Re: A message to the group from LinuxForum.com

From: Eric Rosebrock (eric_at_[nospam)
Date: 05/01/04 

Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 23:37:03 -0400

Sybren,

Thanks for your comments. Please see bleow:

"Sybren Stuvel" <sybrenUSE@YOURthirdtower.imagination.com> wrote in message
news:slrnc9642i.5sk.sybrenUSE@sybren.thirdtower.com...
> Eric Rosebrock enlightened us with:
> > In light of the recent discussions about our website syndicating your
> > newsgroup, your requests and concerns have not gone ignored by our
> > staff by any means.
>
> I noticed that, and I'm happy about that.

I want to make everyone happy with what we are trying to do, and I am very
happy to be able to discuss this among the group openly.

> > We will no longer allow our readers to post in your newsgroups through
> > our forums.
>
> This is by no means necessary. More and more people are posting from
> your forums, so apparently they fill a need. Less rigorous measures
> would suffice, like
>
> - Put the "Linuxforums.com" banner below a signature delimiter ("-- ")
> so it is automatically removed from replies.

We can easily remove the "LinuxForum.com" banner from the posts all
together, however we originally tagged each post coming from our boards so
that if anyone has a complaint, they know where to go to get it resolved,
and that's the only reason why we linked there, it was not meant for an
advertisement. If someone on our forums is being stupid, we want to know
about it and take care of it, however due to the amount of posts each day,
it's nearly impossible for us to monitor them all, however if someone has a
complaint, we're always available to investigate and take action when
necessary.

> - Put the subscriber's signature there too.

If the member had a signature, it should have been posted along with the
post, however I'll look into our scripts and ensure that it is done in the
future.

> - Prevent the users from editing posts that were posted to a Usenet
> group. It can't be edited once it's posted to Usenet. Maybe you could
> post it with a delay, so that people can edit it until 20 minutes
> after posting. The forum system could then send it to Usenet after
> those 20 minutes.

This is an excellent idea. We actually had the syndicator running on a CRON
every 20 minutes, however if the post happened on the 19th minute, there was
no time to allow the change. We'll try to implement this into the new
version when we start syndicating again after we comply in agreeance with
the newsgroups.

> - Let people reply in a threaded way, like replying to a specific post
> more than replying to the thread as a whole.

That's a little more complicated because of the nature of the forums.
However, in my original solution, we could prevent people from replying all
together and encourage them to use a newsreader to connect to the newsgroups
and take care of the posts, in which would definately help resolve most of
the issues we're faced with.

> - Make it clear to your users that they are posting to Usenet, and
> perhaps offer a document about how to use Usenet directly - it has
> it's advantages.

Yes, this is a great idea also. We were hoping that people would understand
by reading the forum description, however we did not consider making sure
that they knew the post they were replying to was going to be posted to a
newsgroup. We simply overlooked that one, but as always, input is valuable
to us and we are more than happy to implement new things to make everyone
happy.

> > This should solve at least half of the heartburn that is happening
> > here.
>
> I think my above points should solve most if not all the "heartburn" (I
> would call it "irritation", nothing more) we feel here. There is no need
> to make your forum read-only - just make it more like Usenet.

My above comments should cover a reply to this.

> > If there is anything else, please email me directly at
> > eric@[NOSPAM]thewebfreaks.com and I'll be happy to figure out ways we
> > can all work together.
>
> I think we'll be able to work together much more easily if the
> discussion is open. Also see
> http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#noprivate
>

I sure hope so. I don't see any reason why we can't connect the two
communities together to work in harmony, as long as we can ensure the
members on our sites understand what is happening when they press that
"Submit" button.

> > We never wanted to upset you or make you think we are "stealing" your
> > content.
>
> I'm not bothered that you're replicating what I'm writing. If I want it
> to be private, I'll send it in a PGP-encrypted, personal email.
>
> > I really don't understand why we are being targeted for doing this,
> > other than we may have polluted your newsgroups with some posts from
> > our members, which has been resolved.
>
> You take our comments way too harsh. On Usenet, it's pretty normal to
> say things literally as we feel them. To people that aren't used to that
> we may sound blunt, but we see it as honest and straight-forward.

It's been a rough week, I don't mean to sound like I'm taking this personal,
it's just that when I read the 40+ commented thread about people threatening
to DoS attack us and the legal threats I got from John Hasler about the "The
Berne Convention Implementation Act of 1988" really pushed things in the
wrong direction.

> > I look forward to working with anyone who is willing to be mature
> > about this situation.
>
> Glad you see it that way.

Ditto.

> Sybren
> --
> The problem with the world is stupidity. Not saying there should be a
> capital punishment for stupidity, but why don't we just take the
> safety labels off of everything and let the problem solve itself?

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