[ng_abuse] Message-ID: <000301c3e9da$1e21f4b0$b361832c@compaq1246>

To: <>
Subject: [ng_abuse] Moderated UK newsgroups....
From: "Harry Bloomfield" <>
Date: Mon, 2 Feb 2004 22:15:50 -0000

Hi folks,

Out of curiosity, I have been subscribed for a while to the moderated
version of uk.local.yorkshire

I thought you might be interested in hearing how the new newsgroup is
performing and how well it is fulfilling its purpose....

The group took a little time before it was eventually 'found' by all
the Usenet servers, so it was not immediately available to everyone.
Once it was, it was then possible for anyone to subscribe to and read
the contents.

Postings made to the newsgroup are directed via a filter server which
is set up to remove certain content automatically, with some
additional manual intervention as and when needed. The filtering
seemed to only delay postings between a matter of a few seconds and a
worst case of some 5 minutes. This seems a small price to pay, versus
the alternative of the personal filter systems needed for so many of
the open groups.
Whether the delays might increase as more groups join the moderation
server I don't know, but it seems a small price to pay for the
concentrated content. Any items which are filtered out, can be easily
seen on a web site and I have seen no indications of bias on the part
of the moderation process against any genuine posts.

No attempt seems to have been made to completely eliminate trolling,
only the more malicious ones are absent. Those who thought that the
move to moderated status might mean the end of the group, will I am
sure find it a pleasant surprise.

Looking at the original u.l.y newsgroup this evening, all the genuine
posters seem to have abandoned it in favour of the new moderated
version of the group.

One of the objections to moderated groups I heard, was that newcomers
would not be able to get to the content easily and that posting by
newcomers would suffers long delays. This is absolutely untrue. They
can be reading in no more time than it takes to subscribe to an
umoderated group and posting with just a delay of a minute or two.

Regards,
Harry
M1BYT@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU