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From: tli@uscvax.UUCP (Tony Li)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: Need for Stargate screening?
Message-ID: <1423@uscvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 16-Jan-85 01:50:51 EST
Article-I.D.: uscvax.1423
Posted: Wed Jan 16 01:50:51 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jan-85 10:24:05 EST
References: <494@vortex.UUCP> <702@cbosgd.UUCP>
Organization: CS&CE Depts, U.S.C., Los Angeles, CA
Lines: 54

Mark Horton:
> I must point out that there is a very significant volume of people who
> want either (a) lower phone bills, (b) higher quality netnews, or both.
> Both of these groups are very interested in stargate, moderation, and
> other ideas that may help meet these goals.

Add my vote.  This will definitely become a large factor.  Consider what
happen when USENET doubles in size again.  The traffic that you now get will
double.  Are you ready for that?  I'm not sure that I am.

I'm also spoiled.  I started reading the moderated groups on Arpanet, and
have read and contributed there for quite a while.  I'm much happier with
the content of the newsgroups/mailing lists there, not to mention the
reduced overhead and reduced volume involved.  For those who equate
moderation with editing and censorship, I think you're not quite
understanding how a moderator functions.  The moderator is there not to
restrict the discussion, but to remove the flames ("You're so F*cking wrong,
your *ss is coming out your nose.") and the gross amount of redundancy that
appears as a result of the propagation delay in the net (2000 * "Hey, can
you send me a copy of that?").  I don't see the moderator as even an editor.
The moderator is not there to improve your articles.  They're sole purpose
is to combine the received messages, less the flak, into one posting.

Sad to say, I'm not enthused about the way moderated groups on USENET are
working out.  At this site, I'm very sure that no one even knows how to
post, much less route something out to a moderator.  Then again, I'm told
that 'pathalias' stuff will cure some of this problem.  Well, I'm not the
local administrator, and there's not much I can do about it.

The current moderated groups, though, are not setting a real good example.
Mod.motss seems to be a compendium of one-liners of what's in net.motss.  If
you want something important, you have to get mod.motss.  Most of the others
aren't doing anything, as far as I can tell, with the exception of mod.std-c.

On to more important matters -  I'm quite in favor of this project, and I
wish Lauren all of the support in the world in doing it.  I've been turning
over the idea of getting a hook-up here, and I guess the one question left
is this:  what kind of assurance do we have from the transponder folks that
we'll be allowed to continue this experiment for a while?

In other words, laying out the $$$ for dish, decoder etc. is not small
potatoes to me.  I'd like to know that I'm going to pass the break-even
point on the investment.  Now I know that we can't get any written
guarantees of how long we'll have the bandwidth, but I would like to hear
some idea of how long this experiment is supposed to run.  Lauren?  How long
do I have before this equipment is useless and I'm back to phone links?

Cheers, 
Tony ;-)
-- 
Tony Li ;-)		Usc Computer Science
Uucp: {sdcrdcf,randvax}!uscvax!tli
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