Not a prayer.

Frank Matthews

Yves Bellefeuille wrote:
    > There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    > regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?
    >
    > I don't have a fixed opinion or any specific suggestion, but I'd like to
    > know what others think. Feel free to reply by E-mail, if you prefer.
    >
    > (For those who don't know, "moderation" means that posts would have to
    > be accepted by a "moderator" before they appear. The idea is that the
    > moderator or moderators wouldn't accept spam, trolls, and so on. Many
    > formerly unmoderated groups have decided to become moderated, as spam
    > and trolls gets worse.)
    >
    > Yves
    >

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003 15:11:29 -0400, [email protected] (Yves Bellefeuille)
wrote:

    >There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    >regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?

My understanding is that an unmoderated group isn't usually converted
to a moderated group. What would happen is that there would be a RFD
(or whatever it's called) for a new, moderated group, say
rec.travel.europe.moderated.

Sometimes it's necessary to create a new, moderated group when the
current group goes utterly berserk. Case in point, I used to follow
rec.music.beatles until some years ago when it became completely
flooded with trolls, flames, and general ranting and raving. There
were over 1000 posts per day with extremely poor signal to noise ratio
making it almost impossible to keep up, so rec.music.beatles.moderated
was started.

I don't think rec.travel.europe has reached that point. The trollish
topics usually are obvious from their headers. A well-tuned killfile
takes care of much of the rest.

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, wrote:

    > This suggestion crops up every so often. I go with the general
    > conclusion reached in the past, that it would be completely unworkable
    > on a group that gets so many legitimate posts. All that would be likely
    > to happen is that a parallel unmoderated group would be set up and the
    > majority of posters would migrate there.

Thanks for mentioning this; I made a mistake in my previous post.

The people in charge of these things have declared a moratorium on
"moderating in place", i.e. changing an existing unmoderated group into
a moderated group. Instead, they suggest creating a *companion*
moderated group.

In this case, rec.travel.europe would continue as an unmoderated group,
and a new moderated group called rec.travel.europe.moderated (for
example) would be created.

People could continue to post in the unmoderated group rec.travel.europe
and nobody would be forced to post in rec.travel.europe.moderated;
however, if the new moderated group is found to be useful, people might
decide to "migrate" there.

Sorry for my mistake. Please assume that I was asking whether a
*companion* moderated group would be a good idea.

Yves

--
Yves Bellefeuille , Ottawa, Canada
Francais / English / Esperanto
Esperanto FAQ: http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq.html
Rec.travel.europe FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/travel/europe/faq

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003 12:33:30 -0700, "PTRAVEL" wrote:

    >Right now, all news groups, not just r.t.e. are inundated with trollage and
    >OT posts. This reflects the current world situation. When things calm down
    >(and I hope they do), I'm sure r.t.e. will return to its usual fare, i.e.
    >"Is Europe safe?,""Are the French rude?,""Are American tourists
    >obnoxious?,""Can I drink the water in Italy?,""Are all Gypsies
    >pickpockets?," etc.

Oi! You forgot the one about ATMs versus travellers cheques/checks!!!
    >I think we can do quite well without a moderated group.

Quite so - my (albeit limited) experience of moderated message boards
is that when they become dull, a few brave souls try to liven them up.
The "liveners" break the rules, are labelled trolls and then banned -
then others leave in disgust and the boards become the boring haunt of
an in-crowd. Same old same-old.

Moderators face an impossible task - they're damned if they do and
damned if they don't.

Unmoderated boards have their ups and downs, but eventually reach an
even keel again.

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003 21:36:24 +0100, "The Juggernaut Jockey"
wrote:

    >"Yves Bellefeuille" wrote
    >> Do regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?
    >It cannot be moderated. This is Usenet.
Many usenet groups are moderated.

************* DAVE HATUNEN ([email protected]) *************
* Tucson Arizona, out where the cacti grow *
* My typos & mispellings are intentional copyright traps *

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003 15:11:29 -0400, Yves Bellefeuille wrote:
    > There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    > regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?

Having been on a NG that went from unmoderated to moderated, I have to say
its a really, really BAD idea.

--
-BB-
To reply to me, drop the attitude (from my e-mail address, at least)

"Yves Bellefeuille" wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
    > On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, wrote:
    > People could continue to post in the unmoderated group rec.travel.europe
    > and nobody would be forced to post in rec.travel.europe.moderated;
    > however, if the new moderated group is found to be useful, people might
    > decide to "migrate" there.
Except that people would cross post, resulting in the people that subscribed
to both having the job of sifting through the same posts twice.

Adrian

Yves Bellefeuillewrote:
    >> There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    >> regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?

I think a moderated group would obviously be an improvement, but I also
think there are enough people here who see nothing wrong with the present
arrangements that you'll never get enough support to make it happen.

Charles Hawtrey:
    > My understanding is that an unmoderated group isn't usually converted
    > to a moderated group. What would happen is that there would be a RFD
    > (or whatever it's called) for a new, moderated group, say
    > rec.travel.europe.moderated.

That has been the more common procedure among newsgroups I'm acquainted
with. There is nothing wrong in principle with an RFD to convert an
existing newsgroup, but I think it's more likely to run into opposition.

    > I don't think rec.travel.europe has reached that point. The trollish
    > topics usually are obvious from their headers. A well-tuned killfile
    > takes care of much of the rest.

To me this summary says that the point where moderation is desirable
*has* been reached. Of course, a sufficient number of moderators would
be needed, and some sort of statement of moderation policy.
--
Mark Brader "'A matter of opinion'[?] I have to say you are
Toronto right. There['s] your opinion, which is wrong,
[email protected] and mine, which is right." -- Gene Ward Smith

My text in this article is in the public domain.

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003 15:11:29 -0400, [email protected] (Yves Bellefeuille)
wrote:

    >There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    >regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?

No way. I enjoy reading Evelyn, Marie and Magda too much.

Gordon

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003, "Adrian Rothery"
wrote:

    > Except that people would cross post, resulting in the people that subscribed
    > to both having the job of sifting through the same posts twice.

It would be simple to prohibit cross-posts in the moderated group, if
that's what people want. That's the whole point of moderation, after
all. ;-)

Yves

--
Yves Bellefeuille , Ottawa, Canada
Francais / English / Esperanto
Esperanto FAQ: http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq.html
Rec.travel.europe FAQ: http://www.faqs.org/faqs/travel/europe/faq

On Sun, 13 Apr 2003 15:11:29 -0400, [email protected] (Yves Bellefeuille)
wrote:

    >There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    >regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?
    >I don't have a fixed opinion or any specific suggestion, but I'd like to
    >know what others think. Feel free to reply by E-mail, if you prefer.
    >(For those who don't know, "moderation" means that posts would have to
    >be accepted by a "moderator" before they appear. The idea is that the
    >moderator or moderators wouldn't accept spam, trolls, and so on. Many
    >formerly unmoderated groups have decided to become moderated, as spam
    >and trolls gets worse.)
    >Yves


How would you propose having the group "converted" to one that was
moderated?

You of course realize the existing group would continue, as long as
anyone chose to post to it!

A different new _moderated group_ would have to be established and
then propagated and carried by news facilities across the internet.

In article ,
[email protected] wrote:

    > On Sun, 13 Apr 2003 15:11:29 -0400, [email protected] (Yves Bellefeuille)
    > wrote:
    >
    > >There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    > >regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?
    > >
    > >I don't have a fixed opinion or any specific suggestion, but I'd like to
    > >know what others think. Feel free to reply by E-mail, if you prefer.
    > >
    > >(For those who don't know, "moderation" means that posts would have to
    > >be accepted by a "moderator" before they appear. The idea is that the
    > >moderator or moderators wouldn't accept spam, trolls, and so on. Many
    > >formerly unmoderated groups have decided to become moderated, as spam
    > >and trolls gets worse.)
    > >
    > >Yves
    >
    >
    > How would you propose having the group "converted" to one that was
    > moderated?

There is an established methodology that most propagating news servers
honor. It's a vote.

jay
Sun, Apr 13, 2003
mailto:[email protected]


    >
    > You of course realize the existing group would continue, as long as
    > anyone chose to post to it!
    >
    > A different new _moderated group_ would have to be established and
    > then propagated and carried by news facilities across the internet.
    >

--

Legend insists that as he finished his abject...
Galileo muttered under his breath: "Nevertheless, it does move."

In article ,
Mark Brader wrote:
    > [...] There is nothing wrong in principle with an RFD to convert an
    >existing newsgroup, but I think it's more likely to run into opposition.

Last November (I think that's when it was) the new moderators of
news.announce.newgroups declared a moratorium on converting existing
groups to moderated status. Partly it was because of social issues, as
you mention, but I think it was mainly because of technical reasons.

Many news servers apparently don't honor control messages automatically
any more, so sending out a control message to convert a group to moderated
status leaves a lot of servers with the group set as "unmoderated." This
is a real pain in the neck, because postings made from "unmoderated"
servers never reach any of the "moderated" servers, although postings from
"moderated" servers do reach the "moderated" ones.

If you create a brand-new moderated group and your server doesn't pick it
up, the problem is much more obvious, so it's easier to fix.

--
Jon Bell Presbyterian College
Dept. of Physics and Computer Science Clinton, South Carolina USA

Yves Bellefeuille wrote:
    >
    > There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    > regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?

How would YOU know? You haven't even BEEN here! As far as I can tell,
"regular" posters appear to have been replying to the trolls at a great
rate, so one assumes their answer is "no". BTW, some of the most
passionate arguments appear to involve alleged attempts to stifle "free
speech" in America, insofar as political dissent is concerned. (If you
want to avoid being flamed as severely as you have been on past
occasions, I suggest you propose this at a later date, when feelings are
not running quite so high on issues of "censorship"!)

Miguel Cruz wrote:
    >
    > Yves Bellefeuille wrote:
    > > There's been a lot of spam and trolls in rec.travel.europe lately. Do
    > > regular posters feel that the time has come to moderate the group?
    >
    > I think it would put too much of a damper on legitimate discussion -
    > throwing out the baby with the bathwater, as it were. Moderated newsgroups
    > are very slow.
    >
    > Additionally I have limited faith that a collection of suitably impartial
    > moderators could be located.

Oh, as on past occasions, I'm sure Yves is more than ready to
volunteer! (He's done his best on many occasions to dictate what should
be posted here.) Remember Jack, whom he harrassed to the point of
deliberately lying to get his ISP to shut him down? We have enough
American fascists here at the moment, without adding a Canadian one!