Blocking External Postings to NCF Newsgroups There has been discussion from time to time in various places about the issue of external users (those who do not use an account ID from NCF) who post articles to internal newsgroups (those with a "ncf..." name). I initiated some earlier discussion of this under the heading of "Blocking Anonymous Postings" in the Board moderated group. The discussion that followed indicates that there is some support for such a move. Before the issue gets buried in the on-going flood of new issues, it seems appropriate to bring the issue to a Board meeting, review it, and decide whether or not to implement such a block. At present, our policy is not to distribute internal newsgroups (the "ncf..." series) to other systems beyond NCF. This is on the basis that we should retain some feeling of local community in the NCF newsgroups by restricting access to NCF members only. On the whole, it seems to work to the benefit of these newsgroups. The difficulty is that there is the occasional posting from an external user (a non-NCF account) that in most cases is designed to irritate or harass NCF newsgroup users. To be consistent with our policy of limiting NCF groups to the NCF community, such postings should be blocked. Paul Tomblin, the news administrator, indicates that such a block can be implemented easily if the Board agrees to such a move. To implement this, the Board should pass the following motion: Moved that NCF will implement a block on the external news feed that will prevent the delivery of external postings to the "ncf" hierarchy of newsgroups. -------------- Al Seaman March 13/94