Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!twwells!bill
From: bill@twwells.com (T. William Wells)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: A Few Observations
Message-ID: <1989Nov11.025616.9552@twwells.com>
Date: 11 Nov 89 02:56:16 GMT
References: <1989Nov10.045531.4549@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>
Followup-To: news.misc
Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale, FL
Lines: 42

In article <1989Nov10.045531.4549@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> tlegelst@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Thomas Lynn Egelston Ii) writes:
:      I have been sitting back and watching with distaste the events of the
: past few weeks, and I have a few comments.
:
:      First, I agree wholeheartedly that there is something wrong with the
: current voting system.  However, as of right now, it *is* the official way
: to create a new newsgroup, and according to it, 'sci.aquaria' should be
: created.

Hidden assumption: that all should obey the results of "vote".

The net is not a democracy. And news.groups is not a parliament.
Not even the rationalizations that apply to those apply here. The
hidden assumption is false.

There is nothing whatsoever about the vote (or any vote, in any
context) that permits sysadmins to abdicate their responsibilities.

At best, the vote is an *aid* to sysadmins.

In an ideal world, a vote is conducted with due regard to the
things that will result in useful votes. When that occurs, the
sysadmin can happily and even mindlessly create the newsgroup,
regardless of his personal opinion on the subject: the result of
the vote tells him whether or not thoughtful people have found a
reasonable use for the net.

In the sci.aquaria debacle, the vote was conducted in such a way
as to result in it being worthless as an aid to sysadmins.

Thus there is no good reason to follow the results of the vote.

As I, and several others, have said, sci.aquaria will not exist
here. The vote results are meaningless. And it is obvious that,
while a group for people who are interested in aquariums would be
a good thing, the name is totally inappropriate.

Followups have been directed to news.misc.

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