> Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 19:48:14 +0100 (BST)
> From: S L Painting <slp@zedtoo.demon.co.uk>
>
> One minor point: If (as I do) you get questions of the "which way up
> should I hold a mouse?" variety, you might not want the disclaimer in
> the auxiliary header.
I meant to leave this up to the maintainer, to judge whether X-Disclaimer or
Disclaimer was better for the target audience of his/her FAQ.
> People unfamiliar with the *.answers hierarchy (e.g. those seeing the
> FAQ in the home newsgroup) might end up with the mistaken impression
> that "answers" to questions about the FAQ itself might somehow need
> "approval", and that they need to be in some (unspecified) "form".
I guess I should have phrased it "Approval for postings in *.answers is based
on form, not content" with "postings in" being the new phrase.
> Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 19:13:33 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Thamer Al-Herbish <shadows@whitefang.com>
>
> There is one aspect of this header that is a bit distressing. It's
> almost like saying "*.answers will archive anything in a readable
> format." Surely you do look over FAQs to make sure they're
> worthwhile?
For the most part we aren't qualified to judge what's worthwhile; each of us
probably reads at most a couple of dozen of the hundreds of USENET groups, so
are not familiar with what's appropriate for the others. I delete spam
without replying (other than the robomessage everyone gets about how
backlogged the queue is). Aside from that, the closest I've come to content
moderation is to ask someone if they really meant their message to be a
*periodic* information posting, since *.answers isn't for one-time messages.
This takes care of most advertising pseudo-FAQs, plus a few inflammatory
postings that the author later regretted.
> From: tanstaafl@pobox.com (Nick)
> Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 22:24:27 -0400
> And the disclaimer should go in all (or at least all new) FAQs, since
> putting the disclaimer in just the controversial FAQs would cause the very
> misunderstanding you're trying to prevent.
>
Several people commented on this (Nick's being the first message I saw). It
needs to be nearly universal, since
- I can't necessarily judge in advance what's going to be controversial
- My interactions with FAQ maintainers are more pleasant if I remain polite
and non-confrontational. "Hey, kook, add this disclaimer if you wever want
to see your FAQ again" just isn't likely to win friends and influence
netizens.
> Date: Fri, 25 Jun 1999 23:38:05 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Thamer Al-Herbish <shadows@whitefang.com>
>
> The logic is flawed here. The disclaimer will not stop abuse. All
> its saying is that the *.answers people are not responsible for the
> contents. I think its blatantly obvious when the FAQ has a list of
> contributors and the maintainers name on it.
Not so obvious to many -- and it's not just things like the sci.answers/
sci.physics flamefest. Every so often we get polite questions about "how
authoritative is a FAQ"
> Date: Sat, 26 Jun 1999 15:16:47 -0400
> From: Doug Herbert <dherbert@tradskin.org>
>
> Tim Nelson wrote:
> > Doug <dherbert@tradskin.org> wrote:
> > > Whatever happened to your Constitution and the guarantee of the
> > > right to free speech, association, etc?
>
> > You mean the one for the US? Um remember, it isn't a world-wide
> > thing here, and certainly doesn't hold you safe from slander.
>
> Is David, or any other member of the team located outside of the USofA?
David lives in Kingston, Ontario, Canada.
I'm not at the moment worried about free speech issues with regard to
*.answers, except to point out that I tried for a solution that is limited to
the *headers* of messages, where it can reasonably be argued that the
*.answers moderators have a legitemate interest, so my request doesn't touch
the *content* of a FAQ.
> David's solution is an easy way out for him and it's wrong.
It's certainly an easy way out for me, which is of course why I asked for it.
If by "wrong" you mean "infringes free speech" then I beg to differ (as stated
in my previous paragraph).
> Date: Mon, 28 Jun 1999 14:56:17 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Paul King <pking@idirect.com>
>
> If David is just a voluteer approver and not a FAQ maintainer, I am puzzled as
> to why his name would appear in association with any FAQ he approves?
I abbreviated when I said "I" receive flames. They come to
news-answers-request@rtfm.mit.edu, but since at the moment I'm the only really
active *.answers moderator (since Pam went into thesis mode), in practice "I"
receive the messages. (We're adding 1 new moderator, but the process is very
slow for reasons that aren't really anybody's fault).
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