Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!whuxl!whuxlm!akgua!gatech!seismo!hao!woods From: woods@hao.UUCP Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: Re: New newsgroup proceedures, voting.. Message-ID: <1986@hao.UUCP> Date: Fri, 7-Mar-86 17:47:11 EST Article-I.D.: hao.1986 Posted: Fri Mar 7 17:47:11 1986 Date-Received: Sun, 9-Mar-86 09:06:14 EST References: <5075@alice.uUCp> <3326@sun.uucp> <1195@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO Lines: 90 No reason why Spaf should always have to take all the heat, so I will take a stab at responding to this one. Obviously, the person who wrote this has no idea what is involved in administrating a backbone site. Let me see if I can enlighten you. > My model of how the USENET voting procedure would run is similar to > that of the electoral college. Each site gets to vote based upon how > many feeds they have, whether news developers are at that site, or > news moderators, or uucp map keepers, or what have you. Sounds good, but I'll wait until I see a reasonable implementation. See my previous article in this discussion. What's a "feed"? Does a long distance "feed" get more votes than a local one? What if they send us more than we send them? In short, good idea in theory, but an accounting nightmare (does that phrase sound familiar to anyone? :-) > There are those who seem to have a problem with this scheme. I wonder > why this is so. Simple practicality. Let's take a "close-to-home" example, with my recent cut of the "soapbox" groups from the hao system. Suppose the net as a whole, including my vote(s), decides that we should keep the soapbox groups. I tell my management this, and they say "off the net". Of course, that isn't what I would do. What I would probably do is cut the groups anyway, which results in an even worse situation that we currently have. Those "downstream" sites still get net.philosophy. You are correct that the sites that are willing to carry the groups should be allowed to continue to do so even if I drop them. But if they do, they shouldn't call the group net.something. They should be calling it co.philosophy, because that's what it effectively is there (unless someone has started a back door feed for those groups, which I doubt). The *FACT* is that the backbone sites WILL decide what net.* groups will exist whatever votes are taken. You cannot tell us what we have to pay for. And, equally true, I can't tell YOU what NOT to pay for. Any vote taken that doesn't have the approval of the backbone sites is a joke. Or at least, it isn't a NET group. > I guess what I am tryng to say is that fair is fair. What goes on in > USENET should not be decided by a select few, it should be decided in > a democratic manner. Wrong. It is and will be decided by those who bear the brunt of the cost. No amount of voting will reinstate net.flame, net.bizzare or net.religion on my machine, and since we pay most of the cost of transporting the news into Colorado, we effectively "vote" for all of those sites too, like it or not (in case you get the wrong idea, I'm not too thrilled about having to cut people off from news they want, but I'm constrained by budgets just like any other Gramm-Rudman site). > There should be some agreement among those who > participate in USENET that yes, you will have to play by the rules, or > else you have to get out of the game. I agree, except that what you mean by "the rules" and what I mean by that are different. We pay for it. You get what WE pay for (of course, if you want to pay for it yourself....) > (I know no such agreement > exists now, but in the future, failure to comply with the by-laws of > the net should be met with the possible suspension and/or removal of a > site from the net.) Oh? And what happens to the sites downstream from us if you decide to remove us from the net? Are you SURE that's the way you want to proceed? > One other thing: I do not believe there should be a ceiling on the # > of groups that are allowed. Since some sites don't carry all the > groups anyway, there's no reason why they should have direct influence > over those sites who are willing to carry them. Fine. Just don't call them NET groups if the backbone doesn't carry them. There will always be a ceiling on the number of NET groups. However many LOCAL groups you want will depend on the users and software in your area. > I wonder, for those > who favor a backbone-run network, do you realize the danger inherent > in dictatorship? I sure do. I hear you wanting to tell us how we have to spend our money. *THAT* sounds like dictatorship. --Greg -- {ucbvax!hplabs | decvax!noao | mcvax!seismo | ihnp4!seismo} !hao!woods CSNET: woods@ncar.csnet ARPA: woods%ncar@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA "If the game is lost, we're all the same; No one left to place or take the blame"