Moderating r.a.p and r.a.s. Was: Absolute lowest altitude you can fly (legally)

On Fri, 05 Jan 2007 22:46:29 -0000, Jim Logajan wrote in :

Michael Rhodes wrote:

Is there a particular reason why r.a.s and r.a.p are not moderated?

First, I'm not 100% sure what the current policy is, but I believe that
proposals to change an unmoderated group to a moderated group would be
discarded as contrary to Big 8 Usenet policy. This is because the few times
that unmoderated groups have been changed to moderated in the past have
lead to considerable strife.

I'm on the big-8 management board, such as it is, and that sounds
about right.

We couldn't bring ourselves to say we'd "never" try to change
the status of a group from unmoderated to moderated, but I think
we're quite firm that it's something that we'd hardly ever consider.

r.a.p. and r.a.s. would not, in my view, qualify as likely
exceptions-to-the-rule.

But it would be possible to propose parallel groups; e.g.
rec.aviation.piloting.moderated - but you'd have to find moderators willing
to plow through submissions several times a day, everyday, indefinitely.
Moderation definitely slows down the dialogue.

And (in my eight-year experience as the moderator of one group),
may tend to lead to less liveliness and fun. There are a lot
of tradeoffs.

Here's a faq about how moderation works, with a link to Allbery's
"Pitfalls" essay:

http://www.big-8.org/dokuwiki/doku.p...aqs:moderation

I think Jim is absolutely right: get a real newsreader, [amigo],
and killfile anyone you don't want to read--and anyone who
talks with them ceaselessly. "And the world will be a better
place ..."

Marty
--
Big-8 newsgroups: humanities.*, misc.*, news.*, rec.*, sci.*, soc.*, talk.*
See http://www.big-8.org for info on how to add or remove newsgroups.

On Fri, 5 Jan 2007 14:46:29 -0800, Jim Logajan wrote
(in article ):



Lastly, moderation doesn't really eliminate strife - it merely moves it
partly out of sight to e-mails between moderators and posters whose posts
have been rejected. And did I mention how much moderators get paid to keep
newsgroups "clean" for the benefit of readers?

I have to agree that a moderated news group probably would not work any
better.

Jim Logajan wrote:

Secondly, if the proposed moderated groups adopt charters similar in scope
to those for r.a.p and r.a.s then IMHO most of the posts by mxsmanic would
still be on topic, while a non-trivial number of the follow-up messages
others have posted in response appear to be off topic or inflammatory and
therefore subject to rejection. [...]

Indeed.

Twenty plus years ago I was a moderator on CompuServe. Before that,
one on a BBS. And yes, it's the few constantly non-informative and
derogatory writers here who would've been censored... not Mxsmanic, who
as you say at least posts on topic.

Google Groups has a useful option. You can easily click to see a
profile, which shows where else and what someone has posted. Often,
the insults to Mxsmanic come from people who are also nasty in other
groups, or from total newbies who (I assume) think they'll look cool if
they join in the insults.

Ironically, those who bash Mx the most about his lack of social skills,
are the same ones who just refuse to get that it's THEIR postings which
readers consider to be more annoying. They're told this over and over
again, from many sides, and yet they still don't get it. I am not
unsympathetic to their social ignorance, but I'm hoping they'll clue in
sometime soon.

Regards, Kev

"Kev" wrote in message
oups.com...
Jim Logajan wrote:

Secondly, if the proposed moderated groups adopt charters similar in
scope
to those for r.a.p and r.a.s then IMHO most of the posts by mxsmanic
would
still be on topic, while a non-trivial number of the follow-up messages
others have posted in response appear to be off topic or inflammatory and
therefore subject to rejection. [...]

Indeed.

Twenty plus years ago I was a moderator on CompuServe. Before that,
one on a BBS. And yes, it's the few constantly non-informative and
derogatory writers here who would've been censored... not Mxsmanic, who
as you say at least posts on topic.

Google Groups has a useful option. You can easily click to see a
profile, which shows where else and what someone has posted. Often,
the insults to Mxsmanic come from people who are also nasty in other
groups, or from total newbies who (I assume) think they'll look cool if
they join in the insults.

Ironically, those who bash Mx the most about his lack of social skills,
are the same ones who just refuse to get that it's THEIR postings which
readers consider to be more annoying. They're told this over and over
again, from many sides, and yet they still don't get it. I am not
unsympathetic to their social ignorance, but I'm hoping they'll clue in
sometime soon.

Regards, Kev

Frankly I'm at a loss as to why so many of the regulars have chosen to take
this person on so directly. On one hand I understand completely that many
pilots take great pride in the knowledge and skills they have developed
through hard work and experience over time and don't take too kindly to
those who abuse them when this knowledge is offered in assistance and then
disputed or corrected on a more or less consistent basis.
On the other hand, one would think that people in such a group would be of
the type that are confident of their abilities to the point where
encountering a person entering their group with shall we say "an attitude of
sorts" wouldn't cause them the obvious issues we're seeing now on the
newsgroups.
Obviously, the simple answer for encountering such a person is to first
politely correct them and make an honest attempt to change them around to a
better method of projecting themselves on the group; then finding this
unworkable, just simply turning the offender completely off as some have
done.
My own opinion of this poster is that he simply has an attitude I dislike. I
therefore avoid him and pass on his posts.
I don't killfile him, as killfiling people is a waste of time on Usenet. You
simply avoid those you don't want to engage. It's as simple as that.
Personally, I feel a bit sorry for this individual. I get the feeling he's
truly interested in both real world aviation and in simulators. Either that
or he's the best damn troll I've seen yet on Usenet :-)
I have no idea what I personally might have had to offer him in the way of
assistance and friendly dialog, as I am active in both the real world and
simulator venues. But of course whatever opportunity that might have
presented itself to this was lost in my first (and last) encounter with him.
I have to laugh really, at all the fuss about this poster. I honestly
believe there has been more bandwidth spent talking about him (this post
included) than actually dealing with the "problem" all the posting is about
:-)
Anyway, if he's a troll, he's a damn good one and I applaud his work. He
seems to have completely taken over at least 2 newsgroups to the point where
a huge percentage of the posting is about him.
On the other hand, if he's NOT a troll, it's my sincere wish that he
possibly rethink his approach to Usenet and offer up not so much an apology,
but a simple "let's start all this over again and I'll make an attempt to
handle it a bit differently and see what happens"
I think I know the people on these groups well enough to know that they
would react positively to something like this.
Anyway......that's my read on all this :-))
Dudley Henriques

I think Mxmanic has a lot better posts than most of the other regulars on
here. The only people bothered by him have a corn cob up their butt.
My son bought me msfilght sim for Xmas and I will find more of his posts
interesting. You can actually generate a fight plan on that thing. The
garmin 530 is just like the one I use in the Barron.

Aluckyguess wrote:

The
garmin 530 is just like the one I use in the Barron.

Not the sim's default Garmin 530, it ain't! Not even close.

For proof of this, change to the Garmin's active flight plan page and
(assuming you have a flight plan with an handful of waypoints) scroll down
a couple of waypoints. Hit the DIRECT TO key and watch what happens to all
those other waypoints that were skipped over.

(spoiler: they all disappear, forever gone from the flight plan)

*THIS* GPS payware add-on is the real deal for MSFS:

http://www.reality-xp.com/products/GNS/index.htm

--
Peter

Peter R. wrote:
Aluckyguess wrote:

The
garmin 530 is just like the one I use in the Barron.

Not the sim's default Garmin 530, it ain't! Not even close.

The Direct-to works exactly the same...
(That's all I'm sayin')

Peter R. writes:

*THIS* GPS payware add-on is the real deal for MSFS:

http://www.reality-xp.com/products/GNS/index.htm

This is the one used by Dreamfleet for its add-ons. Looks, walks, and
talks just like the real thing. Which is not surprising, since the
GPS simulation was written by Garmin.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.

Aluckyguess writes:

The garmin 530 is just like the one I use in the Barron.

If you use the Dreamfleet Baron 58 add-on for MSFS 2004, the GPS 530
in the simulator is rigorously identical to the real thing. You can
literally go from the sim to the real aircraft and operate the GPS
without any transition.

The default GPS provided by MSFS is different in a fair number of
details, although the FS 2004 version is very much like the real
thing, unlike the largely abstract GPS of FS 2002, which corresponded
to no real-world unit, as far as I know.

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.