Xref: utzoo news.admin:7883 news.groups:15335 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!watmath!looking!brad From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups Subject: Re: Fixing the unbroken Message-ID: <56882@looking.on.ca> Date: 5 Dec 89 09:29:50 GMT References: <623@banyan.UUCP> <11939@cbnews.ATT.COM> Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. Lines: 46 Class: discussion In article <11939@cbnews.ATT.COM> wbt@cbnews.ATT.COM (William B. Thacker,00440,cb,1D211,6148604019) writes: >Anyway, all of these flames had nothing to do with, and would not be solved >by, the fancy new voting proposals now being considered. >.... >We can't enforce the guidelines we have, so what's the point of writing new >ones ? Quite right -- there is no point in adding new rules, or more complex rules. This does not, however, invalidate the concept of a whole new set of rules. The trial newsgroup concept, as proposed by myself and others, goes in a completely different direction. And while you may not like some parts of it, it does not have the problem of discussion. There is no discussion at all. If we used trial newsgroups we could rmgroup news.groups and never miss it. No argument because there is nothing to argue about. That's the only way an anarchy can really work. You can never have a working anarchy by "voting." Remember the goals a newsgroup creation scheme should work towards: a) It must provide some sort of objective demonstration of how widely desired the group is. b) It must shut up the group champion if the group is not to be created. b.1) It helps if it has the illusion of democracy. c) It should be efficient, wasting a minimum of net admins time on pointless discussion, and it should discourage discussion of things that simply aren't worth discussing outside the new group itself. d) It should be fast where possible. e) It should pick consistent names. Trial groups perform excellently except on "e" which is an independent problem. I don't think the various suggestions that involve voting on names are good solutions at all. The current system does well only at b and b.1. But it is failing those, too. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com