[11753] in APO-L
Re: newsgroups and APO
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Deborah Nina Cherry)
Mon Mar 27 11:55:31 1995
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 11:52:44 -0500
Reply-To: Deborah Nina Cherry <dc30+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
From: Deborah Nina Cherry <dc30+@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
To: Multiple recipients of list APO-L <APO-L%PURCCVM.BITNET@mitvma.mit.edu>
In-Reply-To: <Added.0jQwk6C00Udb9jpE4c@andrew.cmu.edu>
One problem I have seen with gateway-ed listerservs/newsgroups (where
the posts on each medium are routed to the other) is when some bozo
spams a bunch of (or all) newsgroups that includes the gateway-ed one.
The spam message then appears in the mail box of list subscribers. This
wouldn't be so bad by itself, but what usually happens then is all the
posts complaining/commenting/flaming about the spam ends up on all the
affected newsgroups, including the gateway-ed newsgroup, and hence
floods the mailboxes of the listserv subscribers as well. People are
then forced to unsubscribe to the listserv because of a flood of
completely unrelated mail. (I've seen it happen on a really useful list
for nonprofits...)
This may also be a problem if a flamewar erupts on fraternities in
general that includes the gateway-ed newsgroup. People may start baiting
for flamewars just because we are a greek-letter organization... I don't
know how much this occurs on the current fraternity newsgroups, but
"baiting" seems to have become common on some other groups-
rec.pets.cats was talking about going moderated because of all the
debates that started by people talking about doing sick things to cats...
If we went the route of a gateway-ed newsgroup/listserv, I think it
might be a good idea to have some kind of cursory moderation of what
goes to the listerserv, otherwise we may end up loosing more people who
can't take the junk mail than people we gain. The problem then is that
most people don't have the time to fulfill this function....
Fortunately, I get the best of both worlds here, the listerserv mail is
sent to a local bboard, so it doesn't fill my mailbox...
Yours in LFS,
Debbie Cherry
Life Member, Kappa Chapter
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA
INTERNET or BITNET: dc30@andrew.cmu.edu
