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Path: utzoo!watmath!watcgl!dmmartindale
From: dmmartindale@watcgl.UUCP (Dave Martindale)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: News stats to control net abuse
Message-ID: <555@watcgl.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 4-Jul-83 13:12:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: watcgl.555
Posted: Mon Jul  4 13:12:46 1983
Date-Received: Mon, 4-Jul-83 23:51:14 EDT
References: <1665@utcsrgv.UUCP>
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 17

The problem with Peter's suggestion is that the posting of many articles
does not necessarily constitute "abuse".  To take an extreme example,
compare two net users, one of whom posts a large number of articles about
system bugs or enhancements which are of use to a large portion of the
machines on the net, and another who posts a single article which is several
hundred lines of argument so ridiculous that almost no one reads through
it.  Now, which of these two is an "offender"?  The first has performed a
useful service, the second has annoyed a large number of people, and
yet it is the first person who will show up in statistics of "net abusers".

The practice of human readers sending mail to people who have posted
garbage (in the opinion of the reader) at least causes feedback which
depends on the content of the articles posted.  A scheme of automatic
complaining letters based solely on number or length of articles posted
does not.

	Dave Martindale