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From: jpd@kepler.UUCP (John Donovan)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: Causes on the net...
Message-ID: <212@kepler.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Sep-85 13:14:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: kepler.212
Posted: Thu Sep  5 13:14:16 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Sep-85 07:03:26 EDT
References: <205@kepler.UUCP> <774@vortex.UUCP>
Organization: MicroPro Int'l Corp., San Rafael, CA
Lines: 30
Summary: net.peace won't do in Usenet

Lauren your objections to net.peace are well taken, but I don't agree
with them.  As for the objection that net.peace would "degenerate"
to a parallel of net.policics, what do you mean by "degenerate"? 
If you mean it will embody a heated exchange of ideas, then so be it;
I see that as a healthy use for the net.  As far as duplicating some
information in net.politics, it would take discussion off of that
group and transfer it to a subgroup, if you will.  there would be
a substantial transfer effect that would offset much of the increased traffic.
I believe this has happened with other split-off groups.  Do you want to
avoid this effect and allow the traffic on net.politics to make it even
more congested?

I agree that the net has a problem with traffic levels.  There is a simple
solution, however: each node can unsubscribe to newsgroups in which it
has no interest.  If everyone actually did this, it would relieve the storage
problems by a large order of magnitude.  I would hate to see net.peace be made 
the whipping boy for a larger problem that needs to be addressed.

The implicit question is, when do you start locking out new groups? It seems
to me that the net has been quite democratic so far, and that the diversity
of groups is a function of the diverse interests of net members.  Groups
that don't interest anyone die out; groups that interest members should be
allowed to bloom.  Diversity is the measure of health of any organism, both
here and in nature.

As far as not letting other prople on the net, that raises a problem that
is more dangerous than anything that I have proposed. Where do you
draw the line while maintaining some principles of fairness? More to the
point, WHO draws the line? If members want to see a new group, then
I think it should be allowed to happen.