Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!aplcen!haven!uvaarpa!hb
From: hb@uvaarpa.virginia.edu (Hank Bovis)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Proposed Guidelines Change (was Re: A Few Observations)
Summary: What are you REALLY trying to do here?
Keywords: backbone, oligarchy
Message-ID: <1530@uvaarpa.virginia.edu>
Date: 17 Nov 89 20:40:14 GMT
Article-I.D.: uvaarpa.1530
References: <1989Nov10.045531.4549@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu> <36393@apple.Apple.COM> <1626@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> <2562D3D9.16489@ateng.com> <5289@ncar.ucar.edu>
Reply-To: hb@Virginia.EDU (Hank Bovis)
Organization: University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Lines: 62

In article <5289@ncar.ucar.edu> woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods) writes:
>In article <2562D3D9.16489@ateng.com> chip@ateng.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>>Of course.  The 100 vote requirement should not be weakened.  Chuq's
>>proposal (with which I agree) is to add an _additional_ 2/3 majority
>>requirement on top of the 100 vote differential requirement.
>  This is what I would like to add to the guidelines. 

But what will the REAL effects of this be?

As the net gets bigger, there will inevitably be more and more group
proposals -- too many to get careful attention from very many people.
But the larger the vote on anything, the harder it will be to get a 2/3
vote.  

So this would seem to promote two outcomes:

1.  Groups will have a better chance being created where the total vote
    is small, thus favoring creation of groups catering to smaller and
    smaller of the net as a whole.

>... the only groups that would have been defeated by this
>rule are exactly those that had huge flame wars over the name.

Exactly... there will be a bias against anything controversial... so we
have the other outcome:

2.  Groups will tend not to be created if there are even
    a small number of vocal opposers, because they will be able to
    generate enough controversy to make 2/3 support difficult if not
    impossible.

So what is this?  A backhanded way to restore the Old Oligarchy?
(AKA "The Backbone" ;-))

What do you _really_ want to do?

>... to use the THREAT of blocking creation to force the group champions ...

Exactly... and using anything, including a rule or a guideline, as a
"THREAT" is the best way I know to encourage people to try and subvert
it... so you will be BEGGING for the very rule violations,
irregularities, politicking, and so on, that you seem to want to prevent.

>  I'm going to take a survey. Please MAIL me your opinion: should the rule that
>would require at least 2/3 of the votes to be YES, in addition to the 100 more
>YES than NO rule, be added to the creation guidelines? 

I say NO.  I will send you mail...

>It seems clear to me that SOME kind of change
>is needed in the creation guidelines, and this seems to be the one that
>has generated the LEAST amount of controversy while addressing the problem
>of misnamed groups.

Give it time, Greg... I'm sure a controversy can be stirred up if we
all put our minds to it.........................

1/2 :-)

hb
-- 
Hank Bovis (hb@Virginia.EDU, hb@Virginia.BITNET)