Clique Leader's posts and a
few of his deputies because they were meticulous in their X-
No Archives.
Anyway, meanwhile the group had just become completely
unusable by any fair measure, as a place where people who
were just looking for some Enterprise discussion could go.
The chat drowned it out. Of course Star Trek is iconic and
a great example of something hundreds if not thousands
of people discuss on line, and in theory at least would have
been willing with the much-maligned Enterprise.
The verdict on the series was arguably still out at the time,
and so it was a great test case for the Optional Moderation
concept that I'd been toying with since probably my first posts
to Usenet in March 1996. I started developing it in earnest.
In the interim, FAQs were posted to try to alert new arrivals
to the signal-to-noise problems, with links to other general
Usenet FAQs and the like that I'd done previously.
There were a few of other people I had set up to assist in the
moderation, including one in the U.K. and one in Australia or
New Zealand I can't remember which. There were also a few
others lined up or available as possibles. It was going to be
run via a single news server pilot project. So the FAQs would
have told anyone wanting to just filter it all out where they
could go to get that feed. If they wanted the whole mess, then
they could just keep the unmoderated feeds they were already
using or have eternal "fun" trying to build their own filters to
eliminate the noise flooding the group.
To allow for legitimate off-topic postings by those whitelisted
or anyone else willing to voluntarily follow the protocols, a
label or tag system was proposed. So for example [OT] may
have been one but there were others like {META], and new
ones were also proposed to designate different kinds of what
most would concede are off-topic postings. The idea was that
if you were on the Optional Moderation server pilot project,
but didn't want any of these exceptions, you'd either choose
the fully moderated feed or you would have to killfile [OT] or
[META] or the like depending what things you just didn't want
to see.
If an off-topic post were made without any appropriate label
or tag, it'd just get moderated out. If it had the tag, it'd pass
through as effectively a "request" to users willing to consider
reading such posts. By definition at that point such posts
would be from posters demonstrating some consideration
of other users, because they'd have used the label or tag.
(Just an aside on tags. Outlook Express and Google both had
a bug at the time, and Google still does, where the square
brackets and anything within those at the beginning of the
subject line get dropped in any responses. Therefore tag
systems actually have to be unbracketed to be effective.)
So what Optional Moderation would provide is screening to
ensure any untagged off-topic, meta, or offending for whatever
reasons posts (each category defined with examples given in an
OM manual I had in draft) were all excluded from the moderated
feed. The kinds of things that for the most part you can't robo-
moderate. The U.K. and down under moderator and the others
were involved to help avoid long delays in posts going through
or, in the case of whitelisted posters who might offend, long
delays in de-whitelisting them if they'd gone bad and they had
to start being manually moderated.
The FAQs and discussions had by then gone down the route of
what was about to happen when this was implemented, and
how could those on the group, at least the ones who cared,
understand it and handle the tagging if they cared to post
off-topic in a way individual posters could control filtering on.
The biggest problem on the group had been that the clique
doing the chatting, almost all of them, absolutely refused to
use the simple [OT] label or something similar to respect other
users and allow them to screen it out. Optional Moderation
makes the agreement of the abusers unnecessary. Their tag
is unneeded, because the untagged off-topic post just gets
prevented from going through in the moderated feed. The
offender either tags or is unread. Those subscribing to the
Optional Moderation never sees their off-topic post, or chat
in that alt.tv.enterprise case.
Well, the clique wailed like banshee owls. Like any common
trolls, they hated the idea that this would be a way their never-
ending chat crap would be unseen by hordes of newbies who
might now arrive, or posters who might return or be invited.
By the time this kind of approach is implemented on a Usenet
group, broadly enough beyond the pilot project phase, it's the
abuser's worst nightmare. Their abuse gets relegated to what
amounts to the Undernet, with hundreds happily reading and
posting about the topic but completely oblivious to the abuse.
They don't have to learn about or reinvent the killfile wheel,
one poster or string at a time like 95% of potential users aren't
interested in doing. Subscribe to the Optional Moderation
feed, and you're there. It's all done for you, but with enough
flexibility that those posters who want to engage in or tolerate
some kinds of off-topic postings can do that via the tag system.
The chat clique hated the tag system probably most of all,
because again they'd been refusing to use tags. Now that their
refusal didn't matter, it symbolized the Complete User Control
that so offended them. Instead of foisting their crap upon the
95% of users who just can't be bothered building and managing
a huge killfile, and attacking and running off any one of them
who deigned to complain, they'd be screwed and talking to
no one else but themselves and a few who might find them
amusing enough entertainment. They hated the idea of asking
for "permission" to chat via the tag, and even then only have
readers who'd given their PRIOR_APPROVAL, for crissakes, to
even have a look at the crap they were trying to offer.
The Tragedy of the Commons example I was responding to
in the other post is relevant here. In the original source
of that in the early 1830s, it's a genuine tragedy that it
becomes a lose-lose situation all around simply because
people act in their own self-interest. Here it's not. Those
who want to screen out the ridiculously high-volume off-
topic chat crap could simply do so, so it becomes win for
them.
For the clique or offenders, they're no worse off than they
would be, or any other off-topic posters would be, than
if they started a mailing list or a private web board or the
like for like-minded folk. Since not everyone will bother to
subscribe to or chose Optional Moderation, they also get a
bit of "new blood" they wouldn't otherwise. So it isn't a
complete lose from their point of view either.
The abuser often sees it as a lose though. The dynamic is
unlike the Tragedy of the Commons example in that there
is no "real" resource being competed over. The abuser's
mind is the only source of the conflict once the Optional
Moderation is implemented. It just rocks their control-
freakish world, and the bigger stage they covet, way too
much. People ought to have no easy choice but to read
their crap, is the way the abuser or troll often looks at it.
He (it's almost always a he) is willing to lose the 1 in 20
that's a skilled killfile user, even more so when the 1 in 20
often ends up validating the troll by responding to some-
one else's response. But how dare an easy fix be offered,
that just allows masses of people to not even be aware of
their existence! It can drive them bonkers, or even more
bonkers is I guess the better phrase.
Some of them actually showed some grudging admiration
for the concept though. Even though their cocktail party
would be over soon in terms of the wider audience.
So how come Optional Moderation doesn't exist then, if
it was about to be implemented back then? Personal
reasons mainly. My dad had a stroke in late 1998 and
then a heart attack in late 2002, and I increasingly became
a caregiver for him and later my mother. He passed away
in 2008 and my mother last month after complications
from an operation she had in late July. So I'm actually
now getting back to writing more, and back from a four-
month break from Usenet.
Another factor was that Enterprise was getting worse not
better, and fewer cared. Web boards were also coming
more and more into their own, including the Star Trek
official site and two other major fan sites. The clique had
become entrenched and fewer and fewer newbies or
returning posters were willing to suffer the group. It was
a microcosm of the larger problem.
And thus has fallen Usenet, even more today than 7 or 10
years ago, or 15 years ago since I first posted to it. There've
been some great posts to this thread and I'll have responses
to several others over the next few days, but yours seemed
to touch on several key issues so I've tried to provide the
above more detailed example and will add a few other
specifics.
Just for this post I've coined another tag, [UPA] or rather UPA
without the brackets, for Usenet Performance Art. It's not a
new term by any means but in the context of an Optional
Moderation Tag Table, let's call it, it'd be a way for posters
who generate that kind of thing, or who are open to reading
it, to still see it via an Optional Moderation feed. Same thing
for all that off-topic chat on the Enterprise group, if something
like OTC designated Off-Topic Chat for example. As long as it's
tagged, the OM feed would allow it through and it'd be up to
the users, ideally one-time at the front end, to choose to click
the box to screen that and other types of off-topic postings
out. If a system to do that were too difficult to design then
worst case they'd be instructed on what tag strings to add to
the killfiles in their newsreaders.
As for UPA, anyone subscribed to rec.arts.tv will be familiar
with the "Seamus" problem. It gets old quick, not so much
because of Seamus but rather those who respond and create
faux sock puppet versions of Seamus and on and on.
But there are a few Genuine Seamus (and Genuine Seamus
Sock Puppet) posts that show flair and represent some of
the better UPA shtick I've seen in my 15 years on Usenet. It's
the Seamus copycats and wannabes and responders that are
the much bigger problem.
We're getting really into the Moderation Weeds now, but at
the time that's what I was doing in the Draft Manual for it.
The "Vision Thing" here is that, if and when the Optional
Moderation infrastructure is designed and ready to go, I
think it'll snowball from there and become quite popular.
It's at that point that the Impartial Volunteer Moderator
issue becomes a potential constraint. The pilot project(s)
or group(s) don't pose a volunteer problem, but what if it
works so well that we need hundreds or thousands as part
of this burgeoning new "inter-website" worldwide discussion
boards as some may rediscover Usenet to be?
If it became that kind of success story, and it can't be an
"owned" infrastructure, by Google for example, then it'd have
to recruit more and more from genuinely independent third
parties. If it's "The" place to discuss any topic, worldwide,
then it might well have appeal in that sense. Accountants,
lawyers and the like, from an early stage of their education
and training, get objectivity, or being able to argue both sides
of a case, drummed into them for example. If Usenet has
been reborn and become "The" discussion board, perhaps
many of them, at the student stage, volunteer for moderation
shifts as an exercise in their developing judgement, objectivity
and impartiality skills.
So at the time (of the alt.tv.enterprise situation) I was already
envisaging the wider Usenet issues as well as the group-by-group
ones. For example, what if something illegal gets posted, as
in the child porn example that's been discussed? This is what
I meant by the "Wild Wild West" term upthread. It scares
some people away and contributed to the large ISPs dropping
it. I disagree it was the only factor. Disuse, i.e., declining use
of Usenet, and things like the copyright infringement case that
AOL had to deal with from an SF writer, and TOS complaints
against their own users, all contributed to a "Usenet is just
not worth it anymore" sense. People were migrating to the
web boards and there was little downside in just cancelling
Usenet access altogether.
But a moderator, under the Optional Moderation concept, sees
everything. Binaries probably get robomoderated out, but what
if someone posts something that is arguablly illegal or requires
reporting of some kind?
The General Usenet FAQ I'd done had already alluded to the fact
that the "anything goes" impression is a false one. It a poster
crosses the line into illegality in a particular jurisdiction, they
can and do get charged. The New York child porn investigation
and other reports on arrests and so on often cite the kind
of sources, web sites or boards or what not, that criminals or
those charged can use. So what if a Moderator sees such a
post? I'm not sure what the manual at that Big 8 link says on
that, if anything, but mine said if they run across it enough to
notice potential illegality, or something else that's reportable,
they'd report it to the appropriate authorities. Enough with
that over-the-line stuff.
In the case of something like the UPA though, currently on
display in rec.arts.tv, what if all the Seamus wannabes and
responders and the like are all using UPA labels? Few will
want to have to read all that mess just to see a couple of
perhaps Good Shtick posts from Genuine Seamus.
The way I addressed this issue generally at the time was a
Moderator Tag, so for example MOT for a request to the
Moderator to allow an off-topic post through, or for a
Moderator-approved tag that the Moderator initiates by
adding the "M" before OT. This was the idea and again it
gets into the weeds a bit, but at the core it'd be very easy.
The "M" as a tag or tag prefix would only be allowed through
when the moderator agreed or initiated it. So if there were
some genuinely compelling reason to allow an off-topic post
through, there might be a few tags that would do that. A
user so averse to anything off-topic could still killfile that
or bar it at the front-end checklist, but if it were defined
upfront as what it is, I suspect most users would respond,
effectively, "okay, if the moderator(s) think it's a special or
worthy enough exception, I'll let that through...". Great
UPA shtick might carry a MUPA tag, but just the great stuff
and not the wannabe and responses stuff that floods the
group.
I've read the various responses and seen enough to believe
that there's some interest in the concept even here, but also
widespread skepticism it can be done. I actually disagree and
think it would be very doable to design it as a working
prototype and set it up on a server for a particular group
or groups. I don't think there's anything fundamental here
that hasn't already been done in terms of the specific elements
or tools that are needed. Probably the most "delicate" dance,
in terms of the code, is the inherent bending over backwards
that I think needs to be done to preserve both feeds.
Conceptually, the Optional Moderation feed is probably the
only one that ends up being at all important to the project.
The web sites, and ISPs, are probably never going to want the
raw feed. Pretty much only the existing pay services and the
like will want that. So the stuff that gets outright chucked
out is basically dead and gone for good, from the Optional
Moderation feed point of view. It's never seen again and
has no way to renter the OM stream, short of a REPOST
request that really wouldn't be a REPOST, it'd have to be a
new post that remedied whatever the flaw was that got it
moderated out.
So what's still left is the OM feed, which includes the labels
or tags that are important to moderator and user discretion.
Existing news readers, any worth their salt, would allow easy
killfiling of approved tags if users just don't want it. There
are no unapproved tags at this stage, only tags moderators
have allowed through. So conventional Usenet nntp access
is covered in that way, worst case scenario. Better coding
options would be nice, but it'll work with standard killfiles.
Web boards are another story. The xhtml or whatever else
the packaged web boards use would have to be capable of
personalizing the feed options, so that those who don't want
any OT or MOT or any other tagged stuff never get it. The
mods would also be chucking or removing any unapproved
tags from otherwise approvable posts, so the on-topic purist,
whether via nntp or the web, sees only on-topic, untagged
discussion and nothing else.
This has been a long post and apologies for that, but I'm
setting it all out to demonstrate why I think there's nothing
that's a fundamental obstacle here. It can be developed and
easily so as a pilot project for one or a few groups running on
a single server or a few of them. As it expands, the impartial
volunteer moderators become an issue, but consider how
simple it is from a user perspective, and how standardized
it can quickly become from the moderator perspective.
For moderators, it's basically a "Chuck It" versus "Keep it and
perhaps tag it or amend the tag" decision, with the potential
for a fair bit of robo-moderation and whitelisting to make the
job easier. The upside is enormous if Usenet again becomes
"The" place for discussion of any topic, without the Wild
West or Tragedy of the Commons element that has scared
so many off.
Again, please keep in mind the user focus objective here,
and how dirt simple and convenient it can make Usenet
discussion from their point of view. Ideally there's a front
end, one-time menu selection for the tags they're willing to
let through, and if we have that it's 100% clear discussion
sailing from there. All the noise or crap, from their point
of view, is simply never seen and that includes responses
to the noise and crap. But the system is flexible enough to
accomodate different subjective opinions on that, via the
tag system and/or upfront menu selection.
All that's necessary is to develop it, test it and then expand
it. It'd be the Usenet Holy Grail and web discussion boards,
i.e. web user interfaces, would become the big growth area.
Ideally the web user interface would mimic some of the best
that nntp and good news readers have to offer.
Doug Freyburger
>
> ... There
> are some web boards that have dozens of volunteer moderators.
> Web-wide on any particular given topic, there are probably at
> least dozens and possibly hundreds or potential moderators. If
> they got wind of a new effort to provide an inter-site discussion
> board capability that would offer a well moderated version or
> feed as an option, many would probably say "great idea" and
> be willing to volunteer for a moderation shift.
If there were a web interface with moderators cleaning up groups I'd
switch to it. Even better if it was somehow automated by a rating
system and/or the moderators were offered access based on that rating
system.
So while I am waiting on how such an optional moderation system would
work across NSPs I get how it would work on a single NSP. Google
already has the reputation based rating system implemented, but not the
post removal system.
I've often stated that I want to switch to a web based system that does
have good filtering. So far the only example I have seen is
recgroups.com and they have too few groups for me to use it. Plenty of
NSPs have web interfaces without filters, not interesting to me. Google
has the rating system then does nothing else with it.
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
>The next temptation is to say that's not possible, or at least not
>feasible. But that's ridiculous. Of course it's possible.
So prove it by writing the code and setting it up on your own
test server.
If it works as advertised, maybe other people will agree to
use it on their servers.
And then we'll see if you can recruit the moderators to make
it work.
It's all possible.
Kathy Morgan
> "Kathy Morgan" wrote in message
> news:1jtdp2l.1sn3xfnnpbvb9N%kmo...@spamcop.net...
>
> > KalElFan <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>
> >> ... Preserving the underlying Unmoderated nature of Usenet is
> >> essential, even if a successful Optional Moderation tool is offered...
> >
> > We already have many moderated groups where the moderators
> > have disappeared or ceased to care about their groups, and a lack
> > of volunteers to take them over.
>
> [Massive snipping throughout of many good suggestions that I agree with
> and some that I don't.]
> So to summarize, the combined issue is where would these moderators
> come from, especially if they're not interested enough to participate
> themselves in the group they would moderate, and BTW if I want this
> Optional Moderation tool I'd probably have to develop it myself and
> if I can't code it get someone who can.
>
> It's best to start with the latter point and give some specific examples.
> I already did a lot of work on the Optional Moderation concept back
> in 2002 or thereabouts I think it was, in any case soemwhere in that
> 2001-2004 period. [...]
>
> The verdict on the [alt.tv.enterprise] series was arguably still out at
> the time, and so it was a great test case for the Optional Moderation
> concept that I'd been toying with since probably my first posts to Usenet
> in March 1996. I started developing it in earnest. [...]
>
> To allow for legitimate off-topic postings by those whitelisted
> or anyone else willing to voluntarily follow the protocols, a
> label or tag system was proposed. [...]
>
> If an off-topic post were made without any appropriate label
> or tag, it'd just get moderated out. [...]
>
> So what Optional Moderation would provide is screening to
> ensure any untagged off-topic, meta, or offending for whatever
> reasons posts (each category defined with examples given in an
> OM manual I had in draft) were all excluded from the moderated
> feed. [...]
>
> it's the abuser's worst nightmare. Their abuse gets relegated to what
> amounts to the Undernet, with hundreds happily reading and posting about
> the topic but completely oblivious to the abuse.
>
> They don't have to learn about or reinvent the killfile wheel,
> one poster or string at a time like 95% of potential users aren't
> interested in doing. Subscribe to the Optional Moderation
> feed, and you're there. It's all done for you, but with enough
> flexibility that those posters who want to engage in or tolerate
> some kinds of off-topic postings can do that via the tag system.
Here's something that I don't agree with. If the moderator allows
offtopic or UPA posts that have the appropriate tag, then even the
newbies, if they don't want those posts, have to learn to use their
killfiles. If they were willing to do that, we wouldn't need the
optional moderation in the first place.
I like the idea of an optional moderated version of a newsgroup, but I
think it should moderate out the UPA, offtopic chatter, and just plain
abusive garbage. Those who are willing to learn how to use kill and tag
files don't need the optional moderation, so aim for the audience that
isn't willing to learn how to use their tools well.
> So how come Optional Moderation doesn't exist then, if
> it was about to be implemented back then? Personal
> reasons mainly. My dad had a stroke in late 1998 and
> then a heart attack in late 2002, and I increasingly became
> a caregiver for him and later my mother. He passed away
> in 2008 and my mother last month after complications
> from an operation she had in late July.
I'm very sorry for your losses. They're awfully tough to take, even
when you're expecting them. :-(
> And thus has fallen Usenet, even more today than 7 or 10
> years ago, or 15 years ago since I first posted to it. There've
> been some great posts to this thread
Yes, there have!
> The "Vision Thing" here is that, if and when the Optional
> Moderation infrastructure is designed and ready to go, I
> think it'll snowball from there and become quite popular.
>
> It's at that point that the Impartial Volunteer Moderator
> issue becomes a potential constraint. The pilot project(s)
> or group(s) don't pose a volunteer problem, but what if it
> works so well that we need hundreds or thousands as part
> of this burgeoning new "inter-website" worldwide discussion
> boards as some may rediscover Usenet to be?
If that happens, I think finding moderators would be easy. The problem
at present is the lack of serious numbers of interested participants; if
we had again lots of participants, some of them would be willing to act
as moderators - especially if you can make it easy for them.
> [...] what if something illegal gets posted, as
> in the child porn example that's been discussed? [...] It scares
> some people away and contributed to the large ISPs dropping
> it. I disagree it was the only factor. Disuse, i.e., declining use
> of Usenet, and things like the copyright infringement case that
> AOL had to deal with from an SF writer, and TOS complaints
> against their own users, all contributed to a "Usenet is just
> not worth it anymore" sense. [...] I'm not sure what the manual at that
> Big 8 link says on that, if anything, but mine said if they run across it
> enough to notice potential illegality, or something else that's
> reportable, they'd report it to the appropriate authorities. Enough with
> that over-the-line stuff.
And of course they'll be rejecting the questionable posts.
> I've read the various responses and seen enough to believe
> that there's some interest in the concept even here, but also
> widespread skepticism it can be done. I actually disagree and
> think it would be very doable to design it as a working
> prototype and set it up on a server for a particular group
> or groups. I don't think there's anything fundamental here
> that hasn't already been done in terms of the specific elements
> or tools that are needed. Probably the most "delicate" dance,
> in terms of the code, is the inherent bending over backwards
> that I think needs to be done to preserve both feeds.
That last sentence confuses me. Both feeds? Are you assuming both a
web board and news feed, with a web-to-NNTP/NNTP-to-web gateway? I
really don't think that's needed, but certainly I'd have no objection to
it. There have already been some coded, so you might be able to use
some material that's already been written.
> Conceptually, the Optional Moderation feed is probably the
> only one that ends up being at all important to the project.[...]
> So what's still left is the OM feed, which includes the labels
> or tags that are important to moderator and user discretion.[...]
Again, I think the labels/tags would be unnecessary; moderate out
anything which doesn't fit the charter. Those who can use their
killfiles don't need the OM.
> Web boards are another story. The xhtml or whatever else
> the packaged web boards use would have to be capable of
> personalizing the feed options, so that those who don't want
> any OT or MOT or any other tagged stuff never get it. [...]
I've no problem with your providing a web board, but I'm not convinced
that it's really necessary or even desirable. Still, I'm not opposed,
as long as the web interface enforces Netiquette.
> It can be developed and easily so as a pilot project for one or a few
> groups running on a single server or a few of them.
The need for inexperienced or casual users to learn how to use an
alternate server is perhaps the biggest drawback that I see in this
idea. This thread was begun by someone using a terrible news server; he
is seeing problems that most of us do not, because we're using better
servers that filter out the spam and provide better completion in text
groups. Even though good free alternatives have been suggested, he's
still using the server provided through his ISP.
> All that's necessary is to develop it, test it and then expand
> it. It'd be the Usenet Holy Grail and web discussion boards,
> i.e. web user interfaces, would become the big growth area.
> Ideally the web user interface would mimic some of the best
> that nntp and good news readers have to offer.
Ah! Now I understand why you're wanting a web user interface.
So, am I understanding correctly that you have already coded much of
this, or have you just drafted a Optional Moderation manual and the
coding still needs to be done by someone?
I wonder if maybe this could be accomplished most easily by creating an
entire new top level hierarchy? The new om.* hierarchy (optional
moderated hierarchy) would take the feed from unmoderated newsgroup
foo.bar and map it to om.foo.bar, dropping all the offtopic chatter,
spam, and UPA. When you get a volunteer to optional moderate foo.baz,
you add om.foo.baz to the om.* hierarchy. You'd need a hierarchy
administrator to send pgp-signed control messages. Messages posted to
the group by the moderator or others who support the OM idea could
include a .sig to advertise the om.* companion for those who might be
interested.
--
Kathy - still missing Enterprise, Voyager and Deep Space 9...
Nicolaas Vroom
"Doug Freyburger" <dfre...@yahoo.com> schreef in bericht
news:iee65l$2t5$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> KalElFan wrote:
>>
>> ... There
>> are some web boards that have dozens of volunteer moderators.
>> Web-wide on any particular given topic, there are probably at
>> least dozens and possibly hundreds or potential moderators. If
>> they got wind of a new effort to provide an inter-site discussion
>> board capability that would offer a well moderated version or
>> feed as an option, many would probably say "great idea" and
>> be willing to volunteer for a moderation shift.
>
> If there were a web interface with moderators cleaning up groups I'd
> switch to it. Even better if it was somehow automated by a rating
> system and/or the moderators were offered access based on that rating
> system.
You do not need much of an automated system.
I did a check on users in 2010 for groups containing comp.lang.perl
1. alt.comp.lang.perl: 6
2. comp.lang.perl: 10
3. comp.lang.perl.announce: more than 100 ?
They all look like:
The following modules have recently been added to or updated in the
Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). You can install them using
the
instructions in the 'perlmodinstall' page included with your Perl
distribution.
There is no discussion in this group.
4. comp.lang.perl.misc: more than 500 ?
They are almost all like:
Van: "PerlFAQ Server" <br...@theperlreview.com>
Subject: FAQ 1.13 Is it a Perl program or a Perl script?
Date: dinsdag 2 november 2010 17:00
This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq1.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution.
IMO they do not belong in any group.
(They should be moved and made available as a "document" or url)
and there is almost no discussion going on.
5. comp.lang.perl.moderated: 3
6. comp.lang.perl.modules: more than 70
However most of those messages are MISUSE.
Conclusion: All the groups should be merged in one: comp.lang.perl.moderated
Even better: remove .moderated
Nicolaas Vroom
Steve Bonine
> Conclusion: All the groups should be merged in one: comp.lang.perl.moderated
> Even better: remove .moderated
You have discovered one of many cases in which a hierarchy should be
consolidated. There are currently five Perl groups. This made sense
when there was a lot of traffic on the topic; now it doesn't. If I
wasn't posting this in Usenet, I'd say "Everyone would agree that the
discussion about Perl would be better if there were fewer groups."
Being as this is Usenet, the phrase "everyone would agree" can't be used.
My point is this: It's all well and good to point out that the current
collection of newsgroups in the big-8 matches traffic volume from a
couple of decades ago . . . it's easy to say that a massive
reorganization is needed. The question is how to implement it.
I see two basic problems.
There is little probability that the board will take on the job. It
would be a huge task to go through the various hierarchies and
consolidate them. There are fifty newsgroups on MS Windows; no matter
what structure you came up with there would be screams of anguish from
the participants there. Another alternative would be for individuals to
take on hierarchies that they know, but since that hasn't happened yet I
see no reason to expect it to happen. In short, everyone whines that
there are too many redundant newsgroups, but no one does anything.
But even if we could somehow wave a magic wand and get over the first
hurdle, getting a new streamlined structure to actually be presented to
users would be difficult. Well run news servers would process the
control messages sent out by the board and everything would be correct
for their users. What percentage of current Usenet users use well run
servers? I don't know. I do know that Giganews would not remove any
newsgroups based on a reorganization; they've already got thousands of
bogus newsgroups. So for the unfortunate user on one of these servers
the situation has actually been made worse by all the effort to do the
reorganization -- they see a newsgroup provided by their NSP, post into
it, and no one on a well run server sees their article.
Perhaps an alternative would be to build a list of recommended
newsgroups and post it regularly into the hierarchy. Then people who
ventured into a hierarchy for the first time might see the periodic
posting in group A that suggested that they use group B. For the large
hierarchies where it is most needed this would qualify as spam, but it
might focus the discussion as effectively as "removing" groups.
Rob Kelk
<nicolaa...@telenet.be> wrote:
<requoted text snipped>
>You do not need much of an automated system.
>I did a check on users in 2010 for groups containing comp.lang.perl
>1. alt.comp.lang.perl: 6
Not carried at individual.net. Also, an alt.* group and thus outside the
mandate of the B8MB.
>2. comp.lang.perl: 10
Not carried at individual.net. Since individual.net honours B8MB
checkgroups messages, I assume this is a "rogue group".
>3. comp.lang.perl.announce: more than 100 ?
248 between 10 April and 08:00 EST 17 December, on the individual.net
spool.
>They all look like:
> The following modules have recently been added to or updated in the
> Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN). You can install them using
>the
> instructions in the 'perlmodinstall' page included with your Perl
> distribution.
>There is no discussion in this group.
Which means the group is functioning properly. *.announce groups are for
announcements, and are created when there are enough on-topic
announcements that a separate group would be useful and there are enough
posts in the matching *.misc group that anouncements would be "lost in
the crowd" there.
>4. comp.lang.perl.misc: more than 500 ?
5372 between 10 April and 08:00 EST 17 December, on the individual.net
spool.
>They are almost all like:
> Van: "PerlFAQ Server" <br...@theperlreview.com>
> Subject: FAQ 1.13 Is it a Perl program or a Perl script?
> Date: dinsdag 2 november 2010 17:00
> This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq1.pod, which
> comes with the standard Perl distribution.
For a definition of "almost all" which means "less than half".
>IMO they do not belong in any group.
They appear to be on-topic.
>(They should be moved and made available as a "document" or url)
I thought the intent behind this exercise was to increase the usability
of Usenet, not decrease it. Removing valid, useful, on-topic content
from Usenet is not going to help the affected newsgroup.
> and there is almost no discussion going on.
Out of the nine threads started in the last week (10-16 December), all
have at least three replies. One of those threads, "code review - JSON
parsing and data structures", has 30 replies. Last week's threads do not
appear to be atypical for the group. You have a strange definition of
"almost no discussion".
>5. comp.lang.perl.moderated: 3
1 between 10 April and 08:00 EST 17 December, on the individual.net
spool. And it's the "read this first" moderators' post. <sigh>
>6. comp.lang.perl.modules: more than 70
195 between 10 April and 08:00 EST 17 December, on the individual.net
spool.
> However most of those messages are MISUSE.
They appear to be on-topic.
No comments on comp.lang.perl.tk? (155 posts between 10 April and 08:00
EST 17 December, on the individual.net spool. They appear to be
on-topic, and discussion is taking place.)
>Conclusion: All the groups should be merged in one: comp.lang.perl.moderated
The evidence indicates the opposite - the groups are functioning as
designed and as intended, with the exception of
comp.lang.perl.moderated.
>Even better: remove .moderated
At the least, somebody should carry out a Moderator Vacancy
Investigation to determine whether comp.lang.perl.moderated has been
abandoned by its moderator(s). Would you have the time and inclination
to perform this MVI?
>Nicolaas Vroom
--
Rob Kelk Personal address (ROT-13): eboxryx -ng- tznvy -qbg- pbz
Any opinions here are mine, not ONAG's.
ott.* newsgroup charters: <http://onag.pinetree.org>
Any Usenet message claiming to be from me but posted from any server
other than individual.net is a forgery. Please filter out such
messages if you have the capability.
Whiskers
[...]
> I wonder if maybe this could be accomplished most easily by creating an
> entire new top level hierarchy? The new om.* hierarchy (optional
> moderated hierarchy) would take the feed from unmoderated newsgroup
> foo.bar and map it to om.foo.bar, dropping all the offtopic chatter,
> spam, and UPA. When you get a volunteer to optional moderate foo.baz,
> you add om.foo.baz to the om.* hierarchy. You'd need a hierarchy
> administrator to send pgp-signed control messages. Messages posted to
> the group by the moderator or others who support the OM idea could
> include a .sig to advertise the om.* companion for those who might be
> interested.
That's certainly an interesting and, I think, novel concept. To prevent
the two versions of a group from diverging into two entirely different
groups, there would have to be some way of forcing all posts to the om.*
group to be cross-posted to the 'traditional' group too. That would have
to be one of the duties of the moderator.
But would one om.* group for a given traditional group, satisfy all those
who can't or won't apply their own filters? I can imagine a demand arising
for alternative moderators to suit different tastes - a "Guardian reader's
edition" and a "Fox News edition", or "creationist" and "evolutionist"
versions ... I don't mean to belittle your idea, I think it might be worth
a try; there are some groups I'd like to see benefit from such an
arrangement and which are small enough for there to be general agreement
about which posts should be moderated out (possibly automatically) and
with few enough posts for human moderation not to be too onerous.
--
-- ^^^^^^^^^^
-- Whiskers
-- ~~~~~~~~~~
Whiskers
> "Kathy Morgan" wrote in message
> news:1jtdp2l.1sn3xfnnpbvb9N%kmo...@spamcop.net...
[...]
> Web boards are another story. The xhtml or whatever else
> the packaged web boards use would have to be capable of
> personalizing the feed options, so that those who don't want
> any OT or MOT or any other tagged stuff never get it. The
> mods would also be chucking or removing any unapproved
> tags from otherwise approvable posts, so the on-topic purist,
> whether via nntp or the web, sees only on-topic, untagged
> discussion and nothing else.
[...]
> All that's necessary is to develop it, test it and then expand
> it. It'd be the Usenet Holy Grail and web discussion boards,
> i.e. web user interfaces, would become the big growth area.
> Ideally the web user interface would mimic some of the best
> that nntp and good news readers have to offer.
There are already a number of web-to-usenet gateway services available; eg
<http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Usenet/Web_Based/>, and some NSPs offer a
web gateway too <http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Usenet/Feed_Services/>.
There's at least one single-user usenet client designed to use a web
browser for the user interface <http://newega.free.fr/index.html>.
The most notable thing all those have in common is the small number of
users; only Google Groups defies that trend (and is the origin of some of
the worst transgressions that make usenet so much less than it should be
<http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/>). So web-to-usenet gateways
do not have a good track record.
Doug Freyburger
>
> There are already a number of web-to-usenet gateway services available; eg
> <http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Usenet/Web_Based/>, and some NSPs offer a
> web gateway too <http://www.dmoz.org/Computers/Usenet/Feed_Services/>.
As far as I can tell none of those support any type of filtering. Raw
unfiltered UseNet is what is visible on Google so as far as I can tell
none improve on Google for the user experience.
> There's at least one single-user usenet client designed to use a web
> browser for the user interface <http://newega.free.fr/index.html>.
That one is very interesting. I'll look further at some point. It
looks like a browser plug in.
> The most notable thing all those have in common is the small number of
> users; only Google Groups defies that trend (and is the origin of some of
> the worst transgressions that make usenet so much less than it should be
> <http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/>). So web-to-usenet gateways
> do not have a good track record.
None that offer filtering have enough groups to bother using. Any that
lack filtering have such a high noise level they are not worth the
bother of using - I understand that some run clean feed so they have
less spam than Google. In the long run the spam is not the biggest
problem on UseNet the abusive posters are.
Aatu Koskensilta
> If there were a web interface with moderators cleaning up groups I'd
> switch to it.
I wouldn't. From our past discussions I know we have a very
different
take on what is and is not appropriate in news, a different conception
of what news is all about. I don't need a communal rating system -- I
rate posts based on my previous experience with the poster, the topic,
the nature of the thread the post appears in, what have you. I find
this
works remarkably well, and I've never felt the need to killfile anyone
-- I know I am untypical in this. Since I have a semi-decent NSP[1]
I don't have to worry about spam, HipCrime floods, and all that fluff.
> I've often stated that I want to switch to a web based system that does
> have good filtering.
Well, why not try to set something like that up if it tickles your
fancy? There's nothing particularly tricky about this stuff, from a
purely technical perspective. But don't expect us Gnusers to flock
to your new shiny web gateway.
Footnotes:
[1] Except that for some reason I can't post in moderated groups...
--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.kos...@uta.fi)
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Doug Freyburger
>> issue becomes a potential constraint. The pilot project(s)
>> or group(s) don't pose a volunteer problem, but what if it
>> works so well that we need hundreds or thousands as part
>> of this burgeoning new "inter-website" worldwide discussion
>> boards as some may rediscover Usenet to be?
>
> If that happens, I think finding moderators would be easy. The problem
> at present is the lack of serious numbers of interested participants; if
> we had again lots of participants, some of them would be willing to act
> as moderators - especially if you can make it easy for them.
Maybe official moderators would not be needed. I envision a web
interface with the "Report Abuse" button from Google. Only when you
click this one it tells you how many unique readers have reported this
post so fat and how many more will be needed before it is removed from
view.
If such a complaint based system used a reputation based formula it
would be even better. Ten complaints by folks averaging 5 stars through
a tousand complaints by folks averaging one star would result in an even
better feedback-squared system. Probably just a thumbs-up-thumbs-down
setting plus a "Report Abuse" setting is all that's needed.
But such a system would be from a single NSP so it would not be a feed
as such. It lacks the distributed aspect of real UseNet.
Alexander Bartolich
> Whiskers wrote:
>> [...]
>> There's at least one single-user usenet client designed to use a web
>> browser for the user interface <http://newega.free.fr/index.html>.
>
> That one is very interesting. I'll look further at some point. It
> looks like a browser plug in.
As far as I can see it is a stand-alone web-server. Closed source.
The file README.txt in the top-level directory states these license
conditions:
This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied
warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any
damages arising from the use of this software.
Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for private non
commercial purpose.
For a few seconds I was shocked. Absolutely amazing. Somebody out there
not only believes that classic Usenet can be used for commercial purpose,
but also put his money where his mouth is and developed software accord-
ing to a business plan.
Then I noticed the copyright date. No development since 2005.
Usenet ist still dead, after all. What a relief.
Ciao
Alexander.
Kathy Morgan
> On 2010-12-17, Kathy Morgan <kmo...@spamcop.net> wrote:
>
> > I wonder if maybe this could be accomplished most easily by creating an
> > entire new top level hierarchy? The new om.* hierarchy (optional
> > moderated hierarchy) would take the feed from unmoderated newsgroup
> > foo.bar and map it to om.foo.bar, dropping all the offtopic chatter,
> > spam, and UPA. [...] Messages posted to
> > the group by the moderator or others who support the OM idea could
> > include a .sig to advertise the om.* companion for those who might be
> > interested.
>
> That's certainly an interesting and, I think, novel concept. To prevent
> the two versions of a group from diverging into two entirely different
> groups, there would have to be some way of forcing all posts to the om.*
> group to be cross-posted to the 'traditional' group too. That would have
> to be one of the duties of the moderator.
That's an excellent point that hadn't occurred to me. This could
possibly be handled by using the Followup-To: header but that can be
overridden by the person following up. Perhaps the moderation software
could screen submissions and automatically redirect/post to the
traditional group and wait for the post to reappear in the feed from the
traditional group? I think this might not be too difficult technically:
if email headers are present, then it's a direct submission; if there's
a non-empty Path header and no email headers go ahead and process it.
(Someone who currently has access to samples can correct that if it's
wrong.)
> But would one om.* group for a given traditional group, satisfy all those
> who can't or won't apply their own filters? I can imagine a demand arising
> for alternative moderators to suit different tastes - a "Guardian reader's
> edition" and a "Fox News edition", or "creationist" and "evolutionist"
> versions
Hmmmm...yes. If a demand arose, satisfy it by appending the moderator's
handle to the group name? om.foo.bar.kathy and om.foo.bar.whiskers?
--
Kathy, speaking just for myself and definitely not interested in
administering the proposed hierarchy
Whiskers
> Kathy Morgan wrote:
>> KalElFan <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
[...]
> Maybe official moderators would not be needed. I envision a web
> interface with the "Report Abuse" button from Google. Only when you
> click this one it tells you how many unique readers have reported this
> post so fat and how many more will be needed before it is removed from
> view.
>
> If such a complaint based system used a reputation based formula it
> would be even better. Ten complaints by folks averaging 5 stars through
> a tousand complaints by folks averaging one star would result in an even
> better feedback-squared system. Probably just a thumbs-up-thumbs-down
> setting plus a "Report Abuse" setting is all that's needed.
>
> But such a system would be from a single NSP so it would not be a feed
> as such. It lacks the distributed aspect of real UseNet.
Sounds a bit like the defunct "GroupLens Recommender", which I don't think
survived the 1990s
<https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/w/index.php?title=GroupLens_Research&oldid=372447156>.
Only the 'score' needs to be kept under central control; the end-users'
software does of course need to include support for finding and
contributing to the 'recommmender' data. (Slrn still includes support for
the original scheme; I don't know if any other newsreaders do).
But would users who can't or won't use the filtering tools of their own
software, make use of (let alone contribute to) a collaborative rating of
individual articles or personalities?
Kathy Morgan
> Since I have a semi-decent NSP[1]
> I don't have to worry about spam, HipCrime floods, and all that fluff.[...]
>
>
> Footnotes:
> [1] Except that for some reason I can't post in moderated groups...
So that's why you're posting here using Google? Blech! Wouldn't it be
easier to just use Gnus to send your posts via email to
<news-group...@moderators.isc.org>?
--
Kathy
Steve Bonine
> Sounds a bit like the defunct "GroupLens Recommender", which I don't think
> survived the 1990s
There is perhaps a reason it did not survive.
> But would users who can't or won't use the filtering tools of their own
> software, make use of (let alone contribute to) a collaborative rating of
> individual articles or personalities?
This scheme requires the existence of two distinct populations in a
discussion. The first group is altruistic enough to invest effort in
rating articles so that a second group enjoys a higher signal-to-noise
ratio. The second group must be willing to trust the judgment of the
first group because it is deciding what material they see.
In the Usenet community, I have serious doubts that either group exists.
David E. Ross
According to the 15 December 2010 "List of Big Eight Newsgroups", the
following comp.perl.* groups are officially recognized as part of
Big8-Usenet:
comp.lang.perl.announce
comp.lang.perl.misc
comp.lang.perl.moderated
comp.lang.perl.modules
comp.lang.perl.tk
Your #2 is a bogus newsgroup. You missed comp.lang.perl.tk. As already
cited, alt.* newsgroups -- including alt.comp.lang.perl -- are off-topic
here.
--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>
Anything I post in this newsgroup is my personal
opinion and does not reflect the official position
of the Big8-Usenet Board.
David E. Ross
If your idea of a "web interface" resembles Web forums, I certainly
cannot agree. I find Web forums to be far too cumbersome for navigating
or for following threaded discussions.
David E. Ross
>
> Maybe official moderators would not be needed. I envision a web
> interface with the "Report Abuse" button from Google. Only when you
> click this one it tells you how many unique readers have reported this
> post so fat and how many more will be needed before it is removed from
> view.
Google is a poor authority to cite.
Mozilla's proprietary server news.mozilla.org receives feed from three
sources: (1) directly via newsreaders: (2) through E-mail lists that are
bi-directional, each with a specific newsgroup: and (3) from Google
Groups.
Many of the newsgroups on news.mozilla.org are being converted into true
moderated newsgroups because Google refuses to deal effectively with
spam originating from Google Groups. See
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=598060>. In the meantime,
it appears that each newsgroup on news.mozilla.org has a moderator who
can already remove messages post-facto.
Breaking the link between news.mozilla.org and Google Groups was
thoroughly discussed as an alternative to moderating the newsgroups.
This was rejected for various reasons, including the fact that it would
place an unacceptable burden on novice users who do not yet understand
how to configure a newreader.
Whiskers
As I imagine it, the moderator of the om.* group would have to make sure
that any posts submitted directly to the om.* group have the names of both
groups in the Newsgroups header, as part of the 'approval' process. The
moderator would also of course have to read and assess every post in the
'normal' group, and insert the appropriate ones into the om.* group.
Would articles posted to the om.* group but rejected by moderation, be
submitted by the moderator to the 'normal' group? That would seem to be
'only fair'. Alternatively, make the om.* groups 'read only' for all but
the moderator - so all posts have to go to the 'normal' group.
Another technical point occurs to me: when the moderator inserts an
article from the normal group into the om.* group, the MID and References
headers should be kept intact; this would require over-riding the normal
practice that a server only accepts the first instance of a particular MID
presented to it. We want to change the Newsgroups header of an article
the server already has - and to make that effective, each server will need
to add an article number for the om.* group at the same time as we submit
the revised Newsgroups header, but without changing the article numbers
for any other groups to which that article was cross-posted. So a new RFC
would need to be accepted, to regulate the new procedures.
>> But would one om.* group for a given traditional group, satisfy all those
>> who can't or won't apply their own filters? I can imagine a demand arising
>> for alternative moderators to suit different tastes - a "Guardian reader's
>> edition" and a "Fox News edition", or "creationist" and "evolutionist"
>> versions
>
> Hmmmm...yes. If a demand arose, satisfy it by appending the moderator's
> handle to the group name? om.foo.bar.kathy and om.foo.bar.whiskers?
<chuckle> yes, that sort of thing :))
Whiskers
I'm sure both groups exist; after all, there are active moderators and
managers, and plenty of people seem to be content posting to other
people's 'blogs' and 'web forums' as well as to usenet. But the old
GroupLens idea was that people would both rate articles and accept the
results of communal rating as a guide to their own reading. So the
'other' group of readers would be 'those willing to read and rate articles
no-one else has rated yet' - which would mean for those readers, the
rating scheme would have no real value ... which may be why the scheme
didn't survive.
Martin X. Moleski, SJ
<c13756cc-f139-4254...@w29g2000vba.googlegroups.com>:
> ... Except that for some reason I can't post in moderated groups...
Is this not a moderated group?
Is the post self-referentially inconsistent?
Or have I lost all contact with reality?
Kathy Morgan
> As I imagine it, the moderator of the om.* group would have to make sure
> that any posts submitted directly to the om.* group have the names of both
> groups in the Newsgroups header, as part of the 'approval' process. The
> moderator would also of course have to read and assess every post in the
> 'normal' group, and insert the appropriate ones into the om.* group. [...]
>
> Another technical point occurs to me: when the moderator inserts an
> article from the normal group into the om.* group, the MID and References
> headers should be kept intact; this would require over-riding the normal
> practice that a server only accepts the first instance of a particular MID
> presented to it. We want to change the Newsgroups header of an article
> the server already has -
Spoil sport! I had a feeling that I was forgetting something, that it
just couldn't be that easy. The MID problem is a total deal breaker.
Even if an RFC were drafted and approved, I can't imagine being able to
convince every server admin to modify his server to accept messages for
om.* with MID's that match messages already present in other groups. :-(
The servers were om.* were most needed would be the least likely to
implement it.
--
Kathy
Nicolaas Vroom
"KalElFan" <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> schreef in bericht
news:8mvjb3...@mid.individual.net...
> So to summarize, the combined issue is where would these moderators
> come from, especially if they're not interested enough to participate
> themselves in the group they would moderate, and BTW if I want this
> Optional Moderation tool I'd probably have to develop it myself and
> if I can't code it get someone who can.
<Sorry Sorry Snip very interesting reading>
IMO it is not important if the moderators participate in the group.
They have to follow what is in the chapter.
Once a year (4 * ?) they should post a message with a link to this
chapter in their group so people can easily see what it is all about.
(Some do)
The moderators also do not have to write the chapter, they are free
if they are involved in the update process.
I also think that it is a waste of money to write any form of moderation
software tool.
Part of the problem is that the chapters of all groups are different.
The only thing you can do is to write software which detects common
misuse which is valid for all groups.
But I doubt if that is enough to detect all misuse.
IMO moderators should at least read all postings and at least do the
minimal.
IMO to really write software that detects if a posting is in agreement
with the charter of a group is extremely difficult.
Part of this problem is that the chapters of the different groups are
not clear. For example new.groups news.groups.proposal,
n.g.test n.g.text, n.g.administration.policy n.g.questions, n.g.reviews
and n.g.announce (news.announce.newgroups)
IMO what the big 8 administration should do is inform moderators
better what is all involved.
In theory they should send to the moderators a zip file and a readme
file containing all the necessary information.
Nicolaas Vroom
http://users.pandora.be/nicvroom/
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> I also think that it is a waste of money to write any form of moderation
> software tool.
> Part of the problem is that the chapters of all groups are different.
> The only thing you can do is to write software which detects common
> misuse which is valid for all groups.
> But I doubt if that is enough to detect all misuse.
> IMO moderators should at least read all postings and at least do the
> minimal.
> IMO to really write software that detects if a posting is in agreement
> with the charter of a group is extremely difficult.
It's not just "extremely difficult". You are casually speaking about
the Holy Grail of artificial intelligence. A software that could do
this would win you the Turing Award, the Fields Medal, and a couple
of Nobel Prizes, for starters.
Please, take a sabbatical, get enlightened, or whatever. But do not
engage further in this discussion. You have made it very clear that
you have no idea what you are talking about.
--
host -t mx moderators.isc.org
Whiskers
I don't think it need be a deal-breaker; I can clearly remember seeing at
least one moderated group in which the authorised articles had their MIDs
modified by prefixing a character string identifying the moderator, or the
group. This meant that users' filters etc based on MIDs would still work,
and so would threading. This would make a mis-match between the MIDs in
the om.* groups and the normal ones, so posts made to the om.* group would
require the moderator to strip out the MID prefixes from the MID and
References headers before submitting them to the 'normal' group. I think
that could be automated - but it does rather stretch the 'rule' that a
server must not change a message (but Google Groups blew that one out of
the water years ago).
Steve Bonine
> Spoil sport! I had a feeling that I was forgetting something, that it
> just couldn't be that easy. The MID problem is a total deal breaker.
The MID problem is easily solved. Just add characters, e.g. "_OMM", to
the existing MID of articles that you inject into the moderated groups
so that the MID becomes unique.
The deal breaker for me is taking a submission that was made to one
newsgroup and, without the author's permission, modifying the headers
and propagating it to another newsgroup. Given the ongoing hysteria
about copyright and modifying Usenet articles, there would be a fuss
about that. There are people just waiting for an occasion to make a fuss.
The bottom line is whether this would attract new users to Usenet. It
makes for an interesting discussion but I don't think that people would
flock back to participate in these sanitized newsgroups.
Kathy Morgan
> Kathy Morgan wrote:
>
> > Spoil sport! I had a feeling that I was forgetting something, that it
> > just couldn't be that easy. The MID problem is a total deal breaker.
>
> The MID problem is easily solved. Just add characters, e.g. "_OMM", to
> the existing MID of articles that you inject into the moderated groups
> so that the MID becomes unique.
>
> The deal breaker for me is taking a submission that was made to one
> newsgroup and, without the author's permission, modifying the headers
> and propagating it to another newsgroup.
I feel the MID issue is a deal breaker. Once you modify the MID,
newsreaders can no longer identify which articles you've already read in
another group, so anyone who reads both groups (dunno why they would,
but...) is going to see again the articles they've already read, plus
any new ones that may have arrived. If you don't modify the MID, the
message will never appear in om.*
Modifying headers in general doesn't bother me particularly (see for
example all the extra stuff added to headers by the ngp moderation, and
every server the message passes through modifies the Path), but
modifying the headers in a way that breaks current newsreader
functionality is for me a deal breaker, especially if it also sends the
message to another group where the poster maybe didn't want it to go.
Basically, it seems to me that the om.* hierarchy as I proposed it is a
complete no-go. A user could gain much of the benefit (accurate group
list, minimal spam) simply by changing to a well-run server. That
doesn't help with the trolls and UPA, but those can be addressed by
adding a conventional moderated companion group. Unfortunately, neither
of those solutions is much help to the casual user who is unwilling to
learn how to point their newsreader at a different server or stick
around long enough to find (or help create) the moderated companion
group.
--
Kathy, speaking only for myself
Kathy Morgan
> Part of this problem is that the chapters of the different groups are
> not clear. For example
> new.groups
> news.groups.proposal,
> n.g.test
> n.g.text,
> n.g.administration.policy
> n.g.questions,
> n.g.reviews
> and n.g.announce (news.announce.newgroups)
That list includes 4 bogus groups:
news.groups.test
news.groups.text
news.groups.administration.policy
news.groups.reviews
You are trying to convince us to clean up the hierarchy but refusing to
use a server where you would see any benefit even if we accepted all of
your suggestions. Three of those bogus groups never existed, and one of
them was removed a long time ago. The server you are using has ignored
the control messages to remove the one, and it has honored bogus
requests to add groups that were never approved. According to the stats
you posted, your server also fails to carry many ontopic articles and
serves up instead a load of spam.
You would really do yourself a favor if you would try out one of the
free well-run news servers that has been suggested, and you would find
that things are not nearly as bad as they appear on your news server.
Steve Bonine
> I feel the MID issue is a deal breaker. Once you modify the MID,
> newsreaders can no longer identify which articles you've already read in
> another group, so anyone who reads both groups (dunno why they would,
> but...) is going to see again the articles they've already read, plus
> any new ones that may have arrived. If you don't modify the MID, the
> message will never appear in om.*
I assumed that people would read one group or the other, not both.
> Modifying headers in general doesn't bother me particularly (see for
> example all the extra stuff added to headers by the ngp moderation, and
> every server the message passes through modifies the Path), but
> modifying the headers in a way that breaks current newsreader
> functionality is for me a deal breaker, especially if it also sends the
> message to another group where the poster maybe didn't want it to go.
I'm not concerned by the headers added at the time of moderation; the
article was emailed to the moderator by the author's news server because
the author submitted to the moderated newsgroup. The moderation
software isn't _modifying_ any headers at this point; it's taking email
headers and _creating_ news headers.
Harvesting existing articles out of one newsgroup and reposting them
into another newsgroup is a completely different kettle of fish. The
author intended his submission to go to group A; in fact, it ended up
there and in group B. That's a whole lot different from picking things
up out of a moderation queue and approving them.
Kathy Morgan
> Kathy Morgan wrote:
>
> Cancelmoose originally envisioned NoCeM to be a service from users to
> users. Publication of a NoCeM should have been just as easy as the
> "cancel" feature provided by newsreaders, and subscription to a NoCeM
> series should have been similar to the subscription of news groups.
> "NoCeM-on-spool" turns this idea on its head by executing NoCeMs on
> the server.
>
> > Volunteers would have to be willing to issue the NoCeM's for a given
> > group; I suspect if more of us knew how to issue and use them, the
> > volunteers would surface.
>
> Been there, done that, didn't even got a T-shirt.
>
> http://www.xs4all.nl/~rosalind/nocemreg/nocemreg.html
Thank you for all the information, and for that link.
Do you know if anyone is still issuing NoCem's? The Web page was last
updated a couple of years ago, and there are no recent messages showing
in news.admin.nocem.
--
Kathy
Alexander Bartolich
> [...]
> Do you know if anyone is still issuing NoCem's? The Web page was last
> updated a couple of years ago, and there are no recent messages showing
> in news.admin.nocem.
That's because the news group of choice is news.lists.filters.
Almost all messages there are published by Xavier Roche's bleachbot.
Ciao
Alexander.
Whiskers
I don't know about issuing them, but Individual.net seem prepared to handle
them <http://www.individual.net/faq.php#1.12>.
The 'bleachbot' page is only a few months old
<http://home.httrack.net/~nocem/> and the newsgroup referred to there
(news.lists.filters) is getting frequent posts from bleachbot.
Albasani.net apparently issue them too
<http://albasani.net/info/nocem/index.html.en>.
KalElFan
news:1jtm6sn.1vhgcti1rb3t82N%kmo...@spamcop.net...
> KalElFan <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>
>> All that's necessary is to develop it, test it and then expand
>> it. It'd be the Usenet Holy Grail and web discussion boards,
>> i.e. web user interfaces, would become the big growth area.
>> Ideally the web user interface would mimic some of the best
>> that nntp and good news readers have to offer.
>
> Ah! Now I understand why you're wanting a web user interface.
>
> So, am I understanding correctly that you have already coded much of
> this, or have you just drafted a Optional Moderation manual and the
> coding still needs to be done by someone?
>
> I wonder if maybe this could be accomplished most easily by creating an
> entire new top level hierarchy? The new om.* hierarchy (optional
> moderated hierarchy) would take the feed from unmoderated newsgroup
> foo.bar and map it to om.foo.bar, dropping all the offtopic chatter,
> spam, and UPA. When you get a volunteer to optional moderate foo.baz,
> you add om.foo.baz to the om.* hierarchy. You'd need a hierarchy
> administrator to send pgp-signed control messages. Messages posted to
> the group by the moderator or others who support the OM idea could
> include a .sig to advertise the om.* companion for those who might be
> interested.
Okay, I've been reading all the responses as well, including most recently
from Steve and Whiskers to the issue of changing the MID and copyright
complaints. I don't think the second is an obstacle and it sounds like the
first isn't either but we'll see how the discussion goes. I'd already drafted
this post before reading Steve's response on the copyright and so we'll
see where that goes too.
Despite the pitfalls, which I think can be dealt with, I think your om.* idea
fits well with both the spirit and the required mechanics of the Optional
Moderation concept, at least from the conventional Usenet, i.e., nntp side.
I never considered a new hierarchy at the time of the enterprise group
issue, because it was just a pilot project, a do-it-ourselves fix for the
enterprise group only. I'd done no coding, just defined the concept
and how it would work, and made preliminary plans to run a server
that would treat the existing group like a moderated one. So we'd get
the feed from upstream, filter out (i.e., chuck) the unapproved posts,
and any users interested would be subscribed to the OM server and
get that OM feed. The MID wouldn't have changed as I see it because
it would just be a matter of letting the post through on the server's
version of the same group name.
I expected the OM server and feed would become popular, even
among the off-topic chat clique who'd want to see how the group
looked, which of their posts got through depending whether they
tagged or didn't tag and so on. But it would still be manageable
because again it was the one group-specific and any possibility of
expanding it to other groups would come after working proof of
the concept.
Big picture conceptually though, I think your om.* hierarchy nails
it. It's a generalized version of what was intended to deal with
the Enterprise group noise. Basically, and in keeping with the
Star Trek theme here, your om.* is a Mirror Moderated Big 8
Universe just waiting to happen! :-) A few of the abusers may
consider it so EEEEEVVVVVIIIIIILLLLLLL. :-) They're picturing us
all here Mirror Spock-like. :-) But ultimately they have no valid
basis to complain and I'll make the case for that in this post.
Just several other random early thoughts or questions...
1. Anyone got a precedent for this? When I mentioned OM,
Cleanfeed and then NoCeMs were brought up. Anything come
to mind when it comes to an optionally moderated hierarchy?
I'll mention a couple. I recall reading about the idea of a mod.*
hiererachy once, but it wasn't this OM concept it was just a
proposal to have moderated-only groups in one hierarchy.
I recall another instance where a moderated version of a group
was created in the same hiererachy, so there was rec.foo.bar
or the like with noise problems, and rec.foo.bar.moderated
was started as a new, separate group. At least that's what it
was billed as. But then IIRC there was a low traffic problem
on the moderated group, and the moderator decided to start
importing some posts from rec.foo.bar. By some I mean not
even necessarily all of the otherwise approvable posts from
rec.foo.bar. He may have just copied over the best posts or
better posters. In any case it wasn't what people in the main
rec.foo.bar group thought would happen.
That latter example leads to one of the pitfalls here, the one
Steve alluded to about copyright complaints or some posters
feeling their posts have been hijacked to a new or different
group they never intended it to. In that example I gave above,
it may well have been the case, but I think the om.* concept
can inherently deal with it. In my Enterprise example, there
was no new group being created. There would have been no
newgroup control message having to be sent out. It was simply
the unmoderated group getting set up on a server and those
who were interested could subscribe to that server and get
the OM feed of the group. It was entirely user-driven, those
users deciding to opt for the group filtering the OM concept
and its server/feed would provide. We could always retain
that paradigm I think, if we had to, but we don't have to as
I see it because...
I see your om.* as exactly the same thing but the generalized
version of that. It's true that it would, presumably involve a
control message setting up the om.* mirrors. If we did one
pilot project initially, on say rec.arts.tv, the only group in the
om.* heierachy for a while would be om.rec.arts.tv. The latter
is not a "new" group, it's simply a mirror construct designed to
facilitate filtering tools for users who want that.
Again, the pitfall would be straying from that concept such that
om.rec.arts.tv is being created as anything other than a mirror
version of rec.arts.tv that filters out the junk. So as Whiskers
pointed out it requires that posts made to om.* also be made
to the mirrored group, and all approvable posts made to the
mirrored group be duplicated in the om.* version. The ONLY
manipulation being done here is to filter, as anyone or any
group of posters has a right to do or have someone else give
them the tools to do.
More on this issue a bit down into point #2...
2. Crossposts are presumably the best mechanism to enable
the mirror post to first show up in om.*, but as you or one
other poster indicated users can set followups to override
that. It doesn't really override it though because the next
round it can be added back. The issue is what the protocol
would be for the moderator.
If a user dropped other crossposted groups from the list, i.e.
not the group(s) being optionally moderated), the moderator
doesn't do anything and just leaves the list as the user has
altered it. If a subsequent user restores crossposts, he again
leaves that user decision as is absent any other problem with
the post.
If the user drops rec.arts.tv and om.rec.arts.tv both, so as to
continue only in other groups the moderator has no role in
moderating, then again no moderator decision at all. In fact
he doesn't even see the posts that have dropped the group
he's moderating. The subthread just proceeds on the other
groups, and only if a user restores crossposts does it end up
back in the moderator's lap.
I'll switch gears a bit here just to concede that appropriate
crossposts is the assumption here. If a post is inappropriately
crossposted the moderator arguably just chucks it on that
basis. At best they strip crossposts as part of the moderation
decision, and that isn't altering the user's post per se at all in
the group being moderated.
One of two wild card crosspost issues is when the user drops
om.* and continues posting to only the original or mirrored
group. This can only be interpreted as the poster saying he/
she doesn't want to participate in the filtering tools that OM
is offering. But the post still gets imported to om.* as long
as it's otherwise approvable, as do original source posts, for
example those starting threads in only rec.arts.tv. The
rationale is that om.* is simply a mirror construct, not a
new group, and its purpose -- optional filtering a reader-
user is specifically agreeing to -- is beyond the ability of the
participants in the group to veto.
Imagine if a SPAM artist complained that his posts were
being filtered out because it violates his right to control
where it goes, AND he took this to such an extreme that
even users who specifically subscribed to a moderation
or filtering tool couldn't do it! It'd be absurd, and it's just
as absurd from the other side. If a poster can demand that
his approvable post is NOT seen because a user has simply
chosen to filter, what's next? Insisting a poster who has
a liberal view or a conservative view or a certain race or
whatnot is not allowed to read either? It just doesn't work
as an argument, PROVIDED_THAT the om.* hierarchy is
simply a mirror construct designed to implement the
mechanics of a filtering tool for users who CHOOSE to use
that filtering tool.
Some rec.arts.tv posters who are militantly anti-moderation
may still balk at having their posts appear in an om.* group
that they will argue they don't want to post to. This is again
why the concept of om.* has to be very specific and explained
properly. It is not a hierarchy of "new" moderated groups,
it's exclusively a mirror of unmoderated groups that provides
filtering to those users who choose that filtering. Optional
Moderation is not something a poster to the unmoderated
group can opt out of in terms of preventing any users who
filter from seeing his/her approvable posts.
It's not at all like X-No Archive, though even that "request"
is arguably also not something that any news server has to
grant.
Now, one has to anticipate the lengths some anal-retentive
Usenetizens can go to. :-) If a poster really doesn't want to
have their posts find their way to om.*, they could just start
every post with a "#$@% You OM!" without the munged
expletive, or otherwise trigger moderation. It may not dawn
on the poster that this is what we want because it's great
advertising for om.*. :-) If I were moderating and I ran into
such an anal-retentive poster, I'd be tempted to let him give
OM the free publicity in the unmoderated group, but drive
him nuts by removing the stock offending tag line in om.*
If he intentionally tried worse within the post, and it still
didn't dawn on him that he was letting himself be totally
owned by om.*, then maybe you give him what he wants
and chuck his post. Moderator discretion perhaps.
The issue of the MID will reappear within threads whenever
the om.* crosspost is stripped, just as it will with many OPs
not subscribing to the om.* mirror. The OM added to the
beginning of the MID string, for purposes of the importation
to om.* only, would be repeated as needed for any posts
within the thread. The rest of the crosspost list, along with
om.*, goes to followups only perhaps? Or is there a way, for
the om.* subscriber, that the moderator can import the post
and retain the list in the newsgroups line? Because the mod
doesn't want to post again to the unmoderated group, with
the new OM- prefix added to the beginning of the MID. It'd
be nice to retain it on the newsgroups line though, nominally
so the om.* readers see it.
3. I've never been against a fully moderated OM feed, i.e. no
tagged exceptions. In fact I think I used "fully moderated feed"
or a similar term at the time and probably in this discussion
upthread.
But in its Ultimate Version, I wanted OM to provide the kind of
subjectiveness and/or flexibility that would allow users to pick
and choose what kind and level of filtering they wanted. It
might initially have involved two different feeds, one fully
moderated and one with tags.
The tags would, as you noted, mean newbies might need to
learn to killfile, at least until better coding or a front-end
menu allowed them to select filters a better way. So there'd
be merit in initially defining the om.* hierarchy as solely fully
moderated versions of existing unmoderated Big 8 groups.
Another way to look at this might be mom.* and tom.*, or
the om.* hierarachy being the default mom.* version. The
tom.* hierarchy could come later and be "Tagged Optional
Moderation," while the om.* hierarchy has strict standards
that most moms would be okay reading. :-) Or mom.* just
stands for "Meticulous Optional Moderation". :-) Tom, on
the other hand, is a geek and geeks would be okay with a
killfile or a few tags they don't want to see. :-)
The om.* hierarchy is simpler to start though, and avoids
the complexity of tags and the need for killfiles as you said.
4. As om.* becomes more popular, we'd have the prospect
that, to use an example, om.rec.arts.tv surpasses rec.arts.tv
as the nominal posting source. The rec.arts.tv group will
always have more posts than om.rec.arts.tv, but the bulk
of on-topic posts may be generated out of om.* This may
have implications like, for example, hierarchy splits if the
OM concept increases participation enough.
5. Another possibility is om.alt.* as a Mirror Moderated alt.*
subhierarchy.
6. Along the lines of #5 above, should om.* be open source,
so to speak, at least to the extent the us.* and uk.* and other
top-level hierearchies are invited to mirror their groups? The
larger issue is "ownership". The Big 8 here is fond of referring
to any group not on the approved checkgroups list as "bogus".
But really it's a pointless war of words because the bogus
group or froup doesn't much care. It's subversive from the
Big 8 board's point of view perhaps, but conceivably a group
of opponents to the Board's policies du jour could compete
for news server loyalty with Charlie's Checkgroups or the like.
If enough news servers preferred Charlie's judgment or vision,
Charlie's Checkgroups might win out.
There is no real ownership of any of this, and that would
include the om.* hierarchy just as it does the rec.* and other
hierarchies. By convention or tradition or apathy, the Big 8
board is kinda the known "source" (I hesitate to use the word
authority) for attempts to deal with Big 8 issues. You have
that web site with various materials on there, and you and
others posting here have considerable knowledge, experience
and expertise when it comes to nntp and all kinds of other
related issues. It's also admirable that you all even care
given the continuing deteriorating trend of Usenet.
But ownership, no. Of a piece of software, the code, or as
in copyright of your posts, or a web site featuring optional
moderation, sure. But as in owning the Big 8 groups per se,
or a moderation concept or approach, I think not. It might
be possible to try to patent a moderation approach but to
the extent I've had any input into this one it's not something
I'd ever do. Not that I'm against anyone making a buck and
helping grow and popularize the concept.
The web sites are a good example. I was making a list this
morning of possible Optional Moderation web site names
that I might want to set up and use at some point. I wrote
down a whole bunch on some index cards and many were
taken, but the straightforward optionalmoderation.com (as
well as .net and .org) was available. As a shorter version the
URLS optmod.com as well as, again, .net and .org were also
available.
So I registered all six. :-) I have them all going to the longer
optionalmoderation.org right now, with an under construction
page only. I view anything OM that's developed, in terms of
the idea and the basic infrastructure to support it, as open
source. Software packages or the like, advertising on a web
site if it becomes "The" hot spot for a web board version like
Google Groups should be but isn't because they haven't ever
supported it well enough, sure make a buck. But if us.* or uk.*
want to adopt their versions or even use the om.* hierarchy,
I'd personally have no issue with that in principle. And I'd be
equally willing to see the Board, if they're interested, make
om.* "their" hierarachy initiative. The Big 8 becomes the
Big 8 + 1 Mirror Moderated Hierarchy.
But if it works so well and others want to use om.*, what then?
Do we end up with an om.xxx subhierarchy? I don''t see how
anyone could prevent it, any more than they could rec.xxx if
news servers could be persuaded to carry it. They'd probably
just start an omxxx top-level hiererchy though, so technically
not om.*. :-)
So I don't really see any ownership issues, beyond anyone or
any group interested in setting up their own websites. If the
"inter-website discussion boards" concept took off then it's
conceivable specific web sites might make a good buck off it,
again if it became one of "the" places to go for that. Twitter
or Facebook no, but I think there'd be potential appeal. It's
not something that exists anywhere right now. Usenet has
too much noise, the web boards are fracturing the market
into little bits, so Worldwide Discussion on a really big scale
and with decent signal to noise is waiting to happen. :-)
KalElFan
news:1jtm6sn.1vhgcti1rb3t82N%kmo...@spamcop.net...
> KalElFan <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
>
>> ... Subscribe to the Optional Moderation
>> feed, and you're there. It's all done for you, but with enough
>> flexibility that those posters who want to engage in or tolerate
>> some kinds of off-topic postings can do that via the tag system.
>
> Here's something that I don't agree with. If the moderator allows
> offtopic or UPA posts that have the appropriate tag, then even the
> newbies, if they don't want those posts, have to learn to use their
> killfiles. If they were willing to do that, we wouldn't need the
> optional moderation in the first place.
We'd still need optional moderation because off-topic offenders
and the like often don't tag. There are users who would be willing
to one-time killfile the tags they don't want, knowing that OM will
be ensuring proper tagging and so they won't much need their
killfile beyond that one initial configuring of it.
So I still like the flexibility. But yes the simplest entry level and
simplest beta test for all this would be the one that doesn't have
the tags. There are certain standards a post has to meet and if
it doesn't it gets chucked. Responses to that post might also get
chucked, i.e. the entire subthread goes if it's off-topic for example.
But there could be some exceptions to that depending on the
transgression and whether respondents in the unmoderated
group salvaged a thread.
>> So how come Optional Moderation doesn't exist then, if
>> it was about to be implemented back then? Personal
>> reasons mainly. My dad had a stroke in late 1998 and
>> then a heart attack in late 2002, and I increasingly became
>> a caregiver for him and later my mother. He passed away
>> in 2008 and my mother last month after complications
>> from an operation she had in late July.
>
> I'm very sorry for your losses. They're awfully tough to take,
> even when you're expecting them. :-(
Thanks.
>> And thus has fallen Usenet, even more today than 7 or 10
>> years ago, or 15 years ago since I first posted to it. There've
>> been some great posts to this thread
>
> Yes, there have!
Yep, and some of them I tried to address in the other response
to your post. There are more to follow if I can get to them.
>> The "Vision Thing" here is that, if and when the Optional
>> Moderation infrastructure is designed and ready to go, I
>> think it'll snowball from there and become quite popular.
>>
>> It's at that point that the Impartial Volunteer Moderator
>> issue becomes a potential constraint. The pilot project(s)
>> or group(s) don't pose a volunteer problem, but what if it
>> works so well that we need hundreds or thousands as part
>> of this burgeoning new "inter-website" worldwide discussion
>> boards as some may rediscover Usenet to be?
>
> If that happens, I think finding moderators would be easy.
Yep, students (colleges and universities) would be one of many
sources. I mentioned twitter and facebook in the other response,
as in any OM web sites aren't likely to become that any time
soon. But I think there's big "Vision Thing" appeal to a site,
or many choices of sites, that have genuinely diverse and
worldwide participation in any topic you can think of. Now
it's mainly a case of having to choose site A or B or C, or of
having to duplicate the posting effort.
If instead there was "The" place to go, where the content is
not owned or controlled by Google, and the underlying basis
of it is free and unmoderated subject only to the laws of the
jurisdiction you're in, but there's also an *Optional* button
you can click or choice you can make to clean that up enough
to make it worthwhile, I think that wins over the owned web
boards hands down. While I prefer an open source way of
looking at it, conceivably the underlying concept is refined
by some web site that provides a great web user interface
to it. That could be proprietary and they could draw more
users and sell more ads and so on. Again not twitter or
facebook, but if Usenet can be revived through this OM
tool then the increase in its usage may make it attractive
to service. Google might stop neglecting it to death and
actually see some potential in paying attention to it again.
> The problem at present is the lack of serious numbers of
> interested participants...
Yep, and it's the same on almost any given web board. There
are relatively few really active ones on any specific topic, and
virtually none that covers so many topics as Usenet does.
> if we had again lots of participants, some of them would be
> willing to act as moderators - especially if you can make it
> easy for them.
Yep, but the mentality of the moderator is key and I think the
OM concept will tend to attract better moderators. For some
on the web boards, it's like a power trip. With OM, a control
freak moderator can be turned off *and* the complainers can
bitch about it or make fun of it ad infinitum in the underlying,
unmoderated source group. If they have a point and it's a
kind of protest action by several posters, it'll tend to generate
whatever moderator replacement process is available and it
won't be like the Big 8's current MVI's. The groups will be used
and cared about enough that the better moderator(s) probably
get installed and people go back to OM.
When OM works, I think the unmoderated version becomes
like the Undernet. Especially if the tagged or tom.* tools are
available, or newbies become sophisticated enough to refine
om.* with some of their own filtering preferences, who'd want
to suffer the junk and noise? Some oldtime Usenetizens might,
but they'd probably have both feeds a click away and only go
to the unmoderated one if they wanted to flame somebody. :-)
[snip illegality or other reportable posts]
> And of course they'll be rejecting the questionable posts.
For sure, but beyond that it's a key issue actually. I don't think
moderators have any obligation to report. They maybe eyeball
the first line of a post, or otherwise know that a post or poster
is likely to have to be moderated out. So it may take seconds
at most to just chuck the post. Robomoderation or voting
tools like "Click to report" might also alert after the fact or
for future posts by a poster or with respect to a subthread.
I'm okay with those as long as the impartial moderator makes
the call, because a few objecting is not an objective judgment
and the mob should never decide. The mob may in fact be
the problem. But a good moderator might take at most five
seconds to dismiss any given way-over-the-line posts.
Should he/she do more though, even though not required
to? I think the moderator should, but does that open up a
can or worms including greater frivolous lawsuit risk because
the moderator is in a different position than the average
"participant"?
Ostensibly the moderator is considering each and every post,
even ones flagged or recommended by robomoderation to
be disallowed. If there's child porn links or death threats
or "hate speech" or criminal confessions or insider trading
tips or plausibly illegal spam or whatever else in a post, does
a moderator have an obligation to report that to appropriate
authorities if they notice it? That might be the ISP or NSP for
starters and maybe none beyond that, but what about more
anonymous remailers or the like? If they do report it, does
that then bring them a step closer to a fiduciary duty to be
consistent and thorough enough to make such a call again
and again? Even though these are posts that would have
just taken five seconds to chuck and let the authorities or
anyone else who has access to the unmoderated feeds (i.e.,
everyone really) take action and report it or investigate it
if they want to?
And which jurisdiction's "standards" are to be considered?
A poster from an Iranian ISP (or the one ISP there? :-)) or
one in China would be subject to different laws in their
jurisdiction than the U.S. or the Netherlands where almost
anything, relatively speaking, might go in terms of freedom
of speech in a text message. If the "answer" here is that it
depends on where the moderator is situated, that arguably
makes the problem even worse.
[snip reference I'd made to both feeds]
> ... Both feeds? Are you assuming both a web board and
> news feed
That too, but the context you were responding to was actually
the unmoderated versus optional moderation feeds, and in the
latter case pontentially a further split based on the tags. But
web vs. nntp as well, and gateways back and forth and all the
other technical issues would all be relevant too. I haven't
clicked some of those other references provided in a few of
the other posts yet.
John F. Morse
>>
>> http://www.xs4all.nl/~rosalind/nocemreg/nocemreg.html
>>
>
> Thank you for all the information, and for that link.
>
> Do you know if anyone is still issuing NoCem's? The Web page was last
> updated a couple of years ago, and there are no recent messages showing
> in news.admin.nocem.
>
They certainly are. That link Alexander provided shows who issues them.
http://www.xs4all.nl/~rosalind/nocemreg/nocemreg.html
My transit server's Daily Report for Friday shows:
NoCeM on Spool:
Id Good Bad
Unique Total
blea...@httrack.com 470 0
638 638
Adri Verhoef <nl-c...@a3.xs4all.nl> 1 0
13 13
TOTAL: 2 471 0
651 651
And Thursday's shows:
NoCeM on Spool:
Id Good Bad
Unique Total
blea...@httrack.com 725 0
1018 1018
no...@arcor.de 4 0
4 4
Adri Verhoef <nl-c...@a3.xs4all.nl> 1 0
4 4
TOTAL: 3 730 0
1026 1026
There are other (newer) Webpages:
http://wiki.killfile.org/projects/usenet/nocem
http://home.httrack.net/~nocem/
http://albasani.net/info/nocem/index.html.en
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/software/inn/docs/perl-nocem.html
--
John
When a person has -- whether they knew it or not -- already rejected the Truth, by what means do they discern a lie?
Jonathan Kamens
Optional moderation has been effect in the newsgroup pair
ne.general / ne.general.selected and working fine since at
least 1995. N.g was so unuseable that one of the participants
in the newsgroup took it upon himself to set up n.g.s after
surveying the folks in n.g and the admins who carried ne.* to
see if there was sufficient interest, which there was
N.g.s works like this... Messages posted to n.g that aren't
filtered out by the anti-abuse rules implemented by the n.g.s
bot are automatically reposted to n.g.s with a new message ID
and with Followup-To directed to boy n.g and n.g.s. Messages
posted just to n.g.s are modified by the bot to go to both n.g
and n.g.s. Messages cross-posted to both n.g and n.g.s (i.e.,
followups to messages posted to both groups) are posted
unmodified.
The group was set up and the bot is maintained by John R.
Levine <jo...@iecc.com>. I believe he created a similar setup
for ne.internet.services.selected. In both cases, the
rationale for setting up the moderated group was, as John put
it, "a gush of noise from a small number of posters" who were
making the group unusable for everybody else and driving
participants away.
I don't lend any credence at all to the "You have no right to
repost my article anywhere except where I posted it" whiners.
Reposting in a different newsgroup is no different from
posting a followup and editing the Newsgroups line to go
somewhere else, and everyone who posts to the Usenet certainly
implicitly gives permission for that to occur. If you're
really worried about the whiners, then you insert a disclaimer
at the top of a posting automatically when you repost,
explaining how it was reposted, so the original poster can't
claim that s/he was "misrepresented" as having posted to a
different set of newsgroups than s/he actually did, and you
post a FAQ to both newsgroups periodically explaining what's
going on, and you allow anyone who wants to opt out of
participating in the *.selected group, i.e., their postings in
the unmoderated group don't get reposted in the moderated
group, and if the post to the moderated group their posting is
automatically rejected. None of this is rocket science.
In short, this idea has already been used successfully, and
you don't need a separate hierarchy to do it. Just tack
".selected" or some other agreed upon suffix onto the end of
the unmoderated group name for the moderated group.
On the topic of collaborative moderation a la GroupLens, you
need a large enough participant base to ensure that malicious
input into the moderation process is drowned out by legitimate
input, and I frankly am not convinced that's achievable for
any newsgroup on today's Usenet.
Rob Kelk
<snip>
>I don't lend any credence at all to the "You have no right to
>repost my article anywhere except where I posted it" whiners.
Insulting those who disagree with you isn't the best way to open debate
on a subject.
>Reposting in a different newsgroup is no different from
>posting a followup and editing the Newsgroups line to go
>somewhere else,
Legally (at least in Canada), this is incorrect. A followup is a
derivative work as defined by the Copyright Act; a reposting is not.
(And before you say "ne.* is a USA-specific hierarchy", I'll point out
that it has international distribution. For example, it's carried on
individual.net, which is hosted in Germany - does anyone know what the
German copyright laws are regarding reposting vs. followups?)
<snip>
--
Rob Kelk Personal address (ROT-13): eboxryx -ng- tznvy -qbg- pbz
Any opinions here are mine, not ONAG's.
ott.* newsgroup charters: <http://onag.pinetree.org>
Any Usenet message claiming to be from me but posted from any server
other than individual.net is a forgery. Please filter out such
messages if you have the capability.
Kathy Morgan
> Kathy Morgan wrote:
>
> (snip much good info)
Yet more info and links. Thanks!
--
Kathy
Whiskers
> "Kathy Morgan" wrote in message
> news:1jtm6sn.1vhgcti1rb3t82N%kmo...@spamcop.net...
>> KalElFan <kale...@yanospamhoo.com> wrote:
[...]
> Despite the pitfalls, which I think can be dealt with, I think your om.* idea
> fits well with both the spirit and the required mechanics of the Optional
> Moderation concept, at least from the conventional Usenet, i.e., nntp side.
>
> I never considered a new hierarchy at the time of the enterprise group
> issue, because it was just a pilot project, a do-it-ourselves fix for the
> enterprise group only. I'd done no coding, just defined the concept
> and how it would work, and made preliminary plans to run a server
> that would treat the existing group like a moderated one. So we'd get
> the feed from upstream, filter out (i.e., chuck) the unapproved posts,
> and any users interested would be subscribed to the OM server and
> get that OM feed. The MID wouldn't have changed as I see it because
> it would just be a matter of letting the post through on the server's
> version of the same group name.
>
> I expected the OM server and feed would become popular, even
> among the off-topic chat clique who'd want to see how the group
> looked, which of their posts got through depending whether they
> tagged or didn't tag and so on. But it would still be manageable
> because again it was the one group-specific and any possibility of
> expanding it to other groups would come after working proof of
> the concept.
[...]
The 'special news-server with stringent filtering' approach has fewer
technical hurdles to surmount than creating a new 'filtered mirror' group
or hierarchy.
Many NSPs already do a lot of filtering, which is completely invisible to
their users unless someone responds or refers to a blocked message in a
message that does get through. There is (or was) at least one public
news-server that filters out all articles posted using the Google Groups
interface.
So there is precedent, and there is no need to create a new group or
hierarchy, and no need to change any existing systems or practices. This
approach does require that a dedicated news-server be set up, and users who
want the expurgated feed would have to set their news-reader software
accordingly, but that's all.
Provided the news-server operator makes it clear that 'we only carry
articles of which we approve', I can't see any moral, legal, or technical,
objections. Merely the practical problems of operating a public
news-server, and doing the filtering quickly and reliably enough for it to
be useful.