Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!purdue!decwrl!nsc!voder!apple!chuq From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Is USENET stagnating? (long) Message-ID: <36116@apple.Apple.COM> Date: 1 Nov 89 19:40:55 GMT References: <9499@max.u.washington.edu> <1989Nov1.173352.25882@utzoo.uucp> Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps Lines: 126 >henry@utzoo.uucp (Henry Spencer) writes: >>wcn@max.u.washington.edu (W C Newell Jr) writes: >>1) It should be possible to add/modify/rename groups by a consensus of expert >>users rather than by a popular vote... >At one point, this was so. Remember the great sinister Backbone Cabal? >It eventually dissolved because (a) the experts persistently had trouble >reaching consensus on significant issues, Actually, I think the real reason the backbone died was that the definition of backbone became outdated due to NNTP -- which caused so many people to be able to join the Backbone Cabal that it became impossible to get anything done. When there were 10 or 20 people on the backbone, it was possible to get things done. When that number topped 50, it was just like arguing in news.groups -- too many people to ever finish a discussion or get a consensus. If some way could be set up to get a reasonable-sized committee of whatevers, I think it could be made to work again. Said number to be at least half a dozen and no more than 15 or 20. Who and how are left as exercises to the reader. >and (b) they were taking a >whole lot of largely-undeserved shit from the populace at large. >(Obligatory Usenet Disclaimer: :-) having been one of them, I'm not >unbiased.) Agreed, but I'll qualify it by saying that it was not generally the populace at large, but a small, very noisy group of people who seem to enjoy rabble-rousing and being obnoxious on general principles. It only takes a few very motivated individuals to completely screw things up [this ins't true of just USENET; look, for instance, at the censorship issues at schools and libraries, where one or two people can successfully screw up entire school districts]. >>The time has come for the creation of >>some official Usenet by-laws, and in particular for the establishment of a >>governing body >This is an interesting idea. It's an interesting idea that comes up about every two years and has since I joined the net. The problem is there's no way to enforce membership, since USENET is a free, anarchic society. All we'd do is start up the "Usenet, Inc." flamewars of a couple of years ago. It's a nice thought, but creating an organization and associated bureacracies would not solve all of USENET problems -- it would solve some of them while creating a new class of problems to worry about. It would also be the end of USENET as we know it; not necessarily a bad thing. There would be a net, but it would be much different than we currently have. >>2) The major security holes now in place must be dealt with ASAP. Our users >>do not appreciate having to repeatedly refuse subscriptions to bogus groups >>such as alt.sex.bestiality. Forgeries may eventually become a real problem; >>this may require some enhancements to the protocols. As soon as you can design and implement a public domain, secure version of UUCP and a secure version of NNTP and make it available to everyone on the net, we'll be *happy* to deal with the security holes. The problem is figuring out how to make sure the data we need to validate the incoming information stream is available from UUCP -- and how to trust that data, since if the person is hoaxing the data, it'd be fairly easy to hoax the validation data as well. Fun stuff. [note to the paranoid: when I call UUCP unsecure here, it is from the point of view of validating the incoming data for mail or USENET. UUCP is not a general security hole into your system -- it just is missing specific data items we would need to verify that the data being passed ot the mailer or news daemons are what we're saying they are. They currently have to be trusted...] >The major security holes now in place are inherently unfixable without, >at the very least, improved transport technology. In an environment of >insecure transport provided by insecure sites, "enhancements to the >protocols" simply cannot do the job. We could probably do a few things to tighted it up: inews could, for instance, check to make sure the incoming news is from a site that we actually are supposed to be getting news from. Inews could also send a verification back to that site to make sure the message came from the site before accepting it, but suddenly you're taling about three UUCP trips (message over, validation back, acknowledge over) -- non-trivial propogation delays and disk storage requirements -- plus, a smart forger could just forge the acknowledgement. We can make it tougher, at fairly expensive costs to the network, but we can't plug the holes. >>3) Site managers have to be impressed with the importance of ensuring that >>their local users adhere to Usenet guidelines and reasonable net etiquette... >How? Nobody has ever been able to come up with a way to legislate the >presence of competent and conscientious administrators. At many sites, >such animals simply do not exist and cannot be conjured up easily. Another suggestion that comes up every couple of years. Another good suggestion, without any way of successfully implementing it. We tried a few things over the last ten years, and none of them worked markedly. >>... major sites such as ours may need some legal protection in actions >>which stem from libelous or obscene material we may receive... >I hope you realize that one major *disadvantage* of having an official >Usenet government is that it becomes an obvious target for legal action. >One strength of the current network is that when the lawyers come knocking, >there's nobody home. The entire liability issue is clouded beyond belief. Among other things, there are no precedents worth bothering with. My greatest hope is that it stays that way as long as I'm on the net.... >>5) Every established newsgroup should have a moderator ... >Can you explain how these people would be paid? (You're *not* going to >get them to do it for free; it's too much work.) I happen to be a supporter of a 100% moderated net in theory -- or, at least, moderating as much of the net as you can. -- Chuq Von Rospach <+> Editor,OtherRealms <+> Member SFWA/ASFA chuq@apple.com <+> CI$: 73317,635 <+> [This is myself speaking] Aftershock. Bummer.