From: wcs@anchor.ho.att.com (bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com +1-510-484-6204)
Date: Thu, 18 Aug 94 17:22:04 PDT
To: mcdaniel@u.washington.edu
Subject: Re:  (fwd) Anonymous posters & Misinformation = Net pollution
Message-ID: <9408190018.AA23783@anchor.ho.att.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


McDaniel posts the following to several newsgroups,
and it was forwarded to cypherpunks:

> The problem:  Anonymous posters supplying pseudo-news reports or
> otherwise wasting bandwidth in groups more concerened with fact
> or at least genuine concerns (such as political talk groups and sci groups.)
> 
> The solution: Limited anonymous posters to forums where accountability
> for what one says is of little concern (such as rec groups where
> applicable.)   OR provide the owners of moderated groups with detailed
> accounts of the true identity of any anonymous poster who post to
> a serious newsgroup and make that procedure known to the would-be
> anonymous user.
> ....
> I believe that anonymous posting is a valuable service in many forums.
> However, it seems that service is being abused in political and technical
> newsgroups.
> 
> I suppose yet another solution would be to make widely known the
> general untrustability of anonymous posters in groups where truth and
> fact are paramount.  But this letter should go a tiny ways towards that goal.

The problem: there's *far* more data on the net than anyone can possibly read,
and you don't want to waste your time reading news from anonymous posters
because they generally post more noise and less signal than you like.
(I can sympathize with that, by the way, and it's often harder to identify
anonymous users than pseudonymous or true-name-using posters.)
I also have different preferences than you do about what newsgroups I think
are more likely to benefit from anon-users and what newsgroups are
more likely to be harassed by them, and I consider your use of the term
"truth" when referring to talk.politics groups to be somewhat amusing...
And the next guy down the road will want something different from both of us.

Some solutions:
1) censor people you don't like, so nobody can read them.  (This is Evil.)
2) find ways to not read postings by anon-users, or responses to those postings -
   this is *much* easier - popular newsreaders, such as rn, give you KILL files
   or other sorts of bozo filters which let you ignore articles with specified
   authors, subjects, or other header lines (e.g. references to articles
   from machines frequented by anon-users, such as anon.penet.fi.)
   (Unfortunately, this is somewhat tougher when people run remailers on
   popular machines, e.g. netcom)
3) only read articles from people you consider to be non-bozos.
   The difficulty is identifying them when you don't read their articles;
   maybe you can do it by reading articles that non-bozos give supportive
   replies to.  
4) have people rate articles, and only read articles with high ratings;
   this sort of system will probably evolve as volume increases further.
   Moderation is one approach to this; there are heavily-moderated groups
   and minimally-moderated groups, and we may need to evolve a parallel 
   ratings mechanism somehow...   Joe Bob says "Check it out!"

Go for the non-coercive solutions, and find ways to ignore stuff you think
is worth ignoring.  I've been reading news since the days when I could real
*all* of it, and technology for selective reading has been a *lot* more
useful than telling people not to post when they're bozos.  There are
probably some appropriate newsgroups to discuss how to build better newsreaders.

			Bill Stewart

			
# Bill Stewart  AT&T Global Information Solutions, aka NCR Corp
# 6870 Koll Center Parkway, Pleasanton CA, 94566 Phone 1-510-484-6204 fax-6399
# email bill.stewart@pleasantonca.ncr.com billstewart@attmail.com
# ViaCrypt PGP Key IDs 384/C2AFCD 1024/9D6465