Xref: utzoo news.admin:3401 news.sysadmin:964 alt.flame:2662
Path: utzoo!hoptoad!pacbell!ames!ucsd!rutgers!bellcore!tness7!killer!sulaco!allen
From: allen@sulaco.UUCP (Allen Gwinn)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.sysadmin,alt.flame
Subject: A SERIOUS DILEMMA FOR THE NET
Summary: Something MUST be done about Portal
Message-ID: <265@sulaco.UUCP>
Date: 19 Sep 88 01:11:50 GMT
Followup-To: alt.flame
Organization: SULACO, Dallas, TX
Lines: 33

To the members of Usenet:

Greetings.  There has emerged, what I feel to be a big problem.  For
a couple of weeks, the net has been plagued with postings from several
"entities" at the Portal System (tm) in California.  The postings are
made from ambiguous accounts such as "Spartan", "Hijacker", "Argent",
"Ankh" etc, ad nauseum.  It is my opinion that the Site Administrator's
decision to let subscribers use these "handles" (and apparently change
them at will) encourages some of them to post irresponsibly, and perhaps
not use the best of judgement when doing it.  I offer as a "for instance"
the fairly recent incident of "jj@cup.portal.com" who posted a plea for
money across the entire net, cross-posting to most of the newsgroups.

This problem might be solved if the management at the Portal System would
simply replace the "XPortal-User-Id:" line with the user's real name.  This
situation would perhaps force a poster to use more discretion prior to
posting, knowing that his or her *real* name would be attached to the 
posting.

If the Site Administrators at the Portal System are still uncertain as
to whether or not they should implement such a thing, perhaps those of
us who feel this way could help them out by assembling as complete a
portfolio of these postings as possible.  Then, mail them to 
'postmaster@cup.portal.com' along with your comments as to why you feel
the postings are inappropriate.  This will aid their staff in resolving
the problem by presenting them with *complete* first-hand evidence.

I thank you, and Usenet thanks you...

-- 
Allen Gwinn  ...sulaco!allen        Disclaimer: The facts stated are my own.
"At the source of every error blamed on a computer you will find at least two
 errors...including the error of blaming it on the computer."