Xref: utzoo news.admin:3563 news.groups:5492 Path: utzoo!utgpu!attcan!uunet!seismo!sundc!pitstop!sun!amdcad!ames!mailrus!purdue!spaf From: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups Subject: Re: Call for Discussion: Moderation of news.admin Message-ID: <4968@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 27 Sep 88 21:59:35 GMT References:<3147@utastro.UUCP> <699@mace.cc.purdue.edu> <1581NMBCU@CUNYVM> <828@acer.stl.stc.co.uk> Sender: news@cs.purdue.EDU Reply-To: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Lines: 39 In article <828@acer.stl.stc.co.uk> dww@acer.UUCP (David Wright) writes: >In article <1581NMBCU@CUNYVM> NMBCU@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU writes: ># ... I'm only in favor of it being moderated, if Gene Spafford moderates ... >Yes, I'd vote for that! How about it Gene? Thanks for the vote of confidence, but I'm not sure this is the best idea, for a couple of reasons: 1) Many people, especially some of those who feel the need to complain about the status quo, feel that I'm part of the problem. Thus, they would not like to see me moderate. 2) I can't devote much time to it. I'm heavily involved in the kinds of professorial duties one might expect of a junior faculty member trying to establish good credentials for tenure. The Usenet is kind of low on my list, in that sense. Combined with a heavy travel schedule, it really isn't practical to have me as moderator. 3) I don't read much of the Usenet anymore. In fact, most of the old-line backbone/senior admins don't read the net much either. There is too much noise, too much petty bickering, and too little value anymore for me to bother reading more than about 6 groups. Ideally, if you are going to have someone moderate a group about administering news, you'd like someone who tends to follow some larger subset of the newsgroups. Therein lies an interesting catch-22. You want someone with some restraint and experience with the network. However, I can't think of anyone in that category who still reads any significant number of groups in Usenet! The flap over portal was short-lived. Admittedly, it never should have happened in the first place. Unfortunately, the same process is at work in most of the netgroups. Perhaps news.admin should be left as is -- a reflection of the net as a whole. -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf