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From: mesard@bbn.com (Wayne Mesard)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Voter registration
Message-ID: <48535@bbn.COM>
Date: 20 Nov 89 18:11:17 GMT
References: <4199@nigel.udel.EDU> <2421@stl.stc.co.uk> <48464@bbn.COM> <1989Nov19.213702.21187@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu>
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Reply-To: mesard@BBN.COM (Wayne Mesard)
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tlegelst@uokmax.ecn.uoknor.edu (Thomas Lynn Egelston Ii) writes:
>Under your proposed system, I would
>not be granted a vote for a group that I truly am interested in, because even
>though I may have been reading comp.graphics for a year, I've only thought
>(or known?) about voting for new group creation for two weeks.

Right.  That may sound harsh, and is certainly a radical change from
current Usenet philosophy (where a yes vote is interpreted as "I'd
probably read this group" rather than "I think this group would be a
Good Thing for the net").  But as others have pointed out, continuity
and consistency are two of the most important ingredients in a
classification scheme.  People who come to a vote with a private agenda,
and have not witnessed/"thought about" newsgroup creation can provide
neither.

In other words, membership in the Usenet parliament would be restricted
to those who have acquired a sense of Usenet social norms.  Of course,
as an interested party and veteran of comp.graphics your expert
testimony would be invaluable during the discussion period.

-- 
void *Wayne_Mesard();         Mesard@BBN.COM         BBN, Cambridge, MA