Xref: utzoo news.admin:7876 news.groups:15313 Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!samsung!usc!apple!rutgers!att!cbnews!wbt From: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups Subject: Re: Fixing the unbroken Message-ID: <11939@cbnews.ATT.COM> Date: 4 Dec 89 15:11:41 GMT References: <623@banyan.UUCP> Reply-To: wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 99 In article <623@banyan.UUCP> gil@banyan.com writes: >In article <11832@cbnews.ATT.COM> wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019) writes: >>Let's consider the actual cost of the sci.aquaria debate: > >[gory details removed] > >>Was it worth it ? What was gained ? > >I don't get your point Bill, should we change the "voting" guidelines >or not ? First you agree with Jeff that the status quo works well >enough and then you tell us how badly it fucked up. I probably didn't make myself clear. My point was that, while what sparked the uproar was Richard Sexton calling the vote for sci.aquaria, whereas many people thought it should have been rec.aquaria, the uproar itself only happened because *people refused to abide by the guidelines then in existance*." Rather than let the vote run its course, everyone insisted on trying to abort it immediately. Various complaints I heard were: - Vote called for before the discussion period had ended - Vote called for without resolution of name issue - Sexton actively solicited votes from "uninterested" parties - etc During the vote, these and other issues turned news.groups into the most boring flamefest I've seen yet. Worse, even, than talk.politics.misc. Well, close, anyway. Kaldis never posted to news.groups. Anyway, all of these flames had nothing to do with, and would not be solved by, the fancy new voting proposals now being considered. None of these will solve the basic factor that allowed this whole affair ; that Usenet is an anarchy, and if somebody wants to ignore the rules, they can. Richard chose to violate certain guideline procedures (*), and the *violation* cased 6 weeks of screaming. Writing new procedures won't prevent him, or anyone else, from violating those, too, with the same results. (*) Some will argue whether guidelines were, in fact, violated. I won't. If you prefer, consider that the *perceived* violation of guidelines caused the arguments. Same effect... You could institute a rule saying "New groups will only be created if they are approved by Greg Woods, and no voting will be allowed or adhered to," and it won't prevent the next person from coming along and conducting a vote, anyway, while 50 people yell about the violation of the guidelines. We can't enforce the guidelines we have, so what's the point of writing new ones ? Now, I'm not claiming that it's therefore impossible to control new group creation. Rather, what I'm driving at is this: Stick to the guidelines we have, and leave the ultimate choice for group creation where it *always* was; in the hands of the administrator of each Usenet site. Remember, the votes are simply suppose to show support for the group, and opposition to it. They're not binding to the site admins; rather, they demonstrate to the admins that the group is worth creating. I think Richard's vote still contained that information; the huge "yes" vote indicated (*to me*) a bit of shady doings, but nonetheless a sincere interest in the new group, while the huge "no" vote indicated (*to me*) equally questionable turnout, and a sincere objection to the choice of name. That's all the information a site administrator needs to decide. Why does everyone insist on coming up with these new contrivances to make the admin's choice for him ? Don't you think she's capable of deciding for herself ? >All these new >voting mechanisms are supposed to _fix_ the above problem(s). Why not >give 'em a chance ? Because they won't fix the problem. The problem is not the creation of sci.aquaria; it was the weeks of anguish it took to get it over with. I believe that, had everyone just quietly cast their votes, rather than screaming back and forth in news.groups, it might have failed; it certainly would not have passed any more convincingly. So the result would be about the same; a narrow margin with several hundred no votes. And the site admins would have looked at it and said, "well, it made the 100 vote margin, but I think the name's stupid, and lots of people agree, so *I* won't carry it." Or decided to carry it, despite the large negative vote. Which is what we have now, except we did it the hard way. >Do you think we won't be able to change back to >the old mechanisms if the new ones don't work out ? No, I don't think we'll ever go back. That's not the way a bureaucracy works. - - - - - - - - valuable coupon - - - - - - - clip and save - - - - - - - - Bill Thacker AT&T Network Systems - Columbus wbt@cbnews.att.com "C" combines the power of assembly language with the flexibility of assembly language. Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com