Group Moderation? (was: Re: Rich $alz is still alive ??!!!??!!)

[David E. Brooks Jr]

Perhaps there needs to be a different mechanisim for moderating high volume
source newsgroups such as comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.misc.  I
suppose there are any number of options, such as the Professional Moderator
mentioned by Brad Templeton (brad at looking.on.ca) in an earlier message, but 
perhaps the best solution I can think of is multiple moderators.  Implementing 
such an idea does pose some problems, but all-in-all, they don't seem to be
difficult to overcome.

Hypothetically, it would work like this:

A central mail address would accept a submission using a pre-specified
protocol (which could be as simple as naming the subject line in a
certain format) and assign it to one of the group of moderators for the
newsgroup once all parts are received.  A copy would be kept at the
submission server's site to be posted when approved, in order to keep
down the network traffic.

How to assign a submission to a moderator could vary, but should include
feedback from the individual moderators in some way.  This way, if one
of the moderators becomes overworked, goes on vacation, et cetera, sub-
missions would go to other moderators (and supposedly insuring a steady
flow of messages to the network).  Also, the content of the submission 
could be used to determine which moderator received it (e.g., a moderator
for BSD-related sources, one for SYSV sources, et cetera).

Also, the submission server would need to be able to handle detecting
various kinds of errors, such as incomplete submissions, and act accordingly.

Communicating between the moderator and the submittor would be direct,
with the submittor getting the moderator's address as a reply from the
submission server.  Of course, it would be a breach of protocol to send
a submission directly to an individual moderator.

When a moderator approves a submission for posting, either the changed
version of the submission would be resent to the server (with appropriate
validity checking) or a message indicating that the current copy should
be posted is sent.

Naturally, there would have to be a cetain amount of communication between
moderators in order to maintain a certain level of quality and 
professionalisim for the newsgroup.

Comments, anyone?


-- 
David E. Brooks Jr                      UUCP :  ...{ddsw1,ukma}!corpane!brooks
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