moderation of alt.sources vs. automated harangues

[Brandon S. Allbery]

As quoted from <8467 at boring.cwi.nl> by dik at cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter):
+---------------
| Something like that.  Although, if I remember correctly, it was the fear that
| a moderator would inhibit distribution of some sources.  But that discussion
| was long ago.
+---------------

That was indeed one of the sticking points, although it came up late in the
discussion.  Rich Salz's "editor ban" in comp.sources.unix proved that there
was a point to it, but on the other hand I responded to it by specifically
inviting editor postings in c.s.misc.

It's more a "good moderator"/"bad moderator" problem tha anything else.
Perhaps a solution is to allow moderator voting, a la newsgroup voting... but
that's a different topic for a different group.

+---------------
|  >                                                    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.
| Try comp.sources.misc (of course this requires that your mail is received
| by the moderator within one day and that he looks at his mail pretty
| frequently).
+---------------

I look daily, networks permitting (e.g. if I can't rlogin to uunet I wait
until I can or until the weekend, whichever comes first), and post daily.  But
I have to *get* the submissions.  (hint hint ;-)

+---------------
| The problem with alt.sources is of course that when you follow-up to an
| article there it goes to alt.sources, unless you edit the newsgroup line.
| But is alt.sources important enough to warrant measures as for
| ....general?  And if so, how well will the newsreading programs comply?
+---------------

I think the news programs should have a general mechanism for this:  a
newsgroup can have a followup-to newsgroup specified, or a list of suggested
followup-to newsgroups with the implicit statement that if such a list exists,
followups to the original group are frowned upon.

One more note on moderated newsgroups:

My original intent for comp.sources.misc was to do essentially what has been
proposed for a moderated alt.sources: get it out fast if it's source, reject
it if not.  But I ran into a snag: archivers.  It seems that once you moderate
a sources group, people start archiving it... and they prefer specific
formats, such as all the auxiliary-header baggage.  There's also the problem
that once a moderator is in the loop, people expect him/her to reject or
repack uuencoded arc/compress/whatever postings.  So there is now a potential
delay in c.s.misc.

Are you sure you want that headache here?

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery, moderator of comp.sources.misc	     allbery at NCoast.ORG
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