🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <CrJspt.9Mn@freenet.carleton.ca>, af706@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Sean P.
Maguire) says:
>The proposed gateway is to be UNidirectional from the Listserv to the
>proposed Usenet group bit.listserv.economy.  This is to say that posts
>from the List would be posted to the Usenet group, but posts to the group
>would NOT be posted to the Listserv List.  My Postmaster has expressed a
>concern about an increase in traffic which might become "unmanageable".

As I have posted here before, I am really opposed to unidirectional
gateways. They are so different from the way everything else works on
Usenet, that they are unfair to people on the Usenet side. People there
have no way of knowing that the group is not listened to.

What you end up with is this really strange environment, where half of
the participants have access to all the posts and the other half only
hear from people on their own side. This is no way to carry on a
conversation. Arguments and answers to questions will appear to be
ignored by those on the list side. The folks on the newsgroup side have
no way of knowing why -- despite posting the answer to someone's question
any number of times -- the poor fool continues to ask for answers.

What I do think is a fine idea are moderated newsgroups. You can either
have some human be moderator to review of posts you might get from the
Usenet side, or (even better) you have have the posts sent to the list
address. Then, if the piles of posts you fear (but most probably won't
see) actually occur you always have the option of setting the list to
"Send= Private". This will block posts from people who not on the list,
but with a nice message telling then why. This also allows your
subscribers who prefer to read and post from news to set themselves to
"NOMAIL" and still be able to post from the newsgroup side.

Jim McIntosh (jim@american.edu)
The American University
Washington DC 20016-8019 USA