Moving to new form of usenet ideas?

[Charlie Edmondson]

Moderated groups tend to be dull or totally dead. The cure is worse
than the disease.

John

Hi John,
Depends on the group. I haunt a moderated group that is supposed to be
discussing Babylon 5 that is pretty active, but it 'strays' from the
core topic a bit... ;-)

Charlie

 

[John Fields]

Well sure. We all make them occasionally. That's why I don't comment
unless its repeated.

^^^
??? LOL!!!
---

But you have no idea how disconcerting it can to

^
be
---

be reading a comment critically when you come across a boo boo like
that. At the very least it destroys the train of thought.And technical

^
Space or 2

 

[John Fields]

Now, now, boys and girls. We can all waste time demonstrating our
"cooking" skills or we can all waste our time demonstrating the
epistemological foundations of science and truth in universal terms.

 

[John Fields]

Part of your service to the country no doubt.


A lot of us have been there. That doesn't qualify us as idiots.
Fortunately relatively few were disabled. I was just trying to
understand how you think that bears on issues raised here.

---
It doesn't bear on any issues raised here. He uses it as his .sig,
and the only time he elaborates on it is when someone asks him about
what's up with that.

you seem to take it as a personal affrontery; what's up with _that_?

 

[John Fields]

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

SAT 1520. How did you do?

John

I hover around 149.

If that's too deep for you to comprehend, well....

 

[Herbert John \Jackie\ Gleason]

Hoist with his own petard? Hard to make a serious point when people
are laughing.

~v~~

You and Larking both are goddamned idiots.

 

[Herbert John \Jackie\ Gleason]

I don't consider it an issue of raw smarts but of composition skills.

~v~~

Whereas my mistake had nothing to do with either.

 

[ChairmanOfTheBored]

^^^
??? LOL!!!

Started sentence with the word "And" as well.

Not saying that I haven't been guilty of the same thing, merely that it
is not grammatically correct. (GC)

 

[Timothy Golden BandTechnology.com]

Sorry for all the cross posting but I'm interesting in getting a serious
discussion about how usenet has become lately.

Many people are moving away from usenet because of all the spam and cooks
that have been showing up. The rate of spammer seem to be growing
exponentially(ok, not really but it feels like it).

I think maybe its time to do something about it. What I'd like to see happen
is an "upgrade" to usenet. I do not like th forum based communiations that
has sprung up lately but since it solves many of usenet's shortcommings I
believe that will will take over.

If many people feel the same way then maybe we can move on to something
better and increase the efficiency and productivity that usenet was meant
for.

Some ideas I have are:

1. Cook repellent - Some method to prevent cooks from interrupting normal
flow. Either having a voting scheme or some type of identifying means to
either completely remove them or at least make it easier to avoid them.

2. Spam repellent - Similar to Cooks.

3. Meta data - Have the ability to directly include graphics and things like
TeX into messages. For those that do not want to view it they can disable it
or have some other means to see it.

4. Specific tools for groups - Different groups have different needs for
communication. Mathematics groups need to efficiently communicate
mathematical formulas while electronics need to communicate schematics.

5. Moderation - Potentially give regular users of the group the ability to
"quasi-moderate" or in general just have a wide range of options to have
more control over groups(But not to much).

6. Non-anomality or some way to slow down spammers. Maybe better routing
data and such.

7. Potentially "Backwards compatible" with usenet - have the ability to surf
usenet with the same client to help make a smoother transition.
----

In any case this is extremely preliminary and just some thoughts. It seems
that usenet has started to go down the drain. Hopefully there are those out
there that are interested in keeping it alive. I'm thinking something very
similar to usenet but with just more "features".

If enough people are interested in doing this then maybe we can put
something together. All ideas and suggestions are welcome.

Thanks,
Jon

Hi Jon.
I posted some ideas on a filtering mechanism on
sci.physics.foundations back awhile when they started it.
I guess I'll just repeat that idea here tersely. I do not like
moderated groups and avoid posting to them. I do believe that the
uncensored form of usenet is extremely valuable and at some level this
must include spammers or something near enough to them to be called
spam by most. For instance the 'arrow of time' threads on sci.physics
are rarely replied to by the poster and the poster changes names
regularly but posts the same content with little if any variation.
However these posts do have some substantial content and so I would
ask where they fit on the spam continuum?

My own experience has been that there are camps of like-minded people.
Some prefer the solidity of established theory whereas others prefer
to be on the bleeding edge. Here again is a crackpot continuum and I
myself do not care for the narrow interpretation that the strict
bookwormy good dogs follow.

So the posters who I would affiliate with can form a trusted group
just for me. For instance two of my favorite posters are galathaea and
Jan Pantelje. I have bookmarks to their posts via google search. If
each of us could choose our own trusted group of authors (and readers)
then we would have filtration without censorship.

As you mention compatibility an instance of a negative form of
filtration might include galathaea for instance posting a 'don't
bother' message to a thread which she feels is not valuable. Now if I
can filter out messages that galathaea rejects then I have saved
myself some time. Furthermore if I don't find anything good to read I
can open up my filtration ultimately to fully uncensored. Hence
voluntary censorship can be implemented on uncensored media.

Now I'll give you an instance of who I would not want to censor me:
Eric Gisse, Sam Wormeley, and Uncle Al. I would not like them to have
any censorship priveledge over what I read and so I pose that as the
most fundamental requirement of an improvement criteria. Rejection of
material is par for the course for humans and so the censorship needs
to be optional.

Positive qualities may be implemented as well so if Jan thinks a
thread or individual post is decent he could post a reply such as
'excellent thread' or 'excellent post' and hence a marking of threads
to read for those who don't have so much time but know that they like
Jan's sensibilities would be possible. Furthermore such filtration
could even be implemented accross group boundaries though I suppose
this is more of a google thing. Ultimately we need an open version of
google that is implementable by providers if a deep history is to be
maintained.

I have to admit that my knowledge of the usenet protocol is limited
and I could stand to learn a bit more about the distribution model,
but these ideas are loose enough to work I think though the
implementation of filtration via messaging would require a standard.
Whether it was implemented as message content or merely as a header
field is somewhat irrelevant to the function. If enough raters existed
a thread could be polluted with ratings and relatively lacking in
content so this is an argument for placing filtration information into
a header field especially for painless backwards compatibility.

-Tim

 

[Default User]

They got shot with spam?

Ewww, Spam bullets. Was that an episode of Mythbusters?





Brian

 

[Lester Zick]

---
It doesn't bear on any issues raised here. He uses it as his .sig,
and the only time he elaborates on it is when someone asks him about
what's up with that.

you seem to take it as a personal affrontery; what's up with _that_?

Usually I only take effrontery with bad spelling. But in your case
I'll make an acception.

~v~~

 

[Lester Zick]

Or you can't do much of anything.

Whereas you prefer to waste your time on what exactly?

~v~~

 

[Lester Zick]

Whereas my mistake had nothing to do with either.

But it did with editing which you probably didn't do.

~v~~

 

[Lester Zick]

I hover around 149.

If that's too deep for you to comprehend, well....

Room temperature IQ, huh.

~v~~

 

[Lester Zick]

^^^
??? LOL!!!
???

^
be

Granted. Missing my usual quota of vodka when I replied.

^
Space or 2
???

~v~~

 

[Lester Zick]

Started sentence with the word "And" as well.

"And" is an independent clause conjunction.

Not saying that I haven't been guilty of the same thing, merely that it
is not grammatically correct. (GC)

Don't know where you learned grammar. In fact I can hardly remember
where I learned grammar. But independent clause conjunctions can start
sentences. And as far as I'm concerned so can dependent clause
conjunctions under appropriate circumstances. The only thing which
can't start sentences are people who only think they know what they're
talking about.

~v~~

 

[Lester Zick]

You and Larking both are goddamned idiots.

Adm. Rickover said the same about me. Wasn't aware he knew Larking.
Obviously he never knew you.

~v~~

 

[Lester Zick]

Hi John,
Depends on the group. I haunt a moderated group that is supposed to be
discussing Babylon 5 that is pretty active, but it 'strays' from the
core topic a bit... ;-)

You're actually in a moderated group discussing Babylon 5 and you're
surprized it strays a little? Jesus, get a fucking life for a change.

~v~~

 

[Lester Zick]

Mainly because it isn't I expect but you can't tell the difference.

~v~~