It's possible in alt.*. A little more work would be required of the proponent(s), since alt.* is a do-it-yourself hierarchy.
Anybody who wants to propose a group in alt.config is welcome to. You'll see many of the same friendly, smiling faces there as here, including mine. But you may be advised that the new group would be better placed in comp.* alongside the old group.
Usenet is probably shrinking, but that doesn't mean it's getting worse. WebTV and AOL no longer provide Usenet access, and their disappearance has probably resulted in an improvement.
A minor distinction, and it would seem they have a troll.
From what I remember, all the combatants in rsa deserved each other (wasn't Hann*g*n involved?).
My point was that in terms of process this seems similar. There's a group with what seems to be a mission poster and they want a new group in order to exclude him.
Russ changed the procedure. To set up a moderated alt group, the proponent would send the newgroup message first. Then the moderator would request that the relay be established; someone will check that a proper newgroup message got archived. The Board has nothing to do with it.
Before Russ, the relay was set up first. After that, the newgroup message was issued.
I suppose free.* doesn't allow moderated newsgroups.
I also would not vote in favor of changing this group from unmoderated to moderated. I probably wouldn't vote in favor of moderating any group in place--I remember too well the problems when news.newusers.questions was moderated in place--but this certainly doesn't sound like a case where an extraordinary action should be taken.
Well, that makes 3 board members who have stated they would not vote in favor of moderation in place in this case.
I can't speak for the board a a whole (as I've not asked the question), but for me, turning an existing moderated group into a moderated one is not something I could vote for. For very much the reason Doug presents. I suspect some if not all the other board members feel similary, but they can speak for themselves.
In my view, if there is a moderated group that's wanted, then any RFD should be for a new moderated group.
What's easy to say? What makes you assume that whaver it is hasn't been expereinced by others? Can you even begin to immagine the number of people who've come to news.groups with the "but our group is unique because ..."
Quite honestly I don't know why we are bothering So far the response has seemed more than a little farcical
Sounds like 'the board' are predisposed not to do much at all but do so with the best possible decorum and good taste?
- not that you speak for each other or would yawn in unison...
Actually I don't recall anyone saying we were unique.
What we said clearly was that the consensus here is that the people who are interested in SW have had enough of the people who aren't , disrupting their space. This has been going on for a number of years and has steadily killed off participation. As a last measure to reclaim our space we have sought to introduce moderation of some sort. Fairly simple to comprehend I would have thought.
yours Neil
---------------------------------------------------------------- I've been looking for love in all the wrong places
On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 23:20:35 +1200, "neil" wrote in :
I would vote for the creation of comp.cad.solidworks.moderated. But someone has to take responsibility for the moderation software and the charter of the group.
Then you don't merit an exception to the general rule that we don't change the moderation status of existing unmoderated groups:
Here's the policy, such as it is:
============ quote ===============
formatting link
Newsgroups may be changed:
o From moderated to unmoderated.
This change may be initiated by members of the group or by the B8MB when a moderated group has been abandoned.
o From unmoderated to moderated.
Changing a group from unmoderated to moderated is ?strongly discouraged? - which, in practice, means that the B8MB really doesn't want to do it. A proposal for such a change should not be submitted unless the change has been discussed in the affected group without significant opposition from the group's active participants. The Big-8 Management Board will carefully scrutinize such proposals and request further information from proponents and group participants as required. We strongly recommend that you instead spend your effort on creating a moderated mirror group.
============= end quote ==================
Consensus is a beautiful thing.
"If wishes were horses then beggars would ride."
I understand your view.
Since you are not unique, the odds of the board voting to change the moderation status of c.c.s are nil.
If you want to work for the creation of c.c.s.moderated, the odds of getting it approved are fair.
Marty, What you are discussing here, as you obviously know at this point, is an attempt to rid what was a productive resource of the infection by two posters to this group. Your argument is that the cure of moderation is worse than the disease.
CCS either has the internet version of ghonorea, which is treatable, or AIDS which is a death sentence.
The participants here are just trying to figure out which.
On Fri, 12 Sep 2008 05:48:00 -0700, "John R. Carroll" wrote in :
My policy position is that if (as I was informed by the OP) the consensus is that moderation is desirable, then the only practical option is to created a companion group.
I know all about the pitfalls of moderation from personal experience as well as from reading what others have to say about it:
formatting link
If people can treat the ailment by filtering, they don't need anything from the board.
If they want something from the board, it would take the form of consideration of an RFD to create a new, moderated group.
2) I have not seen a single "disagree" or "No" vote from people using this group, all who have voted have "agreed". If a vote is taken seems the vast majority are in favor of the proposed change.
Seems the change rule was written for us, why would the board not vote under this rule to allow our change request?
Have I missed something?
We are having a lively discussion, however it doesn't mean given the opportunity we wouldn't vote the same. Seems the only real disagreement is how best to achieve what the group wants.
There is a SolidWorks blog that asked solidworks users to come to comp.cad.solidworks and voice an opinion on the issue. I did a quick look through the related threads on the change proposal. I found three "Agree" votes from people (according to their Google profile) haven't posted in comp.cad.solidworks before. Of those three they may be lurkers, wanted to vote anonymously or ye ole stuffing the ballot box. An easy fix would be to limit voting to people who have posted to this group prior to the proposal discussion.
Yes. Moderation-in-place, as it's called, is inherently troublesome because not all news servers will honor the request to change the group's status. The result is usually a partially-moderated group. If the undesirables you're wishing to block use a server that leaves the group unmoderated, they'll still be able to post. And there can be problems for desirable posters using unmoderated servers, too, because some servers with the moderated group will drop their unapproved submissions.
If you can't deal with the problem by killfiling, I suggest you create a moderated companion group.
No, what everyone in news.groups is trying to tell you is that attempting to switch an existing group from unmoderated to moderated simply does not work.
There are hundreds of news servers out there exchanging messages. Many of them will not honor a control message to convert the group from open to moderated.
On servers showing the group as open, users will see all the posts made to the group. Those users can post messages, but their messages will be seen only by some of the other users whose servers incorrectly show the group as open. Propagation will be very poor for those users, because all of the servers that do show the group as moderated will simply drop those posts and not send them on to other servers.
On servers showing the group as moderated, users will be able to read and post as usual but their messages will go through the moderation process so they will experience variable delays before their messages show up on their servers. They will not see the on-topic messages posted by people using servers that still show the group as open.
Some of the messages posted to servers with the group unmoderated will be grabbed by servers show> easy for you to say - you don't have to suffer this crap for years.
News.groups and comp.ai have been subject to attack off and on for the last decade by a poster angered because comp.ai was moderated in place. When he runs an attack using a Hipclone bot, we are flooded with tens of thousands of offtopic nonsense messages, making the groups next to unusable for anyone who doesn't have a good newsreader (NOT Google, which is a web archive and not a decent newsreader) and/or is on a poorly managed server that doesn't have good filters in place. We know very well what it is like to suffer the crap for years, but moderation in place is not the best answer.
The best answer is probably education: teach the regulars in comp.cad.solidworks to use a good newsreader with good killfile or scoring capability, so that they don't see the problem posts and can't be tempted to "feed the troll" by responding to them. The second best answer may be a moderated companion group. The troll can still post in the existing group while those of you who want useful discussion move to the companion group. The archives of ccs on Google will continue to exist for those who want to look for old answers, while the moderated companion provides a home for current discussion.
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