NetNews Moderator's Handbook
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
news.lists, news.announce.newusers, and comp.mail.maps.
- 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 news.announce.newgroups (a
reduced form of news.groups).
- 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 comp.sources.misc.
- Groups designed to serve as direct feedback to an off-the-net
group. The discussion in comp.std.mumps 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
comp.ai.vision.