"It was deeply ironic that this former moderator of Telecom Digest would
bash Usenet on an ongoing basis, while he was also gatewaying the Digest
to the moderated Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom, presumably because
it reached a wide audience there."

https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicUsenet/comments/16er4nv/usenet_is_a_cesspool_a_dung_heap_patrick_a/

Paul W. Schleck <pschleck@panix.com> wrote:

>"It was deeply ironic that this former moderator of Telecom Digest would
>bash Usenet on an ongoing basis, while he was also gatewaying the Digest
>to the moderated Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom, presumably because
>it reached a wide audience there."

>https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicUsenet/comments/16er4nv/usenet_is_a_cesspool_a_dung_heap_patrick_a/

What is it that you are doing, Paul? You don't even know who Patrick
Townson was nor what had happened. How are you contributing anything to
cultural understanding of Usenet with a quote entirely out of context?

The story I heard, years later, was that this was about the newgrouping
of comp.dcom.telecom.tech in 1993, a redundant unmoderated newsgroup.

Townson had serious health issues. He had been a little active in
the Chicago UNIX community earlier, and ran the Telecom Digest as a
hobby. Basically he took email messages, reformatted them to make sure
they were plain text and of consistent line length, approved them for
both the moderated gatewayed mailing list and newsgroup, and digestified
them for those who didn't want to read individual messages, which created
Telecom Digest. The telecom community was once incredibly active on Usenet.

It took a lot of effort on his part, especially because if you've ever
subscribed to a mailing list, idiots will reply to THE ENTIRE DIGEST
instead of undigestifying it first (very simple to do) and then replying
to the underlying message. Replies to the entire digest wouldn't have
gotten approved by the list moderator but in Townson's case, he might
have extracted the reply from the mess if it was well written, and then
approved that for posting.

During one of the periods in which his health was especially poor,
alt.dcom.telecom was newgrouped in 1991 as an unmoderated group so
there could be some Usenet communication by the community.

In 1993, tale was on one of his Usenet reorganization binges and
decided, without understanding the situation, that Townson wasn't a
suitable moderator and was too heavy handed. Townson felt tale was
attacking him, which he was. Townson lobbied against newgrouping yet
another unmoderated telecom newsgroup on Usenet (of which there were
already quite a few) and that the proposed group was meant, in part, to
counter his alleged heavy-handed moderation.

Townson said the proposed group, comp.dcom.telecom.tech, was redundant
of the existing alt.dcom.telecom and all the other unmoderated groups.

In Usenet voting, tale had a rule that lobbying for or against the vote
to newgroup by certain people -- singling out Townson -- was forbidden.
There was something like arguments were allowed in news.groups only and
encouraging voting one way or the other in other newsgroups and on
mailing lists wasn't allowed. tale was being ridiculous.

The vote lost. tale blamed Townson and to punish him, declared that the
vote had won and newgrouped it anyway.

If you check the archived newgroup message, it's claimed that there was
going to be an active telecom mailing list gated into the group. I sure
don't remember that had ever happened, or if it was truly expected to
happen shortly or if it was wishful thinking on tale's part or if he
just said it to justify his own unusual actions.

In any event, history demonstrated that tale was wrong and Townson was
correct. I never saw the gatewayed mailing list. comp.dcom.telecom.tech
was never an active newsgroup.

I suspect that the out-of-context Townson quote was about tale's unusual
handling of the newgrouping of comp.dcom.telecom.tech.

I knew Townson slightly in real life and spoke to him in person a few
times. He was the Greyhound agent at the Skokie Swift station in years
and just had an interest in telephony as a hobby.

He's been dead for a couple of decades.

In article <uge5pk$kkt$1@reader2.panix.com>,
Paul W. Schleck <pschleck@panix.com> wrote:
>"It was deeply ironic that this former moderator of Telecom Digest would
>bash Usenet on an ongoing basis, while he was also gatewaying the Digest
>to the moderated Usenet newsgroup comp.dcom.telecom, presumably because
>it reached a wide audience there."

This is what it's like being a moderator of a Usenet group gatewayed to
a mailing list. The mailing list users are a small and relatively
self-selected group of people. The people on the Usenet side are
circulating in and out as people move through, and they are much more apt
to be ill-informed, not understanding the group culture, and angry about
something.

At least this was the case back when Townson was running comp.dcom.telecom.
Now, there are less likely to be random angry people showing up in the
group out of nowhere, as there are fewer new people coming into Usenet. But
there is much more likely to be a lot of spam, as there are fewer people
actively managing Usenet servers and Google Groups is being run unattended.

There is nothing more likely to make a person bash Usenet than making them
a moderator.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."