Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!usc!apple!chuq
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Results of sci.aquaria vote
Message-ID: <36590@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 17 Nov 89 18:18:30 GMT
References: <36510@apple.Apple.COM> <17049@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU>
Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps
Lines: 31

hougen@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Dean Hougen) writes:

>Chuq, listen up.  People will regularly contribute to a system if they feel 
>that the system is in some way theirs.

Dean, something like 99% of the people on this net never vote anyway, and
I'd say a good portion of those either don't know of the newsgroup voting or
don't care. We could take away the whole voting priviledge and they'd never
notice. Also, please remember that this voting stuff is a pretty recent 
innovation on USENET, and the net didn't dry up and disappear back before it
was allowed.

>Take away their right (priv.) to
>participate in the decisions of USENET and the users will go.

Point of order. Most folks have a 'right' to participate in USENET decisions
only at the sufference of the people in charge of USENET. The people in
charge of USENET are the people who maintain the software, sites and
connections that make the net possible. Those are the people who have a
right to make decisions about USENET. The people who are passengers have no
'rights' (just as a passenger on a bus has no 'right' to tell the bus driver
to go somewhere other than where the bus route says it should go). That the
bus drivers give them the ability to make some decisions doesn't imply that
those decisions are somehow 'rights'.

-- 

Chuq Von Rospach   <+>    Editor,OtherRealms    <+>   Member SFWA/ASFA
chuq@apple.com   <+>   CI$: 73317,635   <+>   [This is myself speaking]

All it takes is one thorn to make you forget the dozens of roses on the bush.