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Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!leopard!lat
From: lat@leopard.UUCP (Laurie)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: Traffic in present moderated newsgroups
Message-ID: <117@leopard.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Feb-85 23:14:19 EST
Article-I.D.: leopard.117
Posted: Wed Feb  6 23:14:19 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 8-Feb-85 00:18:14 EST
References: <347@wjvax.UUCP>
Organization: Bell Communications Research, NVC, 331 Newman Springs Road, Red Bank, NJ 07701
Lines: 57

[i think i got off the subject a bit, but i decided to post it
anyway and add my measly $0.000002 worth]

> The point is, given a choice, do people even read the moderated
> stuff?  Or do they continue in their old anarchistic ways?
> 
> I wonder if this inclination is representitive
> of netters in general?
> -- 
> 
> 	Ron Christian  (Watkins-Johnson Co.  San Jose, Calif.)
> 	{pesnta,twg,ios,qubix,turtlevax,tymix}!wjvax!ron

Well Ron, I, for one, would love to have moderated newsgroups.
Unfortunalely, they do not get forwarded to us...someone up
the line must not be running 2.10.2, but I don't have the time
to track it down.

I work full time (yes, I am one of those *nasty, despicable
system administrators* :-), and there are barely enough hours
in the day for me to do my job, let alone plow through 10**10
repetitive postings.  I am also taking classes at night so that
I can get my degree, which cuts into my "free time".  I usually
end up reading news (if at all) between 10pm and midnight --
not too much fun when you are bone tired.  I still wonder how
anyone can read the volume of stuff that goes through this
network and still get their job done (i know some of you can do it,
but most of us can't).

After being a (mostly passive) user of the net for well over
two years now, I was happy to hear that moderated groups
were being tried out.  There has been way too much abuse of
this network; and I think Lauren, Mark, Chuq, Gene, and a few
others would agree.  The idea (I thought) originally behind
the moderated groups was to try to get things under control.  If you
have been reading other newsgroups, like net.books or net.singles,
(I will leave net.unix, net.unix-wizards, and a few other well known
past fiascos out of this), you would see that the pornography debate
and jeff sargent (no harm intended, jeff) issue has taken up most of
the traffic in those newsgroups.

If they were moderated, they would have (could have, whatever) been
channelled off into either new newsgroups, compacted into a digest,
or something, other than propagating 10**2 followups to every
article, which either had nothing to do with the group they were
being posted to, or said the same thing (ok, 10**2 is a bit high :-).

I do not think of moderation as censorship, but it seems that there
is a fine line between the two.  I hope USENET can stay intact,
be it through STARGATE or some other form of communication.
If this means moderation, then I'm all for it, and if I can find
some more time (maybe they'll change the days to allow 30 hours
instead of only 24 :-) I'll try to help out any way I can.

-- 
Laurie
{ihnp4, gatech, allegra}!leopard!lat