# These are totally different "tones" and outcomes ...
# Again, we need to decide what we expect to achieve before we do anything.
# Remember, quite a few admins out there may not have given this much
# thought and we may be alerting them to think hard about it. ...
I think the politest tone possible is the best one to take initially. I
suspect we'd need to address this to whatever net-admins might be
contemplating similar actions in future -- perhaps a posting to an appropriate
news.admin group along the lines of:
Dear news administrators:
It has come to our attention that recent anti-spam efforts by some news
administrators may have a deleterious effect on USENET Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) postings. We are writing to inquire if there is any
possiblity to accomodate the special needs of FAQs in your plans.
The undersigned maintain a variety of FAQs, which are intended to reduce
traffic in newsgroups by answering common questions. To serve this goal, FAQ
postings are re-posted regularly (usually montly or biweekly), are intended to
remain unexpired for the full inter-posting duration, and are often
crossposted to several related groups (always including at least one home
group, news.answers, and *.answers, where * means the hierarchy containing the
home group).
We have heard that news administrators are contemplating policy changes such
as very short expiration times, rapid expiration of cross-posted articles, and
refusal to propagate articles cross-posted to more than 4 groups. All these
policies, while understandable in the context of spam, have the effect of
rapidly eliminating many useful FAQ postings, thus increasing USENET traffic
with postings of "newbie" questions usually answered in the FAQs.
FAQs are usually identifiable by their cross-posting to news.answers, a
moderated newsgroup. We wonder if it would be possible to exempt articles
posted to news.answers from your current or contemplated rapid-expiration and
non-propagation policies. If this is not possible, we would appreciate a
dialogue on how to maintain the value of FAQ postings in the present USENET
climate.
signed
(as many people as want to)
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