> although auto-moderation will completely eliminate cross-posting,
> it cannot prevent a handful of inspired activists from hijacking
> the group for their own agendas. anyone who is committed to the
> destruction of sci.* groups, can easily continue what they are
> doing today. isn't it very easy to write a "shell-script" which will
> keep posting junk to scit?
This is a good point. However, there is a slight mitigating factor here.
It is likely that such a script will post not just to the scit-moderated
newsgroup, but to a number of other groups as well. In doing so, he would
be coming pretty close to the usenet crime of "spamming", i.e., posting
multiple copies instead of crossposting. System admins tend to frown on
spamming, and threat of privilege revocation can be a deterrent in such
a case.
>
> so, the proposed solution, i am afraid, has a gaping loophole
> which would only result in frustrating any activism left in
> dedicated sciters like Kamala, Ramana, Sitaramayya, Suresh garlu.
You have made a good case for a human moderator, or at least an automoderator
with sufficient smarts to establish relevance of a post. Note that there is
currently an RFD out for soc.culture.punjab.moderated, with a panel of
human moderators. Their RFD claims as a rationale the very same problem
that scit is facing. So, human moderation is at least worth a thought.
>
> with all due respect, i would request everyone to consider
> an alternative solution. this is on the lines of the newsgroups
> rec.sport.cricket and rec.sport.cricket.info. while the former
> is unmoderated, the latter is a moderated version which contains
> the right mix of extracts from the former. i.e. r.s.c.info is
> like our own telugu digest. since telugu digest is already being
> compiled by one dedicated editor, why not form s.c.i.t.extracts
> which is compiled by a group of editors/moderators. isn't it enough
> if we have a group of seven moderators, each taking care of a
> particular day in the week. if more enthusiasts volunteer to
> do the job, we can even have 15 of them. then, its just twice
> a month that a volunteer has to serve. i do not think its
> impossible to get 7, if not 15, volunteers.
If I am not mistaken, rsc.info deals with matters like match scores, stats
etc. which are "archivable" things. scit.extracts would simply repost
selected scit articles. I foresee system administrators balking at
carrying two copies of the same article. Not to mention that any reader can
always read an article in scit before it ever appears in scit.e.
>
> obviously, there can be better solutions than the one i
> suggested. the main idea is to see that these efforts
> do not fall prey to the agendas of a handful of people.
> we should design a real good solution, before the RFD and CFV
> process is initiated.
Yes, it is quite important to think things through on telusa before exposing
our thoughts to the big bad world of usenet.
Bapa Rao