moderation of alt.sources vs. automated harangues

[David C Lawrence]

In article <2024 at convex.UUCP> tchrist at convex.com (Tom Christiansen):
Tom> I've been getting a lot of hate mail, most of which is automatic,
Tom> by self-appointed moderators of alt.sources for a comment I
Tom> posted there.  And I'm pretty tired of it.  [...]  If you think
Tom> alt.sources should be restricted, moderate it.  If not, stop
Tom> bitching.

It isn't automatic.  If it could be automated like that I think we
would moderate it, with the moderator being the system that
automatically made decisions about what was source and what wasn't.
Perhaps a relatively simple heuristic could look for things that
appear to be sharchives, but for the time being the messages being
sent to people require human intervention.  (I don't send them; if
anyone wants to see one, some jerk just posted one back to alt.sources.)

In <1989Oct13.192835.1330 at talos.uucp> kjones at talos.uucp (Kyle Jones) writes:
Kyle> So moderate alt.sources.  But do it the way comp.sources.misc was
Kyle> originally going to be moderated: Axe non-source postings, and THAT'S
Kyle> ALL.  Malcontents still can thwart the moderation scheme, but the main
Kyle> problem is articles posted by accident, or because of ignorance.  The
Kyle> occasional miscreant can be cut off.

Sounds reasonable, if anyone is volunteering (and the mailpaths sites
will moderate another group in an alternate hierarchy).  Note that one
of the main reasons for having alt.sources as unmoderated was for the
near instantaneous turn around time; with no moderator intervention
the postings went there as soon as you made them.  I think a very good
approximation of this (ie, posted within a day of being mailed to the
moderator) would be necessary before you got many people to agree to it.

How very interesting this all is in light of the fact that alt.sources.amiga
was just made unmoderated about a week ago.

Dave
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