OT: Alternatives to u.l.m.?

What's wrong with you using unnm? That's unmoderated. You can always ask for advice there, but if you get replies from a Horace Rumpole or Claude Erskine-Brown you might want to treat them with a pinch of salt.

The issue with ulm is that the moderators are not subject to scrutiny and post political matters and subjects that ought to be put in uk.politics. I would also say that many threads become overly long and repetitive with the usual suspects wanting the last word, including moderators.

If we have a specific tenure and election/re-election for moderators then that would work for me. I would support this.

If uk.legal is dead, why do you think any other group would meaningfully survive for uk legal matters?

That's a good shout.

I though Ottavio's post was in unnm, and only realised after writing my reply.

The reason ulm was founded was to get away from the spam and spurious postings that used to infest uk.legal. If uk.legal is defunct, what makes you think any new unmoderated group would be any more successful? IMO, ulm is not as tightly moderated as it used to be when it started.

I could but I don't think it's fair. unnm should be only for complaints about moderation on moderated ngs.

Replying to you and Fredxx, who raised the same points.

I wasn't sure there whether or not there was/is an alternative. That's why I was asking. It is quite clear ulm is a circlejerk (I did write this publicly so I am not talking behind their backs) and is not fit for purpose. There is a uklegaladvice sub on Reddit but like all Reddit subs, it is ruined by moderators. An alternative is to create a mailing list or retake control of uk.legal by just using proper killfiles.

Alternatively, I could reply to ulm post onto uk.legal and see what happens there. If there are enough people...

The spam on u.l. is only from a handful of posters. A killfile should suffice.

Let me know what you think about it.

The original sin is to have created a moderated group only because some users are not clever enough to use a NG reader.

ISTM either you have an unmoderated group where anything goes, including terrible legal advice which could lose your home or put you in jail, or have some degree of moderation. If you just want to chat about legal topics, maybe the first is fine. But a number of u.l.m posters are asking for opinions on a particular legal situation they are in, and an unmoderated group would be potentially dangerous in those cases. In particular if those dispensing advice are often least able to give it, and the newbies have yet to twig that which of their respondents is clueless. (Not that ulm is exactly free of such today)

If you want to make a thing about failings of the moderation policy of ulm, eg political posts, I haven't seen any thread about that in unnm? Maybe there should be rules like moderators can't approve their own posts, or first posts must always be moderated by somebody else?

I think you misunderstand the reasons for having a moderated group in this case.

Theo

Do you think such a group would receive more "right wing UKIP type posters" than left wing remainiacs? Certainly ulm is full of the latter.

I don't know, I would like a spectrum rather than an echo chamber, of any type.

However, my point was that the maintainers of the current u.l.m moderation software have a liberal bias and might object to providing a platform where right wing views (any right wing views) are expressed. This is not a criticism, just a practical obstacle to creating such a group.

FWIW, I consider myself a liberal, but find many of my views unacceptable to cancel culture, in much the same ways as TERFs.

I also enjoy being challenged, I think it helps me understand things more clearly. Which is why I would like a more open and diverse group than u.l.m.

That's not how u.l.m. works. The moderators don't vouch for accuracy and won't normally reject a post on the grounds that it offers inaccurate advice.

In message <uh0551$1m51a$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me, Ottavio Caruso snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com writes

In the style of DIY , you could write an RFD, but the chances of succeeding I wager are pretty remote What's wrong with uk.legal that a kill-file wouldn't fix ? Alternatively volunteer as a moderator on ulm .

uk.net.news.config is over there ----->

Brian

Sorry about the blank posting. I still haven't been able to change the default editor for TIN to anything other than the ghastly nano.

Could you pass an environment variable, temporarily, via command line ? You can then change the value to "xed" or whatever.

EDITOR="nano" tin

Paul

Or similarly to set it permanently put in your .bashrc file:

export EDITOR=vim

or whatever editor you prefer.

(other files are used if you use a shell other than bash)

Theo

I've tried these and variations on them. I can change the EDITOR (or VISUAL) environment variable to xed or other editors, and that works in an ordinary terminal emulator window; but it doesn't seem to work in tin, which always invokes nanobollocks.

$ EDITOR=vim tin -A -r

works for me. Posting this from vim.

There is also a config setting, maybe you have set this in your ~/.tin/tinrc to not use %E but an explicit editor name instead?

Invocation of your editor (editor_format) The format string used to create the editor start command with pa- rameters. Default is '%E +%N %F' with %E=Editor, %N=Linenumber and %F=Filename (e.g., /bin/vi +7 .article). See also $VISUAL and $EDI- TOR under "ENVIRONMENT".

Theo

I knew about this setting, but I hadn't changed it, thinking that the %E placeholder would pull in whatever was stored in $EDITOR. But it didn't.

The latter, using a config file/launcher with: Exec=tin -A -g netnews Terminal=true

I have now changed tinrc accordingly, and it works. Assuming that this posting, which I'm writing in xed, gets through and is intelligible to you.

Many thanks.

I use tin with vi[le], it 'just works'.

I have 'EDITOR=vi' in my .profile but I don't think that's what gets tin to use it. I think that it's simply that my default editor is vi. (I use vile rather than vim, but it's set by the alternatives system so that 'vi' loads vile).