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From: laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: proposed 'standard' for creating new groups
Message-ID: <599@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Sun, 9-Mar-86 12:48:47 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.599
Posted: Sun Mar  9 12:48:47 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Mar-86 04:12:38 EST
References: <1073@burl.UUCP> <886@vortex.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@hoptoad.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 62

In article <886@vortex.UUCP> lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) writes:
>Greetings.  I'm not going to dig up all the details again, but as I've 
>pointed out in the past:
>
>1) Voting on Usenet is flawed.  If nothing else, we should be counting
>   ONE VOTE PER SITE, not one vote per person.  And any form of voting
>   in this environment is of only minimal value in any case.  If sites
>   are going to be counted, then the RATIO of sites that vote "yes"
>   to the TOTAL NUMBER OF SITES on the network should be the issue,
>   not the absolute number of sites.  The point is that it should be
>   necessary for a SIGNIFICANT fraction of the TOTAL network to be
>   interested in a topic before newgroup creation is even considered.

This would be a valid argument if the popostion ``I am going to
create net.frozzbozz and then traffic about frozzbozzes will increase
dramatically''.  But this doesn't happen.  What happens is ``there
is a lot of frozzbozz traffic in net.arch ... if we don't get it
out of here then a lot of people will unsubscribe.  But people want
to discuss frozzbozzes -- so give them their own group.''

I am one of the people who unsubscribed to net.sf-lovers because of the
high non-book content.  The last time there was a proposal for 
net.sf-lovers.movies (or net.sf-lovers.starwars) I lost out -- I
wanted the movie goers to go their own way.  As a result, I don't
read net.sf-lovers any more.

The greatest problem with voting is that people use it to express their
approval of the disirability of *anybody* discussing *anything* about
the topic.  A while ago, there was a discussion in net.micro.68k
about os9.  Hoptoad is a 68K system (Sun 3).  I can't remember whether
it was John Gilmore or I who finally got pissed enough to suggest
that the os9'ers move to their own newsgroup.

But there was a ton of followups which said ``OS9 is useless!! Don't
give it its own nesgroup!!!''  This is the wrong attitude to take.
The attitude is ``OS9 is useless.  Get it the hell out of net.micro.68k!!
Since the OS9'ers show no sign of shutting up, put them somewhere!!!''
[Note -- I don't know beans about OS9.  I don't think that it is
useless.  There are pleanty of useful things which I am not interested
in.  It is just fresh in my memory.

>
>2) Human nature is such that you'll almost always receive more yes
>   votes than no votes.  The people interested respond "yes," while
>   the people who don't care about such a group simply ignore the
>   whole issue and never bother voting "no."  Thus, the fact that you
>   get plenty of yes votes may still often mean that many more people 
>   thought the group was worthless, but didn't have the time nor
>   inclination to send in a vote.  Of course, the people who WANT the
>   group are highly motivated to vote yes.

So what?  If I were the *only* person who didn't care about OS9 and
nobody minded having 2 groups, why shouldn't I get what I want? It
is easy to read both net.micro.68K and net.micro.OS9 right after.
Nobody loses under this scheme, and even if I were the only person
who won -- would that be such a bad thing?


-- 
Laura Creighton		
ihnp4!hoptoad!laura  utzoo!hoptoad!laura  sun!hoptoad!laura
toad@lll-crg.arpa