Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utcsrgv.UUCP Path: utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr From: peterr@utcsrgv.UUCP (Peter Rowley) Newsgroups: net.news Subject: News stats to control net abuse Message-ID: <1665@utcsrgv.UUCP> Date: Mon, 4-Jul-83 01:36:25 EDT Article-I.D.: utcsrgv.1665 Posted: Mon Jul 4 01:36:25 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 4-Jul-83 03:21:47 EDT Organization: CSRG, University of Toronto Lines: 41 Thanks to the poster of the news statistics; they provide valuable feedback to the user community; I'd like to see them done regularly (once a month?)-- the work involved could be shared between sites. This may well provide a sociological solution to net overuse. Abusers are easily identified and will probably restrain themselves. If they do not, system administrators will have the information to take appropriate action. Anarchy, read as "lack of central control", avoids the CPU cycles and communications time required to enforce such control. If feedback mechanisms exist to regulate overall behaviour, an efficient system can result. The net survey provides the feedback, with a pretty low use of resources. All "crimes" are automatically recorded and "criminals" easily identified. Better still, potential criminals are warned that their behaviour is bordering on the criminal, resulting in self-restraint. The "technocratic" solutions proposed by no means guarantee success (they, too, rely on self-restraint) and will consume substantial resources. So, regular posting of news statistics allows peer pressure to function to regulate use of the net, as well as providing system administrators with indications of abuse at their sites. However, as abusers and potential abusers may not read the statistics, automatically generated mail messages to such people are warranted. One might, for example, take the average number of postings by the top 100 or 200 posters and send (polite and informative) mail to those who posted more than twice the average, with copies to their system administrators. All this scheme needs is for some site to compile and post the statistics and, if mail messages are to be sent, agreement on the criteria to be used to decide who to send them to. I don't know enough about the ins-&-outs of news to handle the statistics, but I'll gather and summarize opinions on what constitutes abuse of the net, in numerical terms. A similar solution may work for urging administrators to update their news programs, particularly if mail messages are sent indicating exactly how the new version may be obtained and installed. peter rowley, U. Toronto CSRG {cornell,watmath,ihnp4,floyd,allegra,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsrgv!peterr or {cwruecmp,duke,linus,lsuc,research}!utzoo!utcsrgv!peterr