A Product Design Invitation

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Guy,

Interesting and admirable intentions, but unfortunately this newsgroup is not listed on my newsserver. It is available on google groups,

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but google groups has become too difficult to use.

Perhaps this may contribute to the inactivity.

Mike Monett

Reply to
Mike Monett
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I recently took over as the moderator of the misc.business.product-dev newsgroup. It is my intention to make it into a good resource for all aspects of product development.

I have set up moderation software and have gotten the group off to a slow start by inviting my buddies over on comp.arch.embedded to participate. I am now ready to invite more users.

Here is how the moderation works:

Crossposts to one other non-moderated newsgroup are allowed and welcome. That way you can simply keep posting here as you usually do except for crossposting to sci.electronics.design,misc.business.product-dev instead of just posting to ,sci.electronics.design.

I will approve your first post (expect a delay until the next time I log in as moderator - I do this several times per day) and will add most posters to the whitelist so that all future posts from them are autoapproved without delay.

All posts will be approved unless they are obviously spam, off-topic, or trolling. If you read the read the thread in m.b.p-d, you will only see posts that are not trolling, flaming, political/religious posts, etc. I will *not* censor posts for content as long as they have at least a marginal connection with product development.

Right now misc.business.product-dev is pretty much a dead group, but I am hoping that I can revive it. I can't do it alone, so I am asking for your help.

Reply to
Guy Macon

Since s.e.d. is unmoderated, why is there a moderator's comment in my post? That implies that Guy can, in fact, edit my posts. Which clearly sucks.

There's a reason that most moderated groups are wastelands.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Ah, a Guy-Macon-censored version of s.e.d.

John

======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT: If the need is there, someone is going to meet it... :)

Reply to
John Larkin

Remember the character in "Mein Kampf" who got picked on when he was a kid and grew up needing recognition and trying to tell everybody what to do?

*He's* that guy! ;)

Bob

Reply to
Bob Stephens

I'm thinking that Guy's original post had header fields that made my newsreader (Agent) think that the post was in a moderated group, so it sent an email to the self-appointed-moderator/little-old-lady, instead to my news-server. Or something like that.

So if I just ignore Guy from now on (as lots of other people in both groups will likely do) everything should be OK.

I hope he'll be happy in his snug new newsgroup.

I still don't understand the politics of moderation. Can somebody come along and decide to moderate s.e.d.?

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Here is a quote from the "Moderated Newsgroup FAQ":

An attempt to cross-post a message to more than one moderated group will go to the moderation address for one group, in most cases, the moderated group that appears first on the Newsgroups: line, and will be handled further as that moderator chooses.

Thus, what Guy is suggesting allows him to edit or prohibit your messages at his whim. If you are going to reply to a message that has his new newsgroup as a target, you need to edit it out, like I've done.

*Never cross post to his newsgroup.* At best, it's an unnecessary delay; at worst, it's a childish scheme for getting back at some of this enemies.
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Regards,
  Bob Monsen
Reply to
Bob Monsen

OK, that explains how he intercepted my post to s.e.d.

How very lame.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

Because he xposted his announcement here (sed) and to his shiny new wastelanH^H^Hmoderated group. Your newsreader, like most, assumed by default that you wanted your reply xposted too.

Mark L. Fergerson

Reply to
Mark Fergerson
[...]

No. You have to change the charter for the newsgroup and users have to vote. Someone has to commit to be the moderator, but that responsibility can be handed off to others. The necessary changes are handled by others somewhere in the internet hierarchy.

We had a terrible problem in comp.lang.asm.x86 with what may have been a small group of university students masquerading as an individual. It was interesting at first, but he (it?) ended up causing havoc for years until everyone was completely fed up.

When the vote was taken to change to a moderated newsgroup, my name was first on the list. The resolution passed easily. I think Chuck Crayne is the current moderator.

Mike Monett

Reply to
Mike Monett

Just for info, here's the RFD that made clax moderated:

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Mike Monett

Reply to
Mike Monett

I don't know why he doesn't just admit what he's trying to do, and start a blog. ;-)

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Cheers!
Rich
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Reply to
Rich The Newsgroup Wacko

Oh, that's because you crossposted a disapproved comment to his personal group, which is a no-no.

Yeah, if you want to moderate a discussion, why go to the bother of making up a USENET newsgroup - just start a mailing list, or a yahoo group or BLOG or something.

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Cheers!
Rich
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Reply to
Rich The Newsgroup Wacko

But there are also no limits on flaming! ;-P

Maybe you could call that "moderation by democracy." :-)

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Cheers!
Rich
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Reply to
Rich The Newsgroup Wacko

I hope not!

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Terry Pinnell
Hobbyist, West Sussex, UK
Reply to
Terry Pinnell

You crosspost to a moderated newsgroup, you take your chances.

That being said, it is my moderation policy to never, ever edit a post to a newsgroup I moderate, with "edit" meaning "change something above the moderator's comment line. I may reject the post, of course.

I can, but I won't, and if the possibility of a clearly marked moderator's comment offends you you are free to stay out of moderated newsgroups.

Perhaps. It all depends on who the moderator is and how well he runs his newsgroup. I don't plan on giving anyone any real reason to complain, because a moderated newsgroup is useless without users and so I am motivated to make my target user (someone who wishes to discuss product development and not George Bush) happy.

Most moderated groups aren't controlled by me.

Wrong, which is surprising; I would have expected a comment that was technically accurate. I am not a "self-appointed-moderator." I am an official big-8 newsgroup moderator of a newsgroup that passed an RFD/CFV vote for creation. You can learn more at [

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].

That alone will not be effective. You can however, accomplish your goal by either killfiling everyone who likes talking about product development in a moderated newsgroup, or by simply killfiling by the content of the newsgroups line. If you need technical assistance setting up a killfile, please let me know.

Thanks! We all like happy people in snug newsgroups...

I am glad that you asked that question. The current big-8 newsgroup policy is to not allow any proposal to moderate an unmoderated newsgroup to go to a vote. This is done not to make you happy but for technical reasons; there is a huge synchronization problem if some newsservers don't change the status, and there are too many poorly-managed newsservers to expect them all to update.

If someone has the required 100 more YES than NO votes and twice as many YES as NO votes (see URL above), they can create a new group called sci.electronics.design.moderated and try to attract users, but the unmoderated sci.electronics.design will still exist.

======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT: This is not an actual moderator's comment but is instead a clever simulation of one. Sci.electronics.design is unmoderated.

Reply to
Guy Macon

You are incorrect. There is no mechanism for changing the charter of an umoderated newsgroup and you can't moderate sci.electronics.design no matter how many votes you have. (Your example newsgroup was moderated in place before the policy change) See post below for details.

; :From: NAN Moderation Team :Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups :Subject: ANNOUNCEMENT: Moratorium on moderating in place :Followup-To: news.groups :Message-ID: :Approved: snipped-for-privacy@isc.org :Archive-Name: other.articles/moderation-in-place :Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 06:37:10 UTC : :Due to the problems and controversy resulting from moderating a :newsgroup "in place" (i.e. changing the status of an existing :newsgroup from unmoderated to moderated), RFDs to perform this :change of status will no longer be accepted. : :Officially, this is a moratorium, meaning that the practice may be :reinstated at a later date. The value of such proposals will be :reexamined, after other important issues affecting moderated groups :have been settled. Among these issues are the removal of dead :groups, and the transfer of moderatorship when a moderator becomes :inactive. : :These and other issues related to moderation will be discussed in :more detail, including input from interested parties, upon the :transfer of infrastructure from that developed by David "Tale" :Lawrence to the new system planned by the new news.announce.newgroups :moderation team. : :Proposals for *new* moderated groups will be unaffected by this :moratorium. The Big-8 Guidelines will be updated to reflect this :change. : :Todd McComb for NAN Team :

(Also see [

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]. -Guy)

Reply to
Guy Macon

What part of "non-moderated" are you having trouble understanding? The FAQ section talks about "more than one moderated group", while my post says "one other non-moderated newsgroup." These kids today with their short attention spans...

Yup. And some folks (the ones who have left sci.electronics.design because of the high volume of low-value off-topic posts) like it that way. You obviously don't, so you should feel free to not post to any moderated newsgroups and you should feel free to advise those who like the low-value off-topic posts to do likewise.

Nope. The people who want to talk about product design get whitelisted and can post without any delay.

Reply to
Guy Macon

Guy Macon has enemies?

Reply to
Richard Henry

Really? Name three.

Better yet, will three of Guy's fans raise ther hands (err, post in agreement)?

Reply to
Richard Henry

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