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Autzoo.1469 net.general utcsrgv!utzoo!henry Thu Mar 4 22:53:40 1982 replying to news I got a modest number of replies to my last summary of opinion on people replying to news when they should use mail. This may be the last word on the subject, as traffic seems to have died down. To summarize to date:

Again, the general trend of opinion was strong agreement with my use-mail-not-news position. There was also general agreement that sending news to the whole network should require more typing than just "f-". There was a comment that it's too easy to do by accident, and another that naive users often do not understand its implications. (Also, somebody noted that the stupid "-" is rotten human engineering...)

There were several ideas as to what specifically should be done about the matter. One good point was that f should NOT be in the "short list" of things to do that news displays when prompting. [Pity B news has already gone out, although it was probably a bit late for changes in any case...] Having news explicitly request confirmation of intent was also suggested [although I'm a bit more dubious about that -- it is a bit of an annoyance to people who *do* know what they're doing]. It was suggested that the *documentation* for news should explain the implications of sending news a bit more clearly. [Maybe the first time somebody tries to send something to news, it should give him a short quiz to see whether he understands the consequences... Before certain people flame on, *no* this is not a serious suggestion.]

Given that B news has already gone out to all and sundry, I guess the best last word is one from the last letter I got on the subject:

The problem seems to be how to gently manipulate these people [the ones using f inappropriately] so they will mail their garbage in instead of polluting the network. Although changing the invoking convention for the followup command in some minor annoying way would work ... I feel less drastic measures should be considered first; anti- pollution citations could be mailed out to repeat offenders -- later, if the intransigent fools don't get the message, there could be public stonings...

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