Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!purdue!bu-cs!xylogics!cloud9!jjmhome!cpoint!alien From: alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: Some observations on this whole mess. Message-ID: <2752@cpoint.UUCP> Date: 1 Nov 89 15:34:11 GMT References: <11171@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> Reply-To: alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells) Organization: Clearpoint Research Corp., Hopkinton Mass. Lines: 87 In article <11171@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> vnend@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (D. W. James) writes: >But when you get things like the posting to alt.sex saying "This group is in >danger, if you don't want it censored, send mail saying YES in the subject >line to richard@gryphon.com..." ... This one had me worried. Whatever my feelings are, I am opposed to anything that subverts a vote. So I looked in alt.sex and found the posting. First, it wasn't written by Richard. Second, the text of the article made it EXTREMELY clear what the vote was about (it said the text of the article had to explicitly say 'I vote YES for sci.aquaria'). Third, there wasn't even any politicking in the article (no 'vote for this to preserve the purity of the net', or any such garbage). Fourth, it was immediately recognized for what it was, and people were immediately posting replies warning anyone who might possibly have been confused. (It was so clear that I normally wouldn't have thought anyone COULD have been confused by it, but after Zaphod missed the blatent sarcasm in a previous posting of mine I'm not so sure.) In reality, I suspect that it probably generated more NO votes than YES votes if it generated anything. >Why am I against it? Because I feel that it is a disservice to what I >think of as the net. As big a one as c.p.t.e. was. Fine. Feel free to vote no. As long as you don't think your vote is worth more than 100s of other people's votes (as some people on the net seem to), I have no problem with that. >I'll believe that the vote for sci.aquaria is valid and legit if you can >show me that you have more than 100 people posting to alt.aquaria, >let along 100 people who think of it more as a science than a hobby. >Alt.aquaria doesn't *have* 100 posters (or at least it didn't before >all this bruhaha started.) Therefore the people who count, the >ones *using* the group, can't even vote it past the 100 vote minimum. If this is your criteria, I don't see how any new group can be formed. After all, if the group doesn't exist yet - how can it have 100 current interested posters? You are ignoring three things. First, there are likely to be more people who aren't current posters who would be if the group was in rec. or sci. (if not, Richard wouldn't be trying to move the group). Second, there are people who might have a strong opinion and want to vote who won't be posters (it is surprising that you dismiss this group since you seem to be in it). Finally, who knows how many people read the group without posting? I sure don't. >Should there be a group sci.aquaria? I don't think so. Should there >be a group rec.aquaria? Maybe, I don't care. The only thing I do know >is that, however many votes Richard gets, 95% of them are just so much >garbage, both the aye's and the nay's. Personally, I don't consider your vote any less garbage than the others ... but I respect it anyway. If you start to ignore the results of free elections - no matter how much they disagree with what you think is 'right' - then you cross over the line from a democracy to a dictatorship. Now, there have been a lot of people claiming that Usenet should be a dictatorship (of course, a benevolent dictatorship, preferably with them or someone who agrees with them as dictator), and there have been a lot of people claiming that the Usenet democracy doesn't work - because it is producing a result that they don't like. My personal opinion is that Usenet should remain a chaotic democracy with all of its flaws. I don't trust a dictatorship to remain benevolent, and the postings I have seen from the people running for the position do not convince me that it will even start benevolent. >Richard has said that he doesn't know that the European sites >are now getting rec.*, even though several posters (from sites with >domains like uk and se and fi) have said that they did. Sorry Richard, >I tend to believe their report, being there, more than your belief. If you had followed all the postings, you would have seen that the main backbones now get rec (a lot of them even get alt), but due to the structure in Europe these are still not relayed to a lot of the sites. What the percentage is, I don't know. Neither do you. Neither does Richard, but the research he has done has shown that most of the people he would like to get to he can't. >I voted no for sci.aquaria. I don't recall getting a confurmation, >so perhaps I had best send it again. Certainly I didn't get a note >like Laurie did. Then again, few people would mistake me for Chuq... I didn't get a 'confurmation' either, but I wouldn't worry. Richard has to post the votes when the vote is over, and if he tries to lose votes I am sure that there are plenty of people like you who will catch him at it.