Thoughts on an RCB Website

My thanks go to Scott Kamins, Mike Berro, Jon Meyers and others for
establishing the rec.collecting.books newsgroup in the first place.
Wuzzes they were not.

In the past, RCB has served its purpose in providing an avenue for the
discussion of book collecting. It had a good run and helped guide me in
my book collecting ventures. That is not the case today. Clearly it is
time to upgrade to another level where participation in discussions can
be controlled, and the unruly banned from participating.

Why say goodbye to RCB? Why not create a website to further RCB's
goals? Many web hosting services provide bulletin boards and chat rooms
for its users. Posting to the website bulletin boards is similar to
posting to newsgroups with one exception: Posts can be controlled. The
webmaster can open the bulletin board to the public, can require
registration prior to posting, or can restrict posting to members in
good standing. The webmaster can delete posts and block certain
elements from ever posting again. I haven't checked, but I would think
website chatrooms can be conducted in the same manner.

How much do websites cost you ask? I know of one web hosting service,
iPowerWeb.com, that cost as little as $6.95 per month, if one signs up
for two years.

A few ideas are mulling around in my head as to how to pay for a
website. One option is to charge a membership fee for book collectors
to join the group and use the website. One wonders who would want to
run such a website? We have a few booksellers who regularly posted to
RCB; why not offer them an incentive to run the website? Charge a
membership fee; however, part of that membership fee buys the member a
gift certificate to be used in the purchase of books from the
bookseller(s) running the website.

As to the other benefits of a website....a link to the FAQ and a READ
THE FAQ BEFORE POSTING Sign.....Webspace to advertise, post articles,
photos.......and, best yet, we can say to the unruly: "You're out of
here."

.......My point is, Why let RCB die? Why not bring it to the next
level? I, for one, would be willing to pay a membership fee to help buy
an RCB website. How about you?

Jerry Morris


Welcome to Moi's Books About Books: http://www.tinyurl.com/hib7
My Sentimental Library http://www.picturetrail.com/mylibrary and
moislibrary.com http://www.tinyurl.com/hisn

All you need to do is start a new group at Yahoo or at Google and set
yourself (or a panel of respectable people) up as moderators. It's that
simple. No fees, no costs, and complete control over who can join and
what can be posted. My suggestions for avoiding acrimony would be:

1. Appoint a panel of three reasonable people who can make key
decisions about admissions and behaviour issues. That way you have
balance, and the three leaders can cover for each other during
absences.

2. Ensure that applicants must be approved to join, but then allow them
free reign to post thereafter. You can always delete any abusive posts
or threads later. Ditto for ejecting group-identified troublemakers.

3. Compose a reasonable group mission statement. Allow free speech but
deter personal abuse and persistently strong language. Permit moderate
spamming by group regulars if spam subject is of interest to the group.


4. Permit members to post under a pseudonym but require that they
reveal their true identity to the group moderators if requested.

It really is that easy. I was originally 'all for' usenet because of
its completely unmoderated nature, but history has quickly proven that
many folk regress into child savages aka 'Lord Of The Flies' given the
opportunity.

According to the stats provided via Beta-Google, this RCB group has
circa 80 people who post during any one month. A good third of those
must be one-off spammers, so you would do reasonably well to attract
circa 50 people to any new group.

BTW: Yahoo has the facility whereby after setting up your new group,
you may then invite whole groups to join your own group.

Chris Barker
http://hauntedriver.co.uk

PS. I've set up a book discussion site here just to prove how easy it
all is:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...llecting-Forum

On Sat, 16 Apr 2005 14:55:38 -0400, (Jerry
Morris) wrote:


My thanks go to Scott Kamins, Mike Berro, Jon Meyers and others for
establishing the rec.collecting.books newsgroup in the first place.
Wuzzes they were not.

In the past, RCB has served its purpose in providing an avenue for the
discussion of book collecting. It had a good run and helped guide me in
my book collecting ventures. That is not the case today. Clearly it is
time to upgrade to another level where participation in discussions can
be controlled, and the unruly banned from participating.

Why say goodbye to RCB? Why not create a website to further RCB's
goals? Many web hosting services provide bulletin boards and chat rooms
for its users. Posting to the website bulletin boards is similar to
posting to newsgroups with one exception: Posts can be controlled. The
webmaster can open the bulletin board to the public, can require
registration prior to posting, or can restrict posting to members in
good standing. The webmaster can delete posts and block certain
elements from ever posting again. I haven't checked, but I would think
website chatrooms can be conducted in the same manner.

How much do websites cost you ask? I know of one web hosting service,
iPowerWeb.com, that cost as little as $6.95 per month, if one signs up
for two years.

A few ideas are mulling around in my head as to how to pay for a
website. One option is to charge a membership fee for book collectors
to join the group and use the website. One wonders who would want to
run such a website? We have a few booksellers who regularly posted to
RCB; why not offer them an incentive to run the website? Charge a
membership fee; however, part of that membership fee buys the member a
gift certificate to be used in the purchase of books from the
bookseller(s) running the website.

As to the other benefits of a website....a link to the FAQ and a READ
THE FAQ BEFORE POSTING Sign.....Webspace to advertise, post articles,
photos.......and, best yet, we can say to the unruly: "You're out of
here."

......My point is, Why let RCB die? Why not bring it to the next
level? I, for one, would be willing to pay a membership fee to help buy
an RCB website. How about you?

Jerry Morris

Actually, the simplest solution is a Yahoo Group, we had to go that
route due to Barker at alt.books.ghost-fiction and it's worked very
well. Some 240 members and (mostly) on-topic. There's also adequate
room for uploading files such as the FAQ and perhaps a basic list of
reference books.

The downside is that it may not get as much new traffic as an alt
group, but the trade-off is that fleaBay spammers can quickly have
their posts deleted without any fuss.

Cheers,

John

On 16 Apr 2005 13:35:14 -0700, "The People's Poet"
wrote:

All you need to do is start a new group at Yahoo or at Google and set
yourself (or a panel of respectable people) up as moderators. It's that
simple. No fees, no costs, and complete control over who can join and
what can be posted. My suggestions for avoiding acrimony would be:

1. Appoint a panel of three reasonable people who can make key
decisions about admissions and behaviour issues. That way you have
balance, and the three leaders can cover for each other during
absences.

2. Ensure that applicants must be approved to join, but then allow them
free reign to post thereafter. You can always delete any abusive posts
or threads later. Ditto for ejecting group-identified troublemakers.

3. Compose a reasonable group mission statement. Allow free speech but
deter personal abuse and persistently strong language. Permit moderate
spamming by group regulars if spam subject is of interest to the group.


4. Permit members to post under a pseudonym but require that they
reveal their true identity to the group moderators if requested.

It really is that easy. I was originally 'all for' usenet because of
its completely unmoderated nature, but history has quickly proven that
many folk regress into child savages aka 'Lord Of The Flies' given the
opportunity.

According to the stats provided via Beta-Google, this RCB group has
circa 80 people who post during any one month. A good third of those
must be one-off spammers, so you would do reasonably well to attract
circa 50 people to any new group.

BTW: Yahoo has the facility whereby after setting up your new group,
you may then invite whole groups to join your own group.

Chris Barker
http://hauntedriver.co.uk

PS. I've set up a book discussion site here just to prove how easy it
all is:

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/...llecting-Forum


And of course, banning you would be an excellent start.


Cheers,

John

In article ,
says...

Why say goodbye to RCB? Why not create a website to further RCB's
goals? Many web hosting services provide bulletin boards and chat rooms
for its users. Posting to the website bulletin boards is similar to
posting to newsgroups with one exception: Posts can be controlled. The
webmaster can open the bulletin board to the public, can require
registration prior to posting, or can restrict posting to members in
good standing. The webmaster can delete posts and block certain
elements from ever posting again. I haven't checked, but I would think
website chatrooms can be conducted in the same manner.

How much do websites cost you ask? I know of one web hosting service,
iPowerWeb.com, that cost as little as $6.95 per month, if one signs up
for two years.

There's always InvisionFree, which provides free bulletin board hosting:

http://invisionfree.com/

A board I'm affiliated with suffered a catastrophic hardware failure and
associated data loss last October, and in the interim we wound up
setting up a temporary replacement at InvisionFree. I was surprised how
full-featured and functional it is for a free service (they also offer a
pay service as well).

OTOH, I know a lot of folks who are happy with Yahoo Groups as well. Six
of one, half a dozen of another - it depends if one prefers the mailing
list or bulletin board paradigm. One caveat with Yahoo Groups is that
you're pretty much at their mercy when they decide to "enhance" the user
interface or functionality, even if those changes are ones you'd rather
not have to deal with.

Dave

"We?"

You are a notorious bully who wanted nothing more than to ruin the
usenent group alt.books.ghost-fiction so that you could herd potential
book-buying customers into a Yahoo book-buying pen, which you then cram
full with sock puppets just to fake popularity. Furthermore, your vile
utterances in this rec.collecting.books group have drawn immense flak
for their abusive and profane nature. Additionally, you have been
evicted from one Yahoo book-collectors discussion site already, after
you stalked me there to post abusively.

Besides, one need only look at my detailed suggestions and then compare
them to your "Ban the one person who keeps showing me up for an
obsessive bullying maniac" to realise that who has the finer and more
reasonable mind. You idea of free speech and democracy is to put
yourself in charge and say what you like about your enemies; my idea is
to appoint three independent moderators who would compel you to follow
and respect reasonable democratic procedures.

You are also a proven usenet liar. I have published an email from your
own former ISP proving that. Oddly, you claim that the email is fake,
even though it has auditable headers, and you also now claim there to
be no such person as Mr Barry Maulding, Legal Counsel at
www.isomedia.com, when in fact anyone can verfify that he does exist in
a very real sense. Even odder, you claim to have received emails from
Mr Maaulding which allegedly clear you of all suspicion, but that for
some strange mysterious reason, you are unwilling to publish them.

Rarely have I encountered such a devious, manipulative bully as you.
You lie to your enemies and your friends; you trash usenet groups
without a care for the less aggressive masses; you employ malicious
sock puppets to post libellous allegations which you know would
otherwise land you in court; you abuse your position at the Horror
Writers Association to bully your enemies and to further your own
career; and, most unforgiveable of all, you have quite possibly the
ugliest countenance and worst dress sense of anyone I have ever known.

http://fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/John_Pelan.htm

(Missing caption for above pictu "Would you like flies with your
burger, sir?")

My offer still stands: I will agree to leave all usenet groups, for
good, unconditionally, and to donate =A31,000 to a charity of your
choice, if you will publish the emails you claim to have received from
Mr Barry Maulding, which allegedly clear you of the charge of having
lied about stock ownership in their company. Until this matter is
resolved, our conflict will continue to decimate various newsgroups. As
the person who started it, yours is the power to end it, for the sake
of everyone else.=20

http://hauntedriver.co.uk

On 17 Apr 2005 01:38:00 -0700, "The People's Poet"
wrote:

"We?"

You are a notorious bully who wanted nothing more than to ruin the
usenent group alt.books.ghost-fiction so that you could herd potential
book-buying customers into a Yahoo book-buying pen, which you then cram
full with sock puppets just to fake popularity. Furthermore, your vile
utterances in this rec.collecting.books group have drawn immense flak
for their abusive and profane nature. Additionally, you have been
evicted from one Yahoo book-collectors discussion site already, after
you stalked me there to post abusively.

Besides, one need only look at my detailed suggestions and then compare
them to your "Ban the one person who keeps showing me up for an
obsessive bullying maniac" to realise that who has the finer and more
reasonable mind. You idea of free speech and democracy is to put
yourself in charge and say what you like about your enemies; my idea is
to appoint three independent moderators who would compel you to follow
and respect reasonable democratic procedures.

You are also a proven usenet liar. I have published an email from your
own former ISP proving that. Oddly, you claim that the email is fake,
even though it has auditable headers, and you also now claim there to
be no such person as Mr Barry Maulding, Legal Counsel at
www.isomedia.com, when in fact anyone can verfify that he does exist in
a very real sense. Even odder, you claim to have received emails from
Mr Maaulding which allegedly clear you of all suspicion, but that for
some strange mysterious reason, you are unwilling to publish them.

Rarely have I encountered such a devious, manipulative bully as you.
You lie to your enemies and your friends; you trash usenet groups
without a care for the less aggressive masses; you employ malicious
sock puppets to post libellous allegations which you know would
otherwise land you in court; you abuse your position at the Horror
Writers Association to bully your enemies and to further your own
career; and, most unforgiveable of all, you have quite possibly the
ugliest countenance and worst dress sense of anyone I have ever known.

http://fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/John_Pelan.htm

(Missing caption for above pictu "Would you like flies with your
burger, sir?")

My offer still stands: I will agree to leave all usenet groups, for
good, unconditionally, and to donate £1,000 to a charity of your
choice, if you will publish the emails you claim to have received from
Mr Barry Maulding, which allegedly clear you of the charge of having
lied about stock ownership in their company. Until this matter is
resolved, our conflict will continue to decimate various newsgroups.
As the person who started it, yours is the power to end it, for the sake
of everyone else.

http://hauntedriver.co.uk


You sad little boy.

That's a jaundiced perception. Your lying on usenet could have easily
landed you in court. Anyone conteplating professional dealings with you
should be warned that you are a serial liar. The fact that a small band
of friends opt to publicly overlook your lie doesn't mean that beind
closed-doors your reputation has been seriously undermined.

You could prove me wrong by publishing the emails you and O'Brien claim
to have received from Isomedia, but we both know that you are lying
about that too, don't we? You know full well that if you fake emails
then Isomedia will have you in court before you get a chance to clear
up all that cat mess from your old garden, hence your policy of evading
the issue and being abusive to me.

It's textbook stuff. There isn't a criminal or dictator yet who hasn't
used a smokescreen of abuse to cover up their lies at various times.

CB
http://hauntedriver.co.uk

On 17 Apr 2005 10:55:31 -0700, "The People's Poet"
wrote:

That's a jaundiced perception. Your lying on usenet could have easily
landed you in court. Anyone conteplating professional dealings with you
should be warned that you are a serial liar. The fact that a small band
of friends opt to publicly overlook your lie doesn't mean that beind
closed-doors your reputation has been seriously undermined.

You could prove me wrong by publishing the emails you and O'Brien claim
to have received from Isomedia, but we both know that you are lying
about that too, don't we? You know full well that if you fake emails
then Isomedia will have you in court before you get a chance to clear
up all that cat mess from your old garden, hence your policy of evading
the issue and being abusive to me.

It's textbook stuff. There isn't a criminal or dictator yet who hasn't
used a smokescreen of abuse to cover up their lies at various times.

CB
http://hauntedriver.co.uk

Be quiet, you perverted little toad. Your allegations are without
substance. You are a proven liar, thief, plagarist, racist, spammer,
and like all low criminal sorts seek to project your mischief onto
others.


J

John Pelan sez:
Be quiet, you perverted little toad.

Why don't the both of you just shut the **** up?
You've got my pal Bud Webster very upset and, frankly, your juvenile
****ing contest is boring the rest of us.
Even my archenemy, Spamamoto-Wilson, and I have desisted from warring
with each other here.
If we can do that, so can you!
If you must persist, at least don't post to rec.collecting.books.
Thanks in advance...
--
Bob Finnan
http://bobfinnan.com