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