Nuxx:F00acc8a-715c-4687-a9ca-fa64f02b2707@dr5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com

Path: num2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!num1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!number.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!postnews.google.com!dr5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com!not-for-mail Message-ID:  From: Nuxx Bar  Newsgroups: uk.net.news.moderation Subject: Again, UKRC Sets URCM a Great Example Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 10:47:02 -0700 (PDT) Lines: 51 Organization: http://groups.google.com NNTP-Posting-Host: 82.71.49.124 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 X-Trace: posting.google.com 1300729622 32441 127.0.0.1 (21 Mar 2011 17:47:02 GMT) X-Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2011 17:47:02 +0000 (UTC) Complaints-To: groups-abuse@google.com Injection-Info: dr5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com; posting-host=82.71.49.124; posting-account=WrLs9woAAAD151hWKA9yknAtxFHW4kE4 User-Agent: G2/1.0 X-HTTP-UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.2.15) Gecko/20110303 Firefox/3.6.15,gzip(gfe) Bytes: 3970 Xref: perfectly-safe.chapmancentral.co.uk uk.net.news.moderation:39171

So yesterday evening, I made a comment to Mark Goodge on UNNM about how my posts to UKRC had been in the moderation queue since first thing that morning. It wasn't really supposed to be a serious complaint, otherwise I would have started a new thread. There was nothing really wrong with my posts having been delayed that long. Nevertheless Mr Goodge responded quickly on UNNM and then almost immediately approved all my UKRC posts.

That is pretty much the exact opposite of what would have happened with URCM. If someone "unfavoured" commented here about their posts being held for a while in the URCM "moderation" queue, even if it really were for an excessive period of time, then:

- Their comment would not be responded to at all, except possibly in a snide and unhelpful fashion. - There is no way in hell that their posts would be approved any quicker as a result of their comment. In fact, it's likely that their posts would be delayed further as "punishment" for daring to question the regime. - The poster in question would have a permanent, irrevocable grudge held against them by the "moderators", resulting in constant delays and unreasonable rejections, and of course every complaint about those delays/rejections would just result in the grudge intensifying, creating a vicious circle, the eventual threat of a ban, etc.

The approach that Mark Goodge took made sure that everyone was happy and contributed to the smooth running of UKRC. The approach taken by his opposite number, Ian Jackson, and his remaining supporting "moderators" is consistently more-or-less the worst possible one if you want URCM to run smoothly as a moderated group. And that, I suppose, is the point: UKRC was created because those creating it wanted a moderated newsgroup. URCM was created because Jackson wanted to exclude and punish non-believers and dissenters, and wasn't really interested in running a moderated newsgroup at all, that was just the pretext.

It's ironic that URCM, and not UKRC, is the newsgroup which is being run with such bigoted, fundamentalist, intolerant, dogmatic, quasi- religious fervour. I'm not a Christian, I am sometimes a cyclist, and yet I still think that the running of UKRC completely eclipses that of URCM in every way. Surely anyone who wants URCM to be a proper moderated newsgroup with no opinion favoured above any other thinks the same. Why is it in any way necessary for the URCM "moderators" to be so hostile to certain posters when UKRC (along with every other moderated uk.* newsgroup) repeatedly shows that absolutely nothing bad happens when such hostility is absent, and indeed replaced by helpfulness?

(I think part of the reason Mr Goodge acted so quickly was that I made a wry remark about hoping that UKRC wasn't turning into URCM...I can see why he would want to avoid anyone thinking that!)