As you all know, we will approve any posting which meets the header
guidelines and "which answers common questions and is meant to be read
by humans" (quoting from the news.answers charter). We do not place
any restrictions whatsoever on the content of the posting, and we do
not intend to begin doing so unless the *.answers charter is modified
to place more requirements on cross-posted articles.
We haven't had many problems with competing FAQs, and when we have,
we've always just told the dissenting groups to write their own FAQs
and get them approved, too. I've never heard of a situation which
escalated beyond that, until this s.c.russian incident. More
typically, negative feedback solves the problem: one of the FAQs is
praised, quoted, and referred to much more often by the newsgroup's
readers, and the other one dies out for lack of a supportive audience.
The following are my own views, and not necessarily a statement of an
official *.answers-moderators position.
It would be nearly impossible for us to filter submissions for
accuracy, even to the extent of checking them for factual errors.
There are well over 1500 postings approved for *.answers, on an
enormous variety of topics. It's clearly infeasible to expect the
moderation team to know anything at all about any particular FAQ's
subject, or even to check every one for contradictions or errors. If
we knew that much about all those topics, what would we need FAQ
maintainers for? (And how much money could we make appearing on TV
quiz/game shows?)
Even having "officially sanctioned" FAQ maintainers for a particular
newsgroup or topic would be a logistical nightmare, and would hobble
the free-form anarchy Usenet has enjoyed so far -- which anarchy I,
for one, think is a good thing, despite undeniable problems it has
caused. That's already been discussed, and I don't have much to add.
- Pam Greene
one of the news.answers moderators, news-answers-request@mit.edu
wearing an assortment of hats
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