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From: laura@hoptoad.uucp (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: New newsgroup proceedures, voting.. (long)
Message-ID: <610@hoptoad.uucp>
Date: Tue, 11-Mar-86 19:43:04 EST
Article-I.D.: hoptoad.610
Posted: Tue Mar 11 19:43:04 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 14-Mar-86 04:43:59 EST
References: <5075@alice.uUCp> <3326@sun.uucp> <1195@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> <1986@hao.UUCP> <1232@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU> <1989@hao.UUCP>
Reply-To: laura@hoptoad.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Organization: Nebula Consultants in San Francisco
Lines: 38

Allow me to get 2 cents worth in here.  It sounds to me as if the appeals to
democracy are an attempt to find a moral justification for doing what you
want to do.  Ditto with the complicated voting stuff.  Stop looking.

Case in point. Greg Woods at Hao stopped accepting a lot of newsgroups.
So the people in Colorado lose.  If Greg decided which groups to stop
receiving based on his own personal preference and didn't consider thiers,
then those people have a legitimite gripe with Greg.  If the Colorado
community want protest and say ``nuke net.singles, keep net.religion''
then they can do so.

BUT NOBODY ELSE HAS A CASE AGAINST GREG.  HAO is BROKE.  This is the
problem.  If you don't like this, send money to Greg Woods -- I am
*sure* that  he will take it.  Greg has no moral obligation to spend
money that he doesn't have, even though other people would like him to.

Setting up complicated notions of fairness to manipulate Greg into
paying money that he doesn't have *won't* *work*.  On the other hand,
there are those who would like to have their cake and eat it too.
That is to say -- Greg wouldn't have a problem if there were no
net.religion or net.politics.  (I happen to disagree with this
argument, but no matter).  So we get people to vote on killing them
either ``because we have too many newsgroups, and net.arch.compilers
is soo much a better newsgroup, and we couldn't simply *add* one...''
or ``because the cost of traffic is too much''.  But these arguments
for fairness are bogus -- you penalise the people who *are* willing
to pay because some other sites aren't.

What should happen is that every site should receive as much news as
they are willing to pay for, in whatever newsgroups they choose to
accept.  And no appeals are necessary -- since it is, after all,
their money.


-- 
Laura Creighton		
ihnp4!hoptoad!laura  utzoo!hoptoad!laura  sun!hoptoad!laura
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