Crosspost Nannies: Positions now available

[Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@ifi.uio.no>]

One of the most annoying Usenet phenomena currently is massive, yet
stupid, crossposts.  I don't know what to do to help remedy this
problem exactly, but one possibility is to try to educate people about
what they're doing.  Most people don't know that they are
crossposting, and would rather not have if they knew about it.  (There
are some morons who find gratuitous crossposting funny, but they are
in definite minority.)

So here's my idea:  Start educating people who crosspost to your
favourite group.  It doesn't take much work -- just tap `S M-c' and
then `y' whenever you see an inappropriate crosspost.  This will send
off a polite notifier to the person who did the crosspost.  (If the
article hasn't been crossposted, the `S M-c' command won't send a
complaint.  The command understands the process/prefix convention.)

I've been doing this for a couple of days in alt.religion.emacs, and I
haven't gotten any hate mail back -- just a few apologetic notes
from people swearing never to crosspost again.  

I think it's important that these notification should be sent in a
timely fashion.  If the article is more than one day old, it's
probably not a good idea to send a notification.  There should
probably be just one person in each group to nanny it -- receiving
multiple notifications will probably make people feel like they're
being harassed.  Perhaps one could set up a register of people who are
nannying groups?  

So -- if you think this is a good idea, give it a whirl.  It won't
make the crossposting plague go away right away, but I think with time
it may help alleviate the problem.

-- 
  "Yes.  The journey through the human heart 
     would have to wait until some other time."