Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site looking.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: It's time for news to get user-UNfriendly
Message-ID: <245@looking.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Mar-85 00:00:00 EST
Article-I.D.: looking.245
Posted: Wed Mar  6 00:00:00 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 7-Mar-85 05:55:50 EST
Organization: Looking Glass Software, Waterloo, Ont
Lines: 52

It's a hard fact to take, but the time has come to be autocratic and
start enforcing netiquette in software.  Past authors of the news softare
have made the (understandable) mistake of trying to make the posting software
easy to use.  This should be stopped.

Articles are posted once, yet read thousands of times.  Anything that makes
it one factor easier for the readers and 500 factors more difficult for the
poster is justified.   Thus the following rules are proposed:

1) No "Re:" lines on followups.   News should not provide an automatic subject,
   and instead should require a new AND DIFFERENT subject to be entered.
   If an article is new, it talks about something new, and the subject should
   say what this is.  While we're at it, no subject should be less than about
   50 characters.    Detecting grouped articles is not a function of the subject
   but rather of the References lines

2) No included text of the source article.  In fact, the software should
   detect articles with included text and reject them.

3) No immediate followups.  Instead, all followup requests should be collected
   and batched to the end of the news session, where the reader will be
   presented the referenced articles again, and asked if he really wants to
   follow up.

4) Default distribution region-wide (or smaller), with netwide distribution
   requiring an explicit request, with confirmation.

5) Default followup done as mail to the sender, and only a later question
   after the article is prepared allowing the article to go to the net.
   Questions like, "is your article directed at one person, or answering
   a question."  Reminders that questions should be answered by mail, leaving
   it up to the recipient to inform the world if need be.

6) Detection of beginning users, and beefing up the verbosity and restriction
   for them.  Moderating them if need be.  (this won't be censorship.  The
   way to get unmoderated would be to learn enough to know how to ask!)

6) K news (of course)  A thousand keywords, and a good 5 minutes of research
   required by beginners to find out the right keyword to post to.  About
   time they gave the matter some thought.


So this all sounds nasty and restrictive?  Will it make posting a pain?
GOOD.  For all your complaints about how people in favour of this sort of
thing are trying to ruin your net, ***you're trying to ruin MINE.***


Of course, these changes, along with many other things like K news will
never get done, since nobody has the time and nobody wants to pay for
Usenet, Inc.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd. - Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473