🚀 go-pugleaf

----------- Original message below forwarded by NETTRAIN moderator ------------

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 12:17:24 CST
From: ldavids@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Lloyd Davidson)

May I respectfully suggest that Mr. Hart begin his own Bitnet discussion group
so that those with interest in his project could subscribe.  I'm sure there is
a lot of interest in the Gutenberg Project, but I have come to resent the
multiple long postings I receive about his database, regardless of how
worthy the project may be.  A similar controversy, as everyone probably
knows, just erupted on LIBREF-L when Vigdor Schreibman wrongly accused
the listowners of censorship because they wouldn't post his strident
material because they correctly decided that it was not germane to the
subject interest of the discussion group.  One of the unenviable roles
of listowners of moderated discussion groups is to protect the list's
subscribers from being inundated with material in which they have little
or no interest.  I, for one, support the listowner's decision in this matter
and I hope that other listowners will follow the lead of groups like NETTRAIN
and LIBREF-L and demonstrate similarly responsible behavior.

Lloyd Davidson
Northwestern University
L-Davidson@nwu.edu


----------- Original message below forwarded by NETTRAIN moderator ------------

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 13:28:00 -0500
From: jhart@auburnschl.edu

I have no problem with the January issue, anyway.  It provides info on
access to resources that some of my students would definitely be interested
in.
---
James A. (Jim) Hart                Internet: jhart@auburnschl.edu
Dept. of Education                     uucp: uunet!mother!aubsch!jimh
P.O. Box 800, 23 High St.             Phone: 207-784-6431
Auburn, ME     04210           "Happiness is a state of mind..."
USA


----------- Original message below forwarded by NETTRAIN moderator ------------

Date: Mon, 1 Feb 93 13:23:52 EST
From: morgan@engr.uky.edu (Wes Morgan)

Our moderator writes:

>Mr. Hart complains that I rejected that particular posting without
>reading it carefully.  I admit: when faced with another one of
>Mr. Hart's 400-line epistles, my first reaction is to hit the
>DELETE key.  I certainly did not feel that it was in the best
>interests of NETTRAIN to post these always lengthy messages because
>Mr. Hart includes one or two Internet training documents in
>his listings.

Indeed; my "pet peeve" for mailing lists and bulletin boards (such
as Usenet) is the inclusion of 200 lines of copy for 10 lines of
relevent material.

If Mr. Hart believes that part of a given dispatch is relevant to
NETTRAIN (or any other particular forum), I would think that he could
submit *just* the relevant portion for inclusion.  Why?  Well:

        - Asking a moderator to accept/dispatch 400+ lines in order
          to get 20-50 *relevant* lines is rather presumptive.  Of
          course, asking the moderator to act as an editor of your
          posting is also presumptive.

        - Asking a mailing list server to distribute "all or nothing"
          is a waste or resources, to wit:

            400 lines * 300 copies = 120000 lines @60 bytes/line = 7.2 Mb
                              as opposed to
             30 lines * 300 copies =   9000 lines @60 bytes/line = 540 Kb

          If you curse congested RSCS links (and swamped SMTP servers) as
          I do, you'll disapprove of 6.7 Mb of overhead in a single mailing.

        - Asking one's readers to wade through 400+ lines to reach the 30-50
          relevant lines is, again, rather rude.  We use facilities such as
          NETTRAIN for convenience purposes; flooding us with massive mailings
          destroys their greatest benefit.

        - The materials are available from several other sources.  At the
          minimum, we have the Gutenberg mailing list itself and the Usenet
          newsgroup bit.listserv.gutenberg.  I'll assume that the Gutenberg
          list is archived, so couldn't a LISTSERV query retreive the relevant
          stuff? Is there an FTP archive available for TCP/IP users?

Mr. Hart writes:
>>Those
>>NETTRAINers who have asked permission to repost our newsletters

I urge those NETTRAINers to only repost the *relevant* portion of
the "massive missives"; I, for one, see enough of them elsewhere.....

The whole notion of mailing lists is based (in my opinion) on the idea
that those who share similar interests can join in a discussion group.
Logically, those persons interested in Project Gutenberg should join
that mailing list.  If the Gutenberg folks touch on NETTRAIN's area,
a quick pointer (or excerpt) is certainly proper; a complete repost,
however, is usually improper.

Why not create a shorter message with the relevant information?
That's the best compromise.

--Wes