Rich $alz is still alive ??!!!??!!

[Flint Pellett]

In article <1990Nov28.020040.5518 at looking.on.ca> brad at looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
[...]
>Source and binary group moderating is probably one of the toughest jobs.
>The postings are large and complex and take time to look at.  You have to
>deal with duplicates and similar programs, the risk of virus and a pile of
>other stuff.
>
>When it comes to source and binary moderating, it may be the case that you
>start to get what you pay for.  The people doing it should get some
>compensation.  I know Rich is against this, but sometimes I think it may be
>the only way.   If there are 30,000 readers for a source group, then a
>pittance of few dollars/year would hire a good moderator.  I doubt it will
>happen, though.

I don't have any problems with the job Rich is doing-- personally, I think
it's quite a lot to expect of any volunteer, and I don't see that anyone
who isn't willing to volunteer themselves should be complaining about how
much he has time to do.

On the other side though, it seems to me that it would be reasonable to
support a full-time position, (there may not be enough work to require a
full-timer, but I bet if the position were created the work load would
grow until there was more than enough to keep him/her busy) and that there
are several ways that it could be legitimately funded.  Some ideas for
whoever administers stuff like this to kick around:

1.  Have uunet hire this person, and pay their salary from a special
surcharge to organizations that sign up to receive this group.  If I
knew I was going to get even 2-3 decent programs a year, I'd be happy
to have my company kick in an extra $100 a year- the question is, are
there 300 to 500+ companies total who will? 

2.  If administering a surcharge is a problem, another distribution
channel might be to create a special 900 number that you could call to
get this group from, and that would be the only way it was
distributed: then let the phone company do the collecting. 
(Yes, there are problems here since once it is on the net people
will just hop over a node and ftp it.)

3.  There has been talk about shareware authors getting a free
distribution channel through groups like this.  Why not expect them to
kick in?  For example, if I want uunet to distribute my program that I
ask to get a $20 registration for, why shouldn't I expect to pay uunet
$100 to get them to moderate it?  As an author, I guess I'd have to
figure that if it isn't good enough to get even 5 registrations back
from so I can break even, then it shouldn't be sent out anyway. 
Distribute 100 shareware programs a year this way and you'll have $10K
toward someone's salary.  (You should moderate freeware programs for
free though, so that you still have a way for people to give away
software.)  How many programs go out every year?  (A moderator fee
might also serve as incentive to people to bundle their stuff properly
instead of distributing 20 teensy tiny little things individually.) 

I don't know that much about how uunet operates though, so maybe this
idea is all dreaming-- it just seems like uunet is a ready-made place
to have something like this run from, and the only question is whether
there is enough volume to support it.
-- 
Flint Pellett, Global Information Systems Technology, Inc.
1800 Woodfield Drive, Savoy, IL  61874     (217) 352-1165
uunet!gistdev!flint or flint at gistdev.gist.com