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From: jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: v01INF1: Status - Status of comp.sources.reviewed
Message-ID: <1991Apr15.170137.6877@athena.mit.edu>
Date: 15 Apr 91 17:01:37 GMT
References: <1991Apr14.190013.9991@athena.mit.edu> <6338:Apr1420:14:1691@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1991Apr14.210953.12913@athena.mit.edu> <12178:Apr1512:46:5091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
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In article <12178:Apr1512:46:5091@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>, brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
|> >   Do you have some evidence to back up your claim that people are not getting
|> > what they expected to get?  If so, could you perhaps present it to us?
|> 
|> Sure. Journals do A. The current guidelines say B. You're considering
|> changing the guidelines to A.

  First of all, I don't understand what you mean here.  You have said that we
aren't really modelling things after a real journal (like you say we have
claimed), but here you say that we are considering changing the guidelines to
those of a real journal.  Perhaps you meant, "You're considering changing the
guidelines to C," or something like that?

  Second, as Andrew Patrick has pointed out other postings in this newsgroup,
there is little evidence to back up your claim that we are changing the group
as described in the charter.  I will not rehash what he has said, since he
said it well.  Incidentally, it seems to me that if the many people who voted
for the group thought we were changing it inappropriately, at least one of
them would complain, don't you think?  Instead, the only person complaining
about alleged changes after the vote is someone who voted against the
newsgroup in the first place.  Interesting.

  Third, the realistic/fatalistic point of view.  In the "real world" of the
Usenet, a moderator can do pretty much whatever he wants once a group has been
passed.  As I have said at least twice in other postings, if people decide
that the moderator has not met the goals of the group as described in the
discussion and voting, they will not use the group, and it will wither and
die.  If, on the other hand, they find the group useful, it will flourish.  As
someone else has pointed out in another posting, now that the vote has
happened and the newgroup message has been sent out, arguing about whether or
not we are sticking to the charter is an excercise in futility.  And if you
think that things shouldn't be that way, then you should be arguing to change
the way the Usenet works.  And comp.sources.d isn't the place for that
argument.

|> There is absolutely no way that all the
|> voters can be getting what they expected, unless they expected both A
|> and B. I find it highly likely that some of the voters would be (e.g.)
|> as shocked by the idea of publishing reviews as I was, if not more.

  Andrew Patrick has already pointed out that the question of publishing
reviews was discussed in the charter and discussion period, and that there
*are* journals which publish at least excerpts from reviews when papers are
printed.

|> Now it could be that people expected A, and you're going to end up with
|> A, and B was just a big mistake. In that case I'm justified for flaming
|> it, right?

  "Justified for flaming" is an oxymoron, IMHO.

  You can discuss how the group is going to turn out all you want.  At this
point, however, discussing the vote and whether or not we're sticking to the
charter strikes me as a most useless endeavor.

|> By the way, I didn't claim at first that people are not getting what
|> they expected to get. I said that they *may* get something only loosely
|> correlated with what they voted for. This is obviously true for any
|> group that considers drastic changes after the vote.

  You seem to be the only person who believes that the people running the
group are considering drastic changes after the vote.  And you have presented
little evidence to support this claim; I will begin to believe your claims
about what was said and not said during the discussion period and in the
charter when you start quoting from articles posted during the discussion
period.

-- 
Jonathan Kamens			              USnail:
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