Telamon ) writes:

You had better think about this a little more. Right now posts show up
pretty quickly. If it has to go through a moderators computer that will
slow things down even if one was to use computer automated rules instead
of human intervention.

What if the moderators or his ISP has a problem? The news group comes to
a halt. What if the moderator gets sick, busy, or wants to take a
vacation? Does the news group come to a halt or do things run like they
do now until he gets back?

Or, the moderator or moderators disappear, and the newsgroup becomes
unuseable. That happened to one newsgroup a decade ago, and it seemed
like people talked about it (in a related newsgroup, but had no clue of
how to fix it. I started posting to it, and that caused others to
fix the problem.

But, that moderated newsgroup is pretty dead. A handful of posts each month,
virtually no traffic. If someone posts a question, then there will be
replies, but there usually isn't much more than one question a month, if
that. I posted for a while, but the moderators felt their job was not
to ensure that off-topic junk and flaming not appear, but also to slap
people for quoting too much. When I had one post rejected for that, I
abandoned the newsgroup. They can't afford to reject people for that,
not when they are providing answers, yet they do.

SOme people think moderating is the solution, but I suspect many of
them don't come from a long history with Usenet. Despite the junk,
there is a liveliness to a newsgroup that often gets lost in a moderated
newsgroup. The moderated newsgroups often become sterile.

Michael