Moderation of this newsgroup

[Gary Williams]

In article <0001HW.BB16A16A000B3AF4F0182600 at news.demon.co.uk>,
Simon Dobbs  <simondobbs at froglet.net> wrote:
>I am unsure about this- on demon's newserver there has been virtually no 
>traffic on this group for the past two years, exept the odd spam (one every 
>fortnight or so, which shows it is still working), which really amounts to 
>nothing compared with other groups. I agree, and hope that there may be 
>renewed interest in metabolic regulation, which maybe stimulated by Peter 
>Rich's recent essay in nature, but as yet we are hardly inundated with 
>information - is the initiator of this thread  trying some sort of 
>'pre-emptive strike" in order to attain some sort of control of the heirarchy 
>or a kind of respectability due to moderation of a number of groups (sorry- 
>that sounds pretty paranoid!).
>as i see it this group is almost dead, and certainly doesn't need moderation.
>
>
>apologies for appearing negative
>


Many of the bionet.* newsgroups are poorly used.  I believe that this is
caused both by lack of moderation and the consequent high levels of spam
in recent years, and by lack of education about the existance and
possible uses of these network groups. 

We can (and the HGMP does!) educate people about these newsgroups in our
bioininformatics introductory courses, and BioSci (http://www.bio.net/)
are trying to get as many of the groups moderated as possible in order
to remove the spam.  As a member of the HGMP that hosts the BioSci
newsgroups I have volunteered to moderate many of these groups. 

I have received some thanks in the past from users of other groups for
moderating them (Thanks Rodger and James!) and a passing nod of thanks
from the Director of my unit for doing this.  I certainly would welcome
some respect for doing this, but I don't expect it :-)

I hope that this group will not remain moribund forever, but the use of
this group is something that only the members of the community of people
reading this can do something about.  If you all lurk forever, then this
group will remain unused!

Moderation will not hurt, and it might help.

Gary

Gary Williams               Tel: +44 1223 494522  Fax: +44 1223 494512
mailto:G.Williams at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk          http://www.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk/
Bioinformatics, MRC HGMP, Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SB, UK