From:	"A.Appleyard" <A DOT APPLEYARD AT fs2 DOT mt DOT umist DOT ac DOT uk>
To:	DJGPP AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu
Date:	Wed, 14 Feb 1996 14:10:50 GMT
Subject:	Digesting and moderating

Re having a moderator, virus-l AT cantva DOT canterbury DOT ac DOT nz (moderator of the email
group VIRUS-L AT lehigh DOT edu about computer viruses) appended this to a message in
Virus-L vol9 issue 22:-

> ... I don't post roughly duplicate questions if asked within a week or two,
> if a reasonable response to the earlier question has been posted. In the
> last week I could have posted more than one digest [composed only] of "Is
> Good Times real?", "Email virus warning", "What's Parity Boot?", "What is
> AntiEXE?", "How does Concept work?", "What's Monkey?", "What's this new
> Win95 virus?" and "What's Form?" messages. I send the submitters of these
> duplicates a brief note explaining their question has recently been asked
> and answered and suggest they look for followups in similar threads.

  Having a moderator helps to eliminate multiple queries on the same subject.
  If a moderator appends a brief reply in square brackets to a user message
before letting it go out, that often avoids several wordy replies by users,
many of which would have quoted the original message in full.
  This has proved valuable in the moderated email groups virus-l AT lehigh DOT edu
(viruses and antivirals) and tolklang AT dcs DOT ed DOT ac DOT uk (Tolkien's languages) in
keeping bulk and amount of messages down.
  Digesting is useful to people who have to pay for email at so much per
message received.

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