Mail Archives: djgpp/1997/03/09/07:11:07
Eli Zaretskii (eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il) wrote:
: On 4 Mar 1997, Jesse Bennett wrote:
: My real concern is how well *trustworthy* and *well-meaning*
: individuals can indeed classify the borderline postings in a way that
: doesn't prevent useful information from getting to people who might
: find it helpful.
I think this distinction would be very hard to make; this is why I
suggested in an earlier post that the retro-moderator(s) would feel
more comfortable if they were following set rules, rather than acting
on their personal preferences.
[snip]
: The *real* issue here is not whether a bunch of criminals will take
: control of this news group's traffic, the issue is this: how much are
: we annoyed by the noise that we get on an unmoderated group, and how
: much can we trust our trustees to let them cancel and/or re-route
: some of the messages. That is the issue that DJ was talking about;
: FWIW, I agree that it *should* be raised and discussed by everybody
: who cares to make their views public.
I agree. I personally do not find that there is much off-topic posting
in this group (apart from this thread ;) ). I think what matters here,
as DJ has pointed out before, is whether the off-topic threads and spams
(few though they are) detract much from the group's effectiveness in
solving problems people have with DJGPP and acting as a forum for
discussion of on-topic issues. Personally I think we have recently had a
few threads which were blatantly off-topic, many FAQ questions, and a
large number of `borderline' cases.
I think the first impression newcomers get on posting to this group is
generally that almost every question gets an answer, strictly on-topic or
not. There are virtually no aggressive posts; even an FAQ usually gets a
polite pointer to the relevant chapter. This is an impressive situation
which ought to be preserved, IMHO. It also indicates that perhaps the
retro-moderation isn't required; if all questions get answered everybody
is happy. The problem is when not all questions get answered...
Is the weekly digest mailing-list moderated? If not, perhaps this would
be a better idea than newsgroup moderation, since IHMO the mailing-list
receivers are the ones most likely to be annoyed at off-topic messages,
and a moderated mailing digest would give an alternative path with no
spam. This probably wouldn't be practical on the daily digest, though.
--
George Foot <gfoot AT mc31 DOT merton DOT ox DOT ac DOT uk>
Merton College, Oxford.
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