🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <mbs.4a73@adastra.cvl.va.us>, mbs@adastra.cvl.va.us (Michael B. Smith) writes:
|> 
|> Moving quite a bit of uva.* into chv.* is not only reasonable, but
|> simply good service. The want-ads, the forsale, etc. groups would
|> serve much better than only being part of uva.*. UVa does not stand
|> alone in this community.
|> 
|> I've read UVa's Acceptable Use policy, and I'm well aware that it's
|> also selectively enforced. Commercial advertisements and posts in uva.*
|> are very prolific, as are commercial Web pages on *.edu hosts. (Unless
|> there has been a crackdown in the last few months, which I somehow
|> think I would've heard about.)

The Acceptable Use policy does not prevent folks from posting articles
that are  not acceptable, but they don't remain on the server, and the
person who posted the article is notified of the policy. In extreme
cases, the person has lost access to Usenet, or his/her account, for
either a period of time or permanently. You just don't see that happen --
it is done quietly rather than publicly. I don't see the point in
embarrassing someone publicly -- most of the non-compliant posts are
made by persons who are new to Usenet, and don't understand that there
are guidelines. I would rather provide a learning experience instead
of blasting folks.

The latest posting guidelines for uva.want-ads, which were posted to
the group recently (they get posted a couple of times a semester) are:

    A place to buy/sell/trade used personal possessions among members
    of the university community. Commercial products and services may
    not be advertised here. A commercial product or service is one that
    is produced for the purpose of generating revenue. Having more than
    one unit of an item for sale is often an indication that the item
    does not fit the category of "used personal possession". High volume.

The two key phrases are "among members of the university community" and
"used personal possessions". These two restrictions are in place to allow
uva.want-ads to exist at all, since the Equipment Use policy forbids
personal use of the university's equipment or resources. With those two
restrictions, uva.want-ads is allowed as a community-building service,
which lies within the university's mission. With these restrictions, it
is not possible to open up the group to participation by folks not
affiliated with UVa. 

The other newsgroups in the uva.* hierarchy are mostly associated with
courses, university organizations and academic departments, and topics 
specific to UVa life. 

Gina

(PS - the web page issue is outside my "jurisdiction", but I know that
policies are being debated that will affect this.)