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From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: The responsibilities of volunteers
Message-ID: <1990Dec9.231719.11572@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 9 Dec 90 23:17:19 GMT
References: <27662@cs.yale.edu> <8195@uwm.edu>
Sender: news@athena.mit.edu (News system)
Reply-To: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Lines: 49

In article <8195@uwm.edu>, jgd@convex.csd.uwm.edu (John G Dobnick) writes:
|> Let's deal in some facts, if you please.

  Yes, let's.  But let's deal with all of the facts, not just the ones that
are convenient for you, OK?

|> How long has Rich been moderating
|> c.s.u?  And, in that time, how many packages have been released?
|>   
|> To answer my own questions...
|> 
|> [a calculation that purports to show that since Rich took over, there have
|>  been an average of two packages per week posted to comp.sources.unix.]
|> 
|> What's *wrong* with you people?  *Two* "fixes" a week aren't sufficient?
|> Are you addicted to a constant flow of free code, or what?  

  Are you really trying to claim that an average calculation over the entire
life of comp.sources.unix (with Rich moderating it) is a valid indication of
the actual *current* status of the newsgroup?  That's completely ridiculous. 
Your analysis completely ignores the most important issues being discussed
here.

  First of all, we've been discussing the chronological (as opposed to
qualitative -- I don't think anyone here has challenged Rich's ability to do a
very good job on the submissions that *do* get posted) consistency of Rich's
moderation.  Over the last couple of years, it has become completely
impossible for an author to know, after submitting something to
comp.sources.unix, whether it would take a week, a month, or even a year for
the submission to actually be posted to the newsgroup.  Your calculations
ignore this.

  Second, as I have pointed out in another message, your calculations are only
relevant if you make the base assumption that the number of submissions to the
newsgroup hasn't risen since Rich took over.  But, in fact, it is almost
certainly the case that the number of submissions *has* risen, in which case
the output of the newsgroup should *also* rise; if it does not, then the
inevitable affect is longer delays, which is exactly what is being protested.

  Third, as I have pointed out in another message, it is ludicrous to try to
claim  two packages are posted to c.s.u per week, when six of the last twelve
months have seen *no packages at all* posted to the newsgroup, or at least,
not according to what's in the archives on uunet.uu.net.

-- 
Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
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