From: Bill Davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com)
Date: Tue Jul 25 2000 - 12:45:13 CDT
In <20000724192936.A26652@main.templetons.com>,
Brad Templeton <brad@templetons.com> suggests:
> If a *moderator* uses an injector that doesn't know the status of other
> groups, their posting might get inserted into the system without such
> signatures, in which case it will be rejected at up to date sites.
>
> I view this as a feature, not a bug. Today such a moderator causes an
> illegit crossposting to some other moderator's group by putting on approved
> without noting the xpost
I can't disagree with anything you said except your conclusion. In
almost any group of people, you will get bad results if you take the "I
will make it hard to do it the wrong way" or "It won't work if you
don't do it my way" approach, and much better results if you take the
"the right way is also the easiest way" approach.
So Russ' idea of a place to send all crossposted moderated posts makes
it easy to do right, and having it break has no immediate feedabck to
the moderator and is likely to result in moderators telling readers to
bitch to the ISP because the server is dropping posts. And if it takes
removing the other groups from the newsgroup line to get the post out,
they will do that (because it's easy), and never mind if there are two
posts with the same msg-id.
If you assume that there are moderators and readers who don't care if
they break the rest of usenet as long as they get their posts and don't
see spam, you get an insight into practical implementation. Moderators
are not as technically savvy or public spirited as they were a decade
ago, and the readers want gratification without responsibility. The news
admins are the last people who care if news works right for anything but
spam and copyright violations.
-- -bill davidsen (davidsen@prodigy.com) "The secret to procrastination is to put things off until the last possible moment - but no longer" -me