PLEASE post only sources to alt.sources

[News Administrator @ Wolves]

In <1991Mar08.144014.28853 at convex.com>
tchrist at convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
>Perhaps the other rude posters to alt.sources of discussions, questions,
>et cetera ad nauseum, could be so considerate as John was and cancel
>their inappropriate postings?
>
>Perhaps I should post my rn macro that send autowhines at these folks
>so the whole net could send them ever-so-gentle reminders that they
>did the wrong thing.

I haden't thought of making the thing an RN macro to do it, but for several
weeks I have had one of the flunkies here going through alt.sources and send
the offenders mail like this:

>----------------------------------------------------
>Begin standard complaint text.
>
>You posted the above quoted article to the newsgroup alt.sources.
>
>It obviously is not a piece of source code.
>
>Please post requests to alt.sources.wanted
>
>Please post comments and discussion to alt.sources.d
>
>When following up articles, please correct the newsgroups line if
>possible.
>
>
>Angry replies to this message will be ignored.
>
>			The News Administrator
>			@ wolves

I don't see it as being to abrupt or overly impolite.  Just short and
to the point.

The flunky, occasionally, sends a complaint form to something that I would not
really consider complaining about.  For example, patches and code with some
discussion about alternatives might go unchallenged, and (for better or worse)
something like the jargon file can get by - even if Eric SHOULD have sent it
to Brian Kantor for posting on comp.doc.

Most of the replies that do come in response to these little reminders are
fairly polite and apologetic for the error and appreciating the pointers about
where things should go and such.  Occasionally, there are some high-strung
recipients who get bent out of shape and complain to root about the
"misbehaviour" of my news admin.

There is even one net.author.from.some.trade.rag who seems to think that he
is exempt from being spoken to for being a net.twit - and he keeps repeating
the transgressions even though he makes noises elsewhere about being a good
net user and apprentice guru.  This person uses the ELM mailer bounce command
to send the whole thing back to the postmaster here and thinks he's cute.

My point to this is that here in the alt.sources area we need to do our own
educating to keep the groups reasonable.  Unlike the main Usenet, alt does
not have the reasonable cohesiveness of the major site sysadmins and their
kindred to assure compliance.

alt.sources does not need a moderator, nor even the self-moderation of
alt.hackers (despite the stupidity of the rutgers auto-approving gateway).
It does need the support of every reader to complain to the violators,
especially those who continue to do so after being warned at least once.
-- 
Usenet Net News Administrator @ The Wolves Den
news%wolves at cs.duke.edu    news%wolves at mcnc.org    ...duke!wolves!news
There is a real person who watches this account as their assigned task!