Xref: utzoo news.admin:15457 comp.org.eff.talk:2819
Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!usc!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!mcnc!duke!wolves!ggw
From: ggw@wolves.uucp (Gregory G. Woodbury)
Newsgroups: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk
Subject: Re: What is Usenet? LONG!
Summary: The Evolution of Usenet
Message-ID: <1991Jun23.050938.29045@wolves.uucp>
Date: 23 Jun 91 05:09:38 GMT
References: <1991Jun8.181726.1592@newshost.anu.edu.au> <1991Jun9.225229.25374@alembic.acs.com> <1991Jun20.212602.14470@newshost.anu.edu.au>
Followup-To: news.admin,comp.org.eff.talk
Organization: Wolves Den UNIX
Lines: 267
X-Checksum-Snefru: 6c95ef4c e322b061 cf184446 13913ee0

Albert's latest has sparked some hard thinking about my view of the net,
and this article represents my initial responses to changes in that
view.  Since I wrote it as the changes were occurring, there is some
rambling in places.  I hope that it can provide a springboard to the
discussion that Albert hopes for.   
					Greg Woodbury

In article <1991Jun20.212602.14470@newshost.anu.edu.au> cmf851@anu.oz.au 
(Albert Langer) writes:
>In article <1991Jun9.225229.25374@alembic.acs.com> csu@alembic.acs.com 
>(Dave Mack) quotes and writes:
>
[Albert, referring to an old thread in news.admin]
>Well, to be honest I don't think the subject merits the 100 or more
>postings that have been devoted to it so far. The last batch was
>sufficiently vacuous for me to take a break and enjoy my other hobby of
>banging my head against walls before returning to the fray.

	So do we all Albert, sometimes there are some changes in the
perceptions along the way.

>On a more serious note, I think Tom Neff addressed a more important
>reason for caring than the one that motivated me - describing
>Usenet to new users as an amorphous blob with no organization, tends
>to undermine the degree of organization that has been achieved.

	No one is denying that there is a self-perpetuating entity with
a high degree of organization that we all know and love under the
convenient handle of "Usenet".  The issue is how to characterize that
particular organization.

>The reason I cared was more a result of what I saw as a concerted
>attack on democratic voting during the m.a.g. discussion. In
>retrospect I can see it was just hot air from some windbags, whose
>concentration span is so low that they could not even follow through
>when the renaming vote produced a predictably inconclusive result.

	Oh please, at a certain point it becomes obvious that a
particular point of view is not being shared by those-who-count-in-
the-net (be they the mythical citizens or the sysadmins).  When it
becomes obvious that some group is going to be emplaced despite all
sorts of procedural errors and serious concern over the content of the
group in the main hierarchies, all one can do is sigh and wait for a day
to come when it is appropriate to say "I told you so" (if appropriate).

>Although some people keep emphasizing how it's "only" Usenet and not
>the "real" world, I think Usenet is a very important and valuable
>achievement which has many lessons. Computer mediated communications
>are certainly set to "take off" far beyond the present academic/research/
>computer hobbyist circles and could quite soon embrace practically
>anybody with access to a wordprocessor - which would soon include most office
>workers and most people that have an advanced Hi Fi set. Whether or not
>Usenet succeeds in continuing to evolve and adapt, the structures that
>emerge to cope with that will benefit from discussion of what Usenet is
>and what it is becoming.

	Usenet is certainly a prototype of some kind of electronic
community.  When it started, the hard core computer types were the
creators of a new medium for themselves to use and play with each other.
As the academic networks grew, and the Internet became more and more
used, more and more users (who are NOT hard core computer types) have
entered into the net and forced it to adapt to their presence.

	B-News was a major correction, as was the "great renaming".
Evolution is in effect and Albert's comments have effected some change
in my perceptions of Usenet. I still disagree with some of the positions
he holds, but I understand him more fully.

>I would prefer to move on to discuss what Usenet is becoming, and what it
>should be becoming, once we get past the blindspots about what it is. In 
>particular I think the shift in decision making power from "system 
>administrators" to "users" is an interesting and remarkable phenonoma, which 
>should be analysed and understood, but cannot be while a polite "fiction" is
>maintained that system administrators still have the decisive say over
>the shape of the net which they had in it's early days.

	Well then, let us recognize a distinction between the FORM of
the net and its CONTENT.  The two are related, but can be considered
distinctly.  The content is changing more and more to a
consumer-oriented market, giving the users what they want, rather than
what the admins THINK they want or tell them what they want.  I see this
as a direct parallel to the more traditional (american) broadcast
markets' evolution.  When TV became a viable medium (economically) and
more persons became "viewers", the producers told users what they wanted
and Groucho Marx became an institution.  Later, viewers became more
vocal about what they desired and we have Dennis the Menace and Mr Ed
and My Favorite Martian (segue into Quantum Leap and Twin Peaks and
Dallas).
	Finally, we have cable in more than 50% of american (usa)
households, and the alternative networks are gaining more audience at
the expense of the old broadcast networks.  Meanwhile, the broadcast
stations, stuck in an outmoded situation, but not able to change the
situation (due to regulation/inertia) give an appearance of becoming
more "democratic" and thrashing about producing more pap in an attempt
to salvage market share.
	Usenet is currently in a content situation where there is a
rapid growth of special interest groups, all vying for market share, and
still thinking that the effective way is to get onto the broadcast bands
and be supported by the public wheal.  Other groups are using similar
technologies (e.g. video/usenet) in directed ways (e.g. cable vs
broadcast / news vs mail) to find their markets.

	Then there is the FORM of Usenet.  Sites in discreet situations, run
by folk caught in a mode of private service providers.  New situations
are emerging and new administrative paradigms are needed to allow
effective management.  However, the inertia of the given situation does
not allow the rapid development of techniques for quasi-public
information management - it is still being looked at as a set of
discreet sites.

>(Dave Mack - remember him?)
>>I administer two sites on Usenet, neither of them terribly important.
>>There is nothing that the rest of the sites on Usenet can do to remove
>>me from the net, force me to stay on the net, keep me from issuing
>>a newgroup control message, force me to honor one, or prevent me
>>from posting anything I damn well please. The individual sites that
>>I communicate with have the power to disconnect me, but I doubt that
>>they are likely to do so as a result of any democratic process.

	And here is the prime example.  Dave is at (according to his
address) a commercial site in the USA.  This is the cultural bastion of
feudal thinking in the world today! :-)  {IMHO - I have my own private
site too!}
	In his situation, what he says is true.  There is no
quasi-democracy telling him (or the company) how they are going to
devote their resources or dictating the form of Usenet.  The content
that is seen within that form, however, is being driven by this
quasi-democratic conception of Albert's.  It is "market pressure" that
"encourages" Dave to go along with the rest of Usenet.  This is in the
form of the simple dis-incentive of - if he adopts a severly different form,
the content is going to be of less value.

>Indeed, and much the same is becoming true for your users too. But isn't it 
>even more interesting that you as a system administrator have no more say 
>than any other user on whether a newsgroup gets propagated widely or not? 
>There is nothing you can do, apart from voting, that has the slightest 
>influence on whether a given newsgroup will succeed or fail. Any newgroup 
>or rmgroup control message you may issue will affect only a few sites 
>downstream from you (until they arrange a more reliable feed) and your own 
>users (until they arrange a more reliable sysadmin or find a better system).

	On the other hand, if a site determines that it is going to quit
carrying a group, a new subset of Usenet comes into existence.  If that
subset is sufficiently large, the rest of the net notices and moves to
conform/adapt.  There is still a feudal sitation around in that most
sites are not set up to really allow users the option of forcing a
change in the sysadmin (or even change sites) if they don't like the way
that subset of the Usenet is formed.

>If you disagree with that description of the way things are, by all
>means refute it. If on reflection you agree with it, then please
>reflect on why you focussed on your administration of sites rather than
>on the position of all (equal citizen) Usenet users. It seems to me that
>the changes which have occurred in the status of users have not fully
>registered. They are called citizens now, not serfs. THIS DISCUSSION
>IS NOT ABOUT WHAT YOU AS A SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR CAN AND CANNOT DO.

	Yes and no.  The models of site administration are still
holdovers from the Middle Ages! (or is it that they are just middle
aged? :-)  A few large university sites may have a strong enough user
base to qualify as a democratic city-state, but most sites are still the
feudal demense of the administrators and the system owners.

	It may be that I am just sitting in a backwater and preserving
an illusion of my own self-importance, but the commentary seen flowing
past in the net leads me to think that my world view (or net view - I
guess that is someone's TM :-) is not too badly out of whack.

>It is about "What is Usenet" and one point Chip accepted immediately is
>that Usenet is not a set of machines, or even their administrators, but
>of people who exchange articles under "universally recognized newsgroup
>labels". Those people writing and reading the articles are Usenet and they 
>would find ways to go on doing so if every single sysadmin collapsed
>foaming at the mouth tomorrow. (Most likely by hiring some of the
>excellent software developers around to finish the job by automating
>the role of sysadmin :-)

	Here is the rub.  If all the sysadmins walked out and went on
holiday for (lets say) three days, Usenet (and the Internet) would
collapse into chaos.  The amount of work necessary to keep a site
running (Usenet facilities only) varies from minimal to full-time.  It
is in NO CASE zero.  Until the majority of sites can have usenet run
completely automagically (with zero human effort), the sysadmin is going
to be a necessary piece of the pie.
	This site runs pretty smoothly, but I still spend several hours
a day keeping it going.  My upstream (currently) is a major node that
has several people devoting a fair amount of their ("spare" :-) time to
Usenet.  If these folk decided to let Usenet "run itself" for any length
of time, a major portion of the net would collapse.  If only the top 50
(or so) sites of Brian Reid's "influence list" were to drop out, the net
would collapse.

	To be sure, something else (with a strong resemblence to Usenet)
would arise in a few days time, but the effect of the temporary collapse
would set in motion such changes that Usenet' (prime) would not be the
same as Usenet.

>Part of the confusion is created by avoiding the issue of citizens v serfs
>under cover of mixing up feudalism with anarchism. "We are all equal
>Lords of our domains with no central authority" say the feudalists,
>but "all" does not count the serfs, who meanwhile have setup a
>Republic and do not recognize feudal authority.
> No wonder
>that in western societies the King and the people united to crush
>the Barons long ago.

	The serfs don't "just set up a Republic" and rennounce the
feudal authority.  The development of the independent city-states is a
necessary step in the history of democratic development.  And be
careful, it was the feudal barons, upset with the usurpation of their
feifdoms by King John that sparked the signing of The Magna Carta and
the establishment of Parliament.  Only later, after the Universities had
nucleated the development of urban centers, were the barons forced to
add the House of Commons and create a true democratic situation.

>A glance at news.groups will show you how Usenet ACTUALLY decides
>on new newsgroups. Yet the widespread consensus remains among
>sysadmins that voting is an illusion to keep the serfs in line.
>Since in fact the power of sysadmins is now largely illusory, while
>that of citizens is real and being exercised daily, it would be more
>accurate to say that the special role of sysadmins, which many
>sysadmins believe in so passionately, is purely a polite fiction
>like the special role of the British monarchy, to keep the
>aristocrats in line.

	You insist on your own model as the only valid situation? The
content is a market-driven  quantity.  News.groups is the indicia of the
market.  The site admins respond to the market pressures to maintain a
market share (because it pleases them to do so, or the system owner says
that you will provide this service so that we can make money...)
	The sysadmin may be an illusory power figure, the real power is
(as always) where the money is that provides the wherewithal.  I will
not press this economic model further tonight.

>A glance at comp.admin.policy will show you quite a few
>sysadmins have the most amazing illusions about how "Usenet
>(and even email!) is a privilege" which they can somehow keep the unwashed
>masses of undergraduates from "abusing". Apparently they
>haven't heard about public access sites, waffle and
>related developments. They are going to have to wake up
>and smell the coffee some day soon.

	The money will still come from somewhere, and the "gold rule"
will still apply.  The situation will only get worse as "public" users
enter the net.fray.  The burden of public sites may make the system
break down in such a way that a population split becomes necessary.
Take a look at the history of "FidoNET" to see what might happen.
Common technology, disjoint populations.  Take a look at cable
television to see what might happen - generic technology (video),
disjoint populations (different communities, different services).

	Finally, take a look at the human species - one species
(biological technology) and disjoint populations (segregation by nearly
any basis you care to mention :-(

	Usenet will evolve in a similar manner.  A generic technology
and disjoint populations.  That fissioning is already in progress.

	Usenet will go on, but which "Usenet" will be the "real Usenet"?


					Greg
-- 
Gregory G. Woodbury @ The Wolves Den UNIX, Durham NC
UUCP: ...dukcds!wolves!ggw   ...mcnc!wolves!ggw           [use the maps!]
Domain: ggw@cds.duke.edu     ggw%wolves@mcnc.mcnc.org
[The line eater is a boojum snark! ]           <standard disclaimers apply>