OT: comp.cad.solidworks Charter changes

Agree.

WT

?????? HELLO POT ?????????

Agree

Gary

Calling this the premier SW group doesn't hold water under testing. Far more people find substantial SW help on Eng-tips.com and the SW fora. More traffic and more questions answered. The only real advantage here is for those who are overhabituated to NG readers.

I do agree that moderation would help. I am against robot moderators. I doubt they will work well enough.

Trolls go where they are fed. Ignore them and they will go away, once they are done licking up their own vomit.

I believe in free which means I also believe in allowing people the same right to free speech even if what they have to say makes my blood boil.

This is the oldest, most open and independent where you are now proposing to close and make it dependent.

We already have moderated SolidWorks groups/forums. If you don't like the wild west (freedom of sp each) unmoderated comp.cad.solidworks then move to the city (moderated solidworks group). Better yet just set up your own personal newsgroup filters set to YOUR preferences not someone else's consensus, it's not that hard.

Most of the people/posts you try to moderate here will just create fake names and email addresses, spoof, etc. to get around the "pre-approved group consensus moderated filters" and keep it up anyway (not me).

Out of curiosity you must have some thought on how to set up the filters now. How exactly are you thinking of filtering (moderating) this group?

By number of cross posts? No cross posting? Posters? Keywords? In other words how do you propose to keep it simple, fair, balanced?

I believe in the charter however abiding by it at this point is voluntary. Point it out to the offender when you feel they are violating the charter, that's fine. If you wish to bring a little peer pressure to get people to abide by it that's OK as well. However I am reluctant to agree to taking the only free speech zone left and making it an approved speech only group.

Tom

I wish this were MORE like the WIld West. Guns and gallows and lynch mobs to deal with offenders appropriately. Freedom of speech regulated by "regulator".

Agree.

..

In the 10 years I have been in this group (lurking for the first 6 or

7 years) I started 1 thread IIRC and it was on topic about a pleasant surprise with SolidWorks & CamWorks 2007 right out of the box. All my other posts have been in response to others.

The reason I said HELLO POT is because unlike you Cliff I have NEVER added a cross post. I have never cross posted to your Kook, Political & Extremist groups as you constantly do. Your practice that brings the nut cases and spamers back to us here in comp.cad.solidworks and in alt.machines.cnc.

When responding to posts I try to remember to look up and see what groups the original message I am responding to was posted and remove the cross posted kook, political & off topic groups before I send my response. I said try, I am not as vigilant I could be.

And yes I am guilty of responding to the banquer CAD/CAM eggspurt.

Tom

Me to.

I agree.

We only need moderation for one purpose, and everybody is clear what that one purpose is. I don't think ignoring "him" will make him go away, 10 years of this proves that approach will not work. All of this is just to make one person act like an adult.

c.c.sw IS the premier forum. If you count the years of service this news group has educated us, let us debate, rant, brought us together, disseminated information, and who knows what else, the newer forums don't have the depth of experience. I've learned more from fellow posters on c.c.sw than from any other source.

I left here last year for the very reason that Paul wants to address. I prefer unmoderated, but that only works if everyone can control themselves. I fully support Paul and this effort to reclaim a little territory.

Matt Lombard

Tom,

This is an age old topic. I believe in freedom of speech also. So for example when I start a thread on a topic like _cross posting_ on the group something is taken from our freedom of speech when a game of verbal ping pong ensues on the subject of, dare it be mentioned, SyncTech. Surely many would have liked to respond to the original topic but did not, short changing us of a discussion on cross posting. There were many other threads on SyncTech. This is a charter driven NG. And there is a thing called netiquette. And one thing that should be borne in mind is that a NG is not for any one person's gratification, but rather the pursuit of an idea and the benefit of all. That is why there are so many different news groups.

The type of moderation that is being envisioned is to make free speech possible. Most moderated groups require some sort of entry approvals or even payments (Eng-Tips, SWCad, SW fora, blogs, etc.) And they will bounce members that stray even a little bit from their path. That is not what is being envisioned here. Rather what is envisioned is the control of noise with noise being defined as that speech which is outside the charter and outside the bounds of netiquette so that a discussion of SW can ensue.

There was the wild west in which men/women were free to roam and seek their fortunes. Then there are dude ranches in which men/women go to ride down the same trails week after week in search of the feeling that they are in the wild west. I never understood dude ranches. In the wild west part of this NG people explore SW (the software and the company) and get it to go where it has never gone before in pursuit of their fortunes.

As for the how to moderate, I suppose that would be based on consensus within the scope of the charter as far as individuals go. We already had the discussion on cross posting and the consensus there was that there shouldn't be any (or at least it should be very limited). I think you were part of that thread.

And yes I have given the mechanics of it some thought. I will give an example using a hypothetical name of a non-existent person. For the sake of discussion only let's say the name is bob zee. For some reason bob zee has been moderated out (I don't think this would really happen, it is just an example). So bob zee starts posting as george why. He would probably get one post before a moderator would notice the unmistakable way bob zee writes. Bingo, george why is blacklisted too. What you should take away from this is that moderation would be directed at behavior, not persons so faking an identity will not solve anything if the behavior continues.

Sorry bob zee, even hypothetical non-existent people have feelings. I hope you take this in the spirit it was intended.

TOP

I agree!

Paul, the charter modification is a great idea. I left here in

01-01-2000 and started my own SolidWorks discussion e-mail user group, "SWCAD" because of the CAD wars, flaming and uncivil discourse here at this group.

Any effort, by you, to clean this site up ~ can only help SolidWorks users and discussion.

Keep up the good work,

Dan Bovinich

snipped-for-privacy@googlegroups.com

Jon's contributions may not be to many peoples liking but the main issue I have is actually with 'Cliff the compulsive' - (God I wish he would find something useful to do with his life or frankly f*ck up and die) - and the alt.machines people who cross post worthless comments without thinking. If Cliff and the boys didn't spread and respread it around the net it would be far better for everyone. I have accumulated 55 of these people on my blocked senders list and many many posts a day simply never get to show in my browser. That's fine by me but for people receiving the full swag it must reduce the worth of this group to crap level which is unfortunate cos it has been a great place for Solidworks folk to come. Because they have shown over and over again they cant control their urge to spam and puke on about nothing I agree in principal to the moderation thing however I would rather as a first move that cross posting to other groups could be prevented somehow because I think that would remove 90% of the problem.

Changing an unmoderated group to a moderated group while technically possible at the news server software level is not possible in reality. Would require every news server around the globe which carries comp.cad.solidworks to agree to change it and since there are many good reasons not to it would never be 100% successful.

Instead you need to create a new, mirrored, newsgroup named for example say: comp.cad.solidworks.moderated.

Before you do any more considering on this subject here are two must reads you, and anyone wishing to support the creation of a new moderated Solidworks newsgroup, need to see before continuing:

Pitfalls of Newsgroup Moderation (or Things You Wished You'd Thought Of Before You Started)

Overall Big-8 Management FAQ

Agree.

Jeff Mowry

I whole-heartedly agree!

Top,

First off let me say I respect your >Tom,

This sentence is contradictory, can't create free speech by limiting speech. lets call it what it really is, the whole point of this discussion and proposal to moderate this group is to eliminate the speech we don't like.

This is not a case where someone is yelling fire in a crowded theater where it can cause injury or even death, this is strictly speech and only speech.

Censorship (moderating) once started is a slippery slope.

I did not participate on the OP subject. I did participate in the thread drift where I responded to Jon's posts about shit SolidWorks and how great he thinks SolidEdge is although he has never seen or used.

I did not participate in the OP because I felt it would be hypocritical of me to do so. IMO it was not only about cross posting but also about "feeding the troll/s" which I am guilty of.

I don't like cross posting as a general rule but in some very limited instances it has it's place. The discussion about a machinist changing an engineers solid comes to mind, the thread that was cross posted alt.machines.cnc, it is relevant to both groups CAD/CAM and led to a lively discussion.

Your example is not deleting the offending posts but attempting to block a person from ever posting. Where do you draw the line on offensive signal to noise ratio, 100:1, 1:100?

This is a prime example of the slippery slope.

So the issues are:

1) Block Trolls

Jon has already stated he does not care what others think about him and that he is not going to stop. He won't settle for anything unless it is unilaterally imposed in his favor.

Trying to block trolls doesn't work, for example: Jon uses numerous aliases in the MasterCAM forum, each time one gets banned he just creates new ones so it doesn't reduce let alone eliminate his noise.

2) Stop Cross posting Cliff by his actions in alt.machines.cnc has demonstrated he will not stop cross posting to kook & extremist groups fishing for nut cases and leading them here.

3) Stop feeding the trolls

I don't believe "not feeding the trolls" eliminates the troll. I will however bow to peer pressure and stop feeding the trolls for a while to see what happens. I will respond to OP's and maybe a little thread drift if it isn't feeding who I consider a troll.

4) Eliminate Spam

I have filters so I don't see the noise, most OT's, spam, political posts and extremists lead here by cross posting.

Tom