Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site amdahl.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!whuxlm!harpo!decvax!decwrl!sun!amdahl!gam
From: gam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett)
Newsgroups: net.news.group,net.news
Subject: The politics of groups (of people)
Message-ID: <1996@amdahl.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 7-Sep-85 03:08:35 EDT
Article-I.D.: amdahl.1996
Posted: Sat Sep  7 03:08:35 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Sep-85 02:34:18 EDT
Reply-To: gam@amdahl.UUCP (G A Moffett)
Followup-To: net.news
Organization: Blue Mouse Trailer Resort, Hellmouth, CA
Lines: 17
Keywords: concensus democracy
Xref: watmath net.news.group:3701 net.news:3893


Once a group reaches a certain size, it ceases to be practical to make
decisions by consensus (and I am claiming that ``concensus'' was the
old-style method of decision-making on Usenet).

A democracy can make decisions, but since the vote-counting is
so important, the verification of one-person-one-vote becomes
costly (as we are seeing by the 'vote fraud' discussion).

A way of by-passing these political processes, as we are admitting to
ourselves they will not work for Usenet anyway, is to allow a
free marketplace to decide.  That is, as I said in my followup
to the ``Doomsday Cometh'' article, that each site decides what it
can carry and the aggregate of those individual decisions will determine
in which direction Usenet will go.
-- 
Gordon A. Moffett		...!{ihnp4,cbosgd,hplabs}!amdahl!gam