Re: Creating a Python newsgroup

Tim Peters (tim@ksr.com)
Thu, 20 Jan 94 23:49:07 EST

Wrt moderation, I believe almost all comp.lang.* groups do very well
without it: subscribe to all of them for a few weeks and judge for
yourself. If your experience is limited to, say, the often-unbearable
comp.lang.c or comp.lang.c++, you have a very warped view of the _usual_
comp.lang.* experience.

> I find unmoderated newsgroups typically to be the death of interesting
> technical discussion about a particular topic. I attribute this to the
> ease with which an interested but ignorant person can join the
> discussion `community' -- ...

Putting words in Bill's mouth, I bet what _really_ irks him are not the
interested-but-ignorant (heck, they're a delight!), but the ignorant-and-
uneducable. And for various deep reasons we can explore in
sci.psychology <wink>, I bet the latter won't be attracted to
comp.lang.python.

comp.lang.icon is probably comparable: I don't believe I've ever seen a
useless, off-target, or moronic post there. The worst I'd expect to see
on an unmoderated comp.lang.python are the language-war posts that even
moderation (or mailing lists) can't stop (cuz while they're boring the
500th time thru, they're not really irrelevant ...).

agreeing-that-moderation-does-slash-bandwidth-but-seeing-that-as-
an-argument-against-it-wrt-python-ly y'rs - tim

Tim Peters tim@ksr.com
not speaking for Kendall Square Research Corp