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3. Why do Usenet moderated newsgroups exist ?
Groups on the net are moderated for a variety of reasons. All moderation serves the same basic purpose, to filter out inappropriate postings and to deliver timely, on-topic articles. Most moderated groups fall into one of five general categories:
Groups with postings of an informative nature not suited to discussion and always originating from the same (very small) group of posters. Groups within this category include <html><a href=“news:”>news.lists</a></html>, <html><a href=“news:news.announce.newusers”>news.announce.newusers</a></html>, and <html><a href=“news:comp.mail.maps”>comp.mail.maps</a></html>.
Groups derived from regular groups with such a high volume that it is hard for the average reader to keep up. The moderated versions of these groups are an attempt to provide a lower volume and higher quality version of the same forum. An example of this category is <html><a href=“news:news.announce.newgroups”>news.announce.newgroups:</a></html> (a reduced form of <html><a href=“news:news.groups”>news.groups</a></html>).
Groups derived from regular groups that have often been abused. That is, the regular groups often received postings of items that were not germane to the stated topic of the group (or sometimes even within the realm of politeness for the net). This also includes groups suffering from an annoying number of duplicate postings and inappropriate followups. Moderated groups in this category include <html><a href=“news:comp.sources.misc”>comp.sources.misc</a></html>.
Groups designed to serve as direct feedback to an off-the-net group. The discussion in <html><a href=“news:comp.std.mumps”>comp.std.mumps</a></html> is an example of this.
Groups that are gatewayed into Usenet from an Internet mailing list. These groups are moderated by someone on the Internet side but are shared with the Usenet population. Submissions mailed to the proper addresses, given below, will appear in both the group on Usenet, and the Internet list. This includes some groups in the “inet” distribution such as <html><a href=“news:comp.ai.vision”>comp.ai.vision</a></html>.
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<em>NetNews Moderator's Handbook</em>
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