From: David Iain Greig (dgreig@darwin.ediacara.org)
Date: Mon Aug 05 2002 - 17:44:55 CDT
On Mon, Aug 05, 2002 at 05:04:14PM -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> On Mon, 5 Aug 2002, David Iain Greig wrote:
>
> > Talk.origins uses a C program written originally for (I recall) soc.
> > singles.california. It cannot handle encapsulation of posts.
> >
> > I find Bill's position laudable in theory, and execrable in practice.
> > There are myriads or moderated newsgroups; to think there is a single
> > tool that will work for all of them is madness.
>
> Could you give us the names of some of the myriad of groups using
> non-ASCII names in moderated groups? They must not make it to my site.
> And if there are already tools to handle this why is it being fought so
> hard?
As I am reading Boswell's Life of Johnson, I refute you thusly:
Talk.origins is automoderated.
Talk.origins permits crossposts to any 3 other groups[1][2].
Any Usenet reader posting to any[3] non-ASCII group and talk.origins
will thus be affected, under your new encapsulation system.
I do find your sense of irony delicious, sir, by the way. Your
masterful analysis of Jay Denebeim's grasp of Usenet headers
is only surpassed by your grasp of moderation software and
processes.
</boswell>
I am fortunate that I have the platform and the skillset to re-write
the moderation software to adapt to encapsulation; I'm sure with
the people I *do* know who are working on USEFOR (Henry and Russ)
that you will come up with a workable standard that I can
hopefully translate into Perl or C without too much effort[4]. My
concerns are that:
- you're fixing the wrong problem (mail not news)
- most moderators aren't so lucky as I am
--D.
[1] exceptions: other moderated groups, and a few alt.* groups.
[2] We've had threads conducted in Finnish, French, Dutch,
Spanish etc. Nobody minds. Many crossposted to national
newsgroups.
[3] *un*-moderated (c.f. [1]).
[4] or Russ will be hearing about it.[5]
[5] A lot.