Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!rutgers!att!dptg!ulysses!andante!alice!jj
From: jj@alice.UUCP (alice!jj)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Fixing the unbroken
Summary: Don't fix what's not broken
Keywords: ok as is, why bother with these hopeless voting schemes
Message-ID: <10200@alice.UUCP>
Date: 1 Dec 89 16:13:44 GMT
References: <7139@ficc.uu.net> <479@scorn.sco.COM>
Reply-To: jj@alice.UUCP (alice!jj)
Organization: ATT-BL, Murray Hill, Signal Processing Research Department
Lines: 66

In article <479@scorn.sco.COM> davidbe@sco.COM (The Cat in the Hat) writes:
>
>news.admin's own jeffd@ficc.uu.net (jeff daiell) said:
>-
>-All of the proposals for new voting schemes -- and they seem
>-to be getting hairier by the moment -- ignore one fact:
>-the status quo works pretty well.  An occasional abuse,
>Hear hear!
>
>STV or Mauve or whatever may be nice, but it doesn't change the fact that
>it's fixing something that's mostly not broken.  Sure, the current system
>needs a little adjustment (what's the status on the 2/3 yes vote idea, 
>anyway?) but that doesn't mean it's broken.

Hear! Indeed.  The system isn't broken.  There's no need for such
utter paranoia about adding newsgroups.  There's no sensible reason
to have limits on the number of newsgroups, because the limits won't
have any notable effects, mismanaged and/or misrepresented
statistics to the contrary.  The only thing that IS somewhat sensible
is requiring a sensible name-space, and please notice the
"somewhat". 

The fact that sci.aquaria passed in the "wrong place" seems to be the
root cause of this latest outburst of proposed net-control. (It's not
censorship, it's not fascism, it's not anything but an attempt at control
of an anarchy, a "controlled anarchy" being a nearly ultimate oxymoron.)

We have a completely satisfactory solution in sci.aquaria.  Some people
elect not to carry it. Fine, this is an anarchy, and that's their part
of the anarchic society (so to speak).  If we create rec.aquaria, more
people may carry it, but it won't get the wide distribution of sci,or
maybe it will.  Who can tell?

Of course, the fact that it's controversial, and that it was introduced
against lots of sensible advice and with great antagonism will
forever (in net-terms, which have a memory of about half
a year) cripple any aquaria newsgroup, I'm sure, so we even get
to see the effects of such behavior in such an anarchy.
Gosh, can you say "self-regulating"?  I KNEW you could.

This all begs the question of why the "regular net" (as opposed to
alt.*, none of which I've ever seen) cares at ALL about new groups.
I hear comments about "namespace pollution", I hear arguments
about "user unfriendliness", but mostly I see attempts at
keeping the status quo from people who seem to me to be more
concerned with controlling the net than with the exchange (you
note the lack of the word "free" there, please, the net, in no
sense whatsoever, financial or otherwise, is free) of information.

Now, there are a lot, and I mean a LOT of people out there who
help make nutnoise run, so given them credit for their
work, and accept what they do to the machines under their
control.  If you don't like it, buy your own (*&%^*& machine,
find a feed, and do it your own way. 
There are also some people (there's ALWAYS SOMEONE) who must take advantage
of the system, but in self-

Oh, why bother?  Nobody cares, nobody listens, so why bother?

I think that one definition of maturity is when you start to hate
nutnoise.  Bye.
-- 
Once I wrote a    *Mail to jj@alice.att.com  or alice!jj
Sonnet, now it's  *HASA, Atheist Curmudgeon Division
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