OT: comp.cad.solidworks Charter changes

See my comments to Pete Ross. I understand your points. The one news server that would IMO really need to be willing to honor moderation is Google because that is the one major news server/reader that contains the archives and would have the newbies on it.

TOP

Reply to
TOP
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But are you reading it from Google Groups? Those are the users complaining. It seems that the solution for them is not a moderated Usenet group but a non-Usenet Google Group, if they continue to refuse to subscribe to a genuine News server.

Reply to
Adam H. Kerman

Usenet doesn't work like that.

Reply to
Adam H. Kerman

Jon,

I believe I'm not alone here with asking a very clear question,...

Do you agree or disagree with the charter proposal?

If you agree,.. then, will follow the charter rules? I hope so. Otherwise,.. if you disagree,.. then,.. I think there may be a good chance for you to be on a list of individuals or spammers which could be filtered from the proposed moderated ng.

Personally,.. I think it's very unfortunate we have to move to a moderated ng status... but I AGREE something,... somehow,.. has to be done to help,... so others, who want to help,... can be given a chance to help others,.. without all the noise.

So,.. what will it be, Jon? Or... start a SE ng?... Then,... you can help there.

..

Reply to
zxys

Pete,

As I mentioned this thread was cross posted in mid stream to news.groups. I was really only looking for discussion on ccsw at this time. Agree or disagree was all that we were looking for. BD is the most NG savvy poster who is active in ccsw and he makes some good points. And having his branch of the thread pop onto news.groups first certainly makes it look like there is a lot of opposition. But I think that will change.

Last night I had the opportunity to sit down with the original founder of this group and his opinion if hearsay is permitted was that there was too much noise. I was in a SW user group meeting last night with him and asked the group of about 15 what they thought about ccsw. 4 or 5 immediately raised their hands and named the same problems we are discussing here. The rest were new to SW and were encouraged to become involved with ccsw.

I suppose I will have to respond to the claim that some bloggers have moved some non-contributors to post in this thread. Even if they haven't contributed in the past they certainly have enough interest to contribute in this way. I also see in the people who have responded that there have been several long time contributors who returned just to chime in on this subject. ccsw is being discussed offline in several user group meetings and in other fora with people who used to be here. This is not just an issue of past contributors posting, but future contributors and beneficiaries. When we put up the RFD we will attempt to touch upon those issues. See also Ed Eatons last post which is only on ccsw.

TOP

Reply to
Paul B. Kellner

Google has archives of groups that no longer officially exist. E.g.,

If, as I suspect is quite likely, the request to impose moderation in place is refused by the B8MB, would you prefer to continue with a single *un*moderated group?

There seems to be a consensus in news.groups that moderation in place isn't a realistic option, and the one member of the B8MB who has expressed an opinion seems to share the consensus view.

You're welcome to make a formal proposal for moderation in place, but you also need to consider what your best option is if that proposal is rejected.

I have some vague recollections of a proposal to make a moderated group unmoderated a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, I can't even remember if the proposal passed, but if somebody has a better memory than mine the current status of the group in Google Groups might be informative.

Asking Google for information tends not to work, in my experience.

Won't a connection from Outlook Express to a news server that offers access on port 80 work?

I do understand that this is a rare case where the prevalence of Google Groups users in a newsgroup should be taken into account, but a solution that weaned people away from Google Groups would be ideal, if such a solution could be found.

Moderation doesn't necessarily prevent off-topic posting, and robo-moderation certainly doesn't.

I won't do that right now; instead I'll assume that you're right. But it takes at least two posters to hijack a thread - one to attempt the hijacking and another to respond to the attempt. If people didn't feed trolls and flamers, trolls and flamers would look for otehr targets.

However, I've read some posts in CCSW which suggest that there's a particular problem with crossposts to political groups. The whole of Usenet is suffering from the same kind of problem at present, and most groups I read have more political drivel in them than I've seen in CCSW. But it's a seasonal thing, that tends to occur in four-year cycles. Wouldn't weathering the storm be better than inevitably splitting existing on-topic discussion?

Frankly, I don't really believe in the concept of thread hijacking. If a response doesn't interest me, I move on to the next response.

I've noticed the name "Matt Lombard". Are the other posters you've named sure to return to Usenet if they're offered a moderated group?

The vote would be exclusive to the nine members of the Big Eight Management Board. You and I have no say whatsoever.

Yes please.

Get your asbestos suit ready. Proponents don't get flamed much in news.groups, unless they show remarkable cluelessness, but I can't guarantee that you won't suffer some collateral damage from existing, long-standing flame wars.

At present, I don't think you need a moderated group. However, my opinion is based on reading about 1000 recent posts in my newsreader and about 200 recent thread titles in Google. I'm willing to be persuaded that I'm wrong. Anyway, as I said, neither you nor I has a vote.

Reply to
Peter J Ross

===[begin_verbatim_text]==============================================

  1. To educate and inform others about the strengths, weaknesses, and general usage of SolidWorks.
  2. To allow announcements of products and events for SolidWorks, third-party products, and user groups.

Discussion on comparisons between SolidWorks and other CAD systems should be held in the most appropriate newsgroup. ===[end_verbatim_text]================================================

I'm not convinced that you're right. You can certainly discuss the weaknesses of SolidWorks, and it would be reasonable to mention other products that don't share those weaknesses, but *discussion* of those other products seems to be referred to other newsgroups.

OTOH, what's "the most appropriate newsgroup" for such discussions? There seems to be no officially endorsed comp.cad, comp.cad.misc or comp.cad.advocacy. If such a group existed, would you use it for posting about the faults you perceive in SolidWorks instead of posting to CCSW?

I have to say that you and Cliff seem to be the alleged "problem" that needs to be solved, but you're both making perfectly reasonable comments in this thread and in other recent posts I've read of yours. Maybe a little negotiation between the "problem" posters and the other posters would be better than excluding either set of posters from either the existing group or a new group?

Reply to
Peter J Ross

"So if you?re an old c.c.sw er, or just a newsgroup/forum junkie, follow the link at the top and make a post that says simply ?agree?."

Ick. That's a rather misguided thing to do, in my opinion. A couple of posters even attached an "agree" post to a post that disagreed with the proposal. That's how unfamiliar some of them were with Usenet.

Nevertheless, after excluding all the "agree" posts, there are still many who favour a moderated group. I'm not sure whether a moderated group is a good or bad idea, but the idea of *replacing* the existing unmoderated group with an unmoderated one continues not to appeal to me, not least because it's obvious that a few regular users of the existing group are opposed.

Reply to
Peter J Ross

In message , TOP writes

If you want a moderated group, then creating a new *.moderated group is a better approach, IMHO, than trying to moderate an existing non-moderated group.

Mileage may vary.

Thomas

Reply to
Thomas Lee

I prefer not to be called that, Pau. :-)

They have enough interest to click on a link and type the word "agree". But they weren't even asked if they wanted to use a moderated group, merely if they wanted it to exist.

I've noticed a couple of them who wrote more than "agree". We can take it as agreed that a lot of people want a moderated SolidWorks group - possibly enough people to make such a group a success.

My only real objection at present is to "moderation in place". I also doubt if you have big enough problems to require a moderated group at all, but that's not so clear to me.

You'll be told that the RFD has to be crossposted to news.groups.proposals. You may or may not be told that you also have the option of crossposting to news.groups too. Whether you crosspost to news.groups or not, there may be some comments appearing in news.groups that will be helpful.

I'm reading all the relevant posts in CCSW with interest.

Reply to
Peter J Ross

I've read a thousand recent posts from a real news server, and I've read the list of recent topics in Google. I persist in not quite understanding what the huge problem is. Compared with some of the comp.* groups I frequent, the STN ratio in CCSW seems pretty good.

They may also want contributions from people who don't use Google.

IME, Google Gropers ask questions and the rest of us answer them. :-)

Reply to
Peter J Ross

You do seem to bang on about that a lot. This seems to be what many other posters object to.

What I don't quite understand is why your posts that are critical of SolidWorks have induced such a panic. If your posts aren't worth reading, why don't people just not read them? Even in Google Groups it isn't hard to scroll past something you don't want to read.

Reply to
Peter J Ross

It seems that CCSW may work like that. I'm not completely convinced by the argument that most posters have to use Google because they're posting from work, but it's an argument I'm willing to take seriously.

This software is mostly used at work, not at home.

Reply to
Peter J Ross

He wants to retain comp.cad.solidworks as the group everyone uses. He's been told, repeatedly, that moderation in place is impractical. It appears that he's suggesting that Google Groups would change moderation status to moderated even if no other News server did that.

That's not how Usenet works.

What he really wants is Google Groups to take some sort of spam countermeasure and to eliminate as much of the abuse of Usenet that originates from there as possible. But Google Groups will never play nicely with the rest of the Usenet community.

Reply to
Adam H. Kerman

Yes, Peter. Solution: Don't use Google Groups. You don't see the problem because you aren't lurking from Google Groups.

There is no solution to the problem of Usenet users who insist on using Google Groups as their main source of Usenet, other than to ignore their complaints.

Reply to
Adam H. Kerman

Irrelevant. It doesn't matter who "started" a Usenet group.

You seem to be ranting about SolidWorks Corp. I'm not at present interested in responding to rants. Your rant may be full of accurate data about SolidWorks, but the merits and demerits of SolidWorks aren't what I want to discuss in news.groups. You might want to consider removing the crosspost next time.

Reply to
Peter J Ross

I've lurked from Google Groups today. All I can say about Google Groups is that it's rather like having red-hot pokers stuck in one's eyes.

You're probably right. But the supporters of this proposal claim that the majority of CCSW posters have no realistic alternative to Google Groups, and I'm unable to prove them wrong. This is quite different from the recent example of posters who demanded a Big-8 group because they were too lazy to switch to a news server that continued to provide the existing alt.* group.

Reply to
Peter J Ross

Mileage is unlikely to vary much when you and I give identical advice, given that agreement between us is almost unprecedented. I can't remember a consensus in news.groups as universal as this one.

Perhaps one of your colleagues on the B8MB (such as one of the co-chairmen, Kathy or Marty) will eventually join this discussion and declare officially whether moderation-in-place is a non-starter idea or not.

Reply to
Peter J Ross

On Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:38:06 +0100, in news.groups, Peter J Ross bloviated:

Topic censor.

Reply to
Topic of Censor

It's clear you don't know how USENet works.

Nutshell, you want something you're not going to get. Try wanting something else.

Reply to
Gary L. Burnore

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