Re: First Impressions

[Roger Dingledine <arma@mit.edu>]

In message <35D48949.CBCB5FD0@benham.net>, gecko@benham.net writes:
>1)  How/Who administers the "backbone" and the "moderators".  It's not a
>really important issue yet but I'm curious.

Uh..we do. :) More specifically, there's a list of moderators for each
category, and when a submission happens, those moderators are notified,
and one of them approves it. (Or we just have one moderator per category,
but that will work just the same.) As for joining the backbone, if you
want to handle the traffic and people already on the backbone don't hate
you, then I guess it's fine...
(Yes, this is an overly simplistic description. Eventually we might want
to scrawl up some policies so we have it written down. But that is far
down the road...)

>2)_Has anyone put any thought into preventing duplicate articles (or
>near duplicates)?

Hrm. The simple answer is that the moderators remember what they've
approved, so they can notice when something similar comes through. That's
not very robust at all, though.

If they're identical duplicates, it's pretty easy to deal with them.

That brings up a related issue, tho: cross-posting -- if an article of
news belongs in more than one category. This requires coordination
between moderators. Usenet hasn't solved this yet, right?

--Roger