Role of the NCF News Administrator - statement by Paul Tomblin:

My duties as I see them:
- making sure that the news is flowing correctly
- making sure that the news spool does not overflow
- making sure that the newsgroups that people at NCF want to access are
available
- making sure that the expiry times of newsgroups are set in a reasonable,
fair manner
- making sure that NCF users are not abusing the net by posting spams
(Excessive Multiple Posts) or illegal activies such as Make Money Fast chain
letters.
- responding to users complaints and problems with the news system.

What I do:
- most news problems are delivered to me by the news software as email to
'newsmaster'.  I investigate and resolve any of those.
- I keep an eye on news spool space and the transfer statistics that are
presented every day to make sure there isn't an anomolously high or low flow.
- Run a readership statistics program once a month to get an idea of how many
people read each newsgroup.
- Use that information and the number of posts in groups to occassionally
review if there are groups that deserve longer or shorter expiry times.
- Respond to email from NCF and other people regarding newsgroups, expiry
times, and net abuse.
- Investigate complaints of net abuse originating from NCF and if necessary,
cancel the offensive posts.

What I need from the board:
- Feedback from the "complaints" alias to tell me AND THE COMPLAINTANT what
exactly the board is going to do about the abuse.
- A clear mandate on what I can and cannot do as far as responding to
complaints.  Currently, I operate on the following self-imposed guidelines:
  - a multiple postng that appears in more than 10 groups will be cancelled.
  - an illegal chain letter will be cancelled.
  - I do not cancel based on content.
  - multi-level marketing scams are barely legal, so I don't touch them.
  - Some warning when a Freenet volunteer is going to engage in a fundraising
activity that might set off my alarm bells for multi-posting.  (Like the
air-show thing)