From: Aaron Ucko <uckoa AT nextwork DOT rose-hulman DOT edu>
Subject: Re: C.O.M.D Noise Level
To: eliz AT is DOT elta DOT co DOT il (Eli Zaretskii)
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 1995 08:32:24 -0500 (EST)
Cc: terra AT diku DOT dk, djgpp AT sun DOT soe DOT clarkson DOT edu

> > + With properly adjusted software at the moderator(s) no phone sex
> >   "spam" or "Make Money Fast" posts will get through.  Forged
> >   approvals can be detected (PGPmoose) and such articles canceled
> >   automatically and immediately (and never sent to the mailing list).
> 
> There aren't too many of these.  If you think otherwise, check out 
> alt.programmer.msdos (sp?) which is *really* polluted IMHO.

I'll say---we didn't even get that randomly named and addressed
nationalistic spam.

> > (2) If you must answer such posts, or FAQs, (which is a bad idea) then
> >     answer by email only;
> 
> In the absence of regular FAQ postings, I disagree.  These serve a 
> purpose of pointing newcomers to the FAQ and reminding others about some 
> possibly obscure bugs/features which they long ago forgot.  At least that 
> is what it does to me.

And when people do post off-topic messages, we can always send them
private email redirecting them to more appropriate groups/lists.

> Btw, AFAIK, the main reason of creating a newsgroup was to allow people 
> to read postings more selectively (I wouldn't know, because I still read 
> the mailing list).  Creating the group did make the noise a bit higher 

Me too; but wasn't there also something about DJ wanting to ease the load
on Clarkson's (djgpp-dominated) listserv?