Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!unisoft!mtxinu!rtech!llama!daveb
From: daveb@llama.rtech.UUCP (It takes a clear mind to make it)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Monitoring site output (formerly portal bashing)
Message-ID: <2139@rtech.UUCP>
Date: 6 Jun 88 07:11:12 GMT
Sender: news@rtech.UUCP
Reply-To: daveb@rtech.UUCP (It takes a clear mind to make it)
Organization: Relational Technology, Inc. Alameda, CA
Lines: 82

This note collects several responses to my note about monitoring site
output.  One reply, that I forgot to save, said, essentially, stop
knee-jerking and dreaming up half-witted technical solutions to a
non-problem.  I am inclined to think that some level of monitoring is a
help, and others have suggested and shown how.

In <11@n0atp.UUCP> barry@n0atp.MN.ORG (Barry S. Berg) says
>In article <2134@rtech.UUCP> daveb@rtech.UUCP ([me]) writes:
>>There is discussion of site responsibility for postings, particularly
>>from commercial USENET service providers like Portal and the Well.  Many
>      ^^^^^^^^^^
>Why is everyone bashing Portal and the Well because they charge their 
>users...
>>people would agree that these sites have a greater moral obligation to
>>the net because of the perceived lack of skill/knowledge of their user
>>base.
>Why?? Do you feel that the freshman rush in the fall adds any greater
>level of skill or knowlege to the general user base...

Probably it is unfair to single out commercial/public access sites.  And
yeah, the once a semester "what is NULL" debate does get pretty tiring
after a few years.  

In <6156@well.UUCP> dhawk@well.UUCP (David Hawkins) sez:
>In the referenced article, daveb@rtech.UUCP  wrote:
>>There is discussion of site responsibility for postings, particularly
>>from commercial USENET service providers like Portal and the Well.  Many
>                                                              ^^^^
>>people would agree that these sites have a greater moral obligation to
>>the net because of the perceived lack of skill/knowledge of their user
>>base.
>...
>In the 6 or so months that I've been the System Operator, I've
>received zero complaints about postings made from the WELL to the net.
>That's zero email and zero phone calls.     
>
>For the last 3 months I've been receiving copies of outgoing postings
>to public newsgroups (I don't intercept/read private email or postings
>to moderated newsgroups.)  We have a fairly high volume of outgoing
>articles, but I've only had to cancel one.  It was cross-posted to a
>ton of newsgroups and basically said, "Please send me email so I'll
>know how to send mail to your site."  That article never made it off
>the WELL.  I directed the poster to a simpler method of finding mail
>paths.

I'm sorry if it appeared I was impugning the WELL in my article.  I was
offering it more as an example of the type of site (along with portal)
that seemed likely to have a supervisory need.  The monitoring above is
a reasonable level of observation.  Though my original article suggested
more draconian methods, I recant the thought.  The following article
explains how this is done, and argues the case for doing it better than I:

In <2398@ll1a.UUCP> cej@ll1a.UUCP (Jones) says:
>	There is an *easy* way with the current news software for
>a copy of all postings originating at a site to be mailed to an
>administrator.  Just add a line like:
>
>	newsadm:all,!to.all.ctl:L:/bin/mail news
>
>
>	Of course *all* this does is mail a copy of the posting to
> "news".
>
>	While this doesn't provide any "approval" mechanism, at
> least you always know just what your users are posting.  It
> appeared that portal had absolutely no idea what JJ had posted until
> net-ers at other sites brought it to their attention.  *That* should
> not have had to be the case.
>
>	I would like to suggest that the news administrators of
> *all* sites, not to mention public sites, should know what their
> posters are putting out on the net.  (Potential censorship flamers -
> if a poster at my site is posting something for the whole world to
> see, there can't be any harm in me reading it also.)  I would rather
> that I help a confused poster at my site, than have you have to do
> it because I don't subscribe to the group he posted to.  And I would
> rather tell them about distribution than you.  And if someone at my
> site does ever get abusive, I would rather know first.
>
>	Why be the last to know?


{amdahl, cpsc6a, mtxinu, sun, hoptoad}!rtech!daveb daveb@rtech.uucp