100% Moderation of News Groups. NOT.

[Paul Robinson <tdarcos () access digex net>]

Patrick Townson <telecom () delta eecs nwu edu>, Moderator of TELECOM
Digest (comp.dcom.telecom newsgroup) wrote in an issue of the Digest:

> I think we will see a number of changes in news as private ownership
> of the net gets underway.

More than half of the Internet was already privately operated long
before the changes being proposed were announced.

> Among other things, a large number of unmoderated newsgroups 
> will be dropped, and requirements for posting will be 
> tightened up.  Good idea?  No, not really, but I feel it is almost
> surely bound to happen. 

As long as sites take a group, exactly 'who' is going to drop them?
Unless the sites that are taking news decide to stop carrying the
feeds, and the intermediate sites stop carrying traffic, the groups
will continue to operate.  Or are you claiming AT&T is going to tell
sites they can't carry news groups until they moderate them?  And who
is going to order this 'tightening up' of posting?  And what exactly
do they intend to do to those who don't comply?  Internet is
essentially an anarchy with a very small amount of control over the
content; short of a major "earthquake" class change, I find the type
of changes forseen as extreme.

What is the method?  Metering of traffic and very high traffic
charges?  Refusal to allow access to the NNTP port using TCP/IP?  And
don't forget that UUNET started the Alternet (ALT.*) groups to get out
of USENET rules on setting up groups; beyond that, any two or more
sites that want a particular subject can start a hierarchy and create
one or more news groups.  It is only to the extent that traffic
charges are very expensive that this scenario could happen.  This
assumes that there is no alternative available.  As most areas have at
least two or three competing regional connection services, this does
not seem likely either.  Scarcity and limiting only occur where there
are resource shortages.  That is (to the best of my knowledge) not
present in Internet.

> I think you will see moderated groups almost exclusively as 
> the century comes to an end.   Again, a good idea? No, there 
> is room for almost everyone on this internet; but I don't 
> think the 'powers that be' in the next year or two or three 
> are going to see it that way.  :(   PAT]

All that will happen is the same thing as BITNET (which is also being
gatewayed as the 'bit.listserv' news hierarchy); if 'they' whoever
that is, tries to reduce the number of 'news groups' then people will
move their discussions to mailing lists, and thus INCREASE the amount
of traffic over Internet, because now the messages will go twice; once
to the hub site(s) and then back out to the list subscribers.  If the
regular channels are denied, alternate ones will spring up; the mail
will go through.  And mailing lists can be set up to mail out using
the sender's address or the mailing list address; it may not be
possible to tell which is mail and which is a mailing list, assuming a
local site cares.

Who are these 'powers that be'?  The administrators of my news site --
Digital Express -- take all 3,000+ news groups except for the K12
groups due to legal questions about content exposed to minors; other
than that, they take everything, as does UUNET and many other places.
They could care less about the content; they deliver the messages to
whoever wants to read them.  And this is a commercial site intent on
making money.  Other commercial sites do the same thing; they take
everything passed to them and let the customers decide what they want
to read.

And who is going to do all of this 'moderation'.  The comp.os.vms
group generates perhaps 50 messages a day and is mirrored by five
different mail servers as INFO-VAX.  Who exactly, unless they can make
money from it, is going to moderate a high-volume news group?  Can we
expect to find hundreds of volunteer moderators willing to check every
message?  That's a little too much work for most people.

I will make this promise: the day that I hear any announcement of a
major change to Usenet such as large moderation, is the day I will
spend money out of my own pocket to open a reflector echo and carry
all 3,000+ news groups as mailing lists and carry everything anyone
wants to take.  And all messages will be sent to the newsgroups, plus
being mailed out regardless of so-called moderation.


Paul Robinson - TDARCOS () MCIMAIL COM


[Moderator's Note: Maybe what I should have said was as Internet
becomes totally operated by large telecom companies we are going to
see more and more restrictions on what the backbone sites will be
willing to handle and pricing for connectivity will reach such high
levels that a lot of sites -- maybe most or all -- will find it
totally unaffordable to continue carrying all or even a large subset
of the groups. I doubt anyone will come along and say 'this newsgroup
is no longer in existence', but where there is no one willing to foot
the cost of transporting the group, the group might as well not exist.
I think you will find all sorts of rules and pronouncements coming
down about newsgroups having to 'pay their own way', etc. I doubt that
MCI is going to give a free ride to the talk and misc groups, to name
one example. Of course anyone is free to make a phone call and pass a
full newsfeed UUCP-style to anyone they want; but that is going to
become old real fast when the phone bills start arriving, to say
nothing of the delay in processing news. You can't move it very fast
on a phone line at 9600 baud or even 14.4 for that matter. 

Sure there will be brave souls who volunteer to take 'all seventeen
thousand news groups' (or whatever number it is up to at that point)
and parcel out full feeds to whoever wants it, but the phone bills are
going to be astronomical and MCI/ATT/Sprint's attitude will be fine,
you'd rather pay us that way, go ahead ... but no more free rides or
close to it.  I think -- and this is just my opinion -- that as
the transition to one hundred percent private ownership comes about
the 'owners' are going to have dollar signs in their eyes where the
moderated groups are concerned, because these they can control if they
get control of the moderators -- not a hard task -- and to hell with
the rest of the anarchists. 

Nothing will happen overnight, or even in a month's time. But watch
and see if as the general public catches on to Usenet the unmoderated
groups don't become noisier than ever, the traffic level reaches
record highs -- you think it is high now? -- and the cost for
connections to the Internet sky-rocket. More admins will pull the plug
on more groups (unless the group finds its own way in via UUCP or
similar) and the moderated groups will eventually be what is left. You
really think MCI is going to be as generous with alt.whoever and
misc.whatever as Uncle Sugar has been all these years?  It is hard to
pin down or quantify, but I have a gut-reaction that the moderators
and their moderated groups are going to be among the few survivors of
a shakedown and 'reform' the net will experience in the next few
years.  And *no one* is going to say 'you cannot have group X' or
whatever ... it will just happen as people grow weary and tired of
paying the bills. The private owners will cut deals with the moder-
ators and their groups, etc.  Watch and see, that's all I'm saying. PAT]