Xref: utzoo news.groups:4549 news.admin:2625 Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!epiwrl!epimass!jbuck From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin Subject: Re: Democracy at work: Big brother is watching Message-ID: <2220@epimass.EPI.COM> Date: 15 Jun 88 17:04:54 GMT References: <56436@sun.uucp> <15613@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <4342@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <44373@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck) Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA Lines: 81 In article <44373@beno.seismo.CSS.GOV> rick@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams) writes: >Acutally, taking context into account, the exact threat was that >if Spafford unilaterally, without first obtaining some sort of >concensus of the "backbone", issued a newgroup, I would immediately >issue an rmgroup until the issue was settled. > >Quite a bit different from the original quote eh? Nope. Every other time a vote had been completed, Gene or Greg Woods IMMEDIATELY, without the approval of all the backbone admins, sent out the newgroup message. Your unilateral threat seems to be holding things up. >I'm still waiting for the answer to two simple questions: > > 1) Why comp.women instead of comp.discrimination or some such? Because we voted on it. There is precedent for it: the uk.wic group (women in computing). Why don't you go argue with the Brits about changing the charter for their group while you're at it? > Are women the only ones with these problems? If not, > why exclude the others. Because we voted on it. See above. > 2) Is this problem unique to the computer industry. If not, > why not sci.women or soc.wgas Because we voted on it. Newsgroups should address a specific area. Otherwise let's nuke everything except misc.misc. >The proponents of comp.women continually dodge these simple questions. >This to me implys that they can't make a case for it. We've discussed these questions for a month; haven't you been reading? >Any answers not directly addressing those fundamental questions >are irrelevant to the discussion. We've discussed it, and voted on it. >The group could exist TODAY as comp.society.women or soc.women.computers, >so this absurd claim that the very idea of the group is opposed is >total nonsense. The only basic argument has been the name. All other >discussion clouds the basic issue. I'd be happy with the name comp.society.women, and Trish says she'd have no problem with it either. But at this point, comp.women has been approved. So here's a proposal: 1) Create the group as voted on 2) Open up the floor for proposed name changes (comp.society.women has the best chance of passage). 3) If and when a new name is approved by the VOTERS (not by the backbone, but by the net as a whole), we change the name, by doing an rmgroup and a newgroup. Doing it this way will accomplish several things. We get the group as voted on, we preserve the integrity of the procedures we've set up, and in 30 days we'll probably end up with the name you want. I acknowledge the right of the backbone to refuse to carry any article. I do not acknowledge the right of any site to tamper with articles as they pass through, and installing an alias to turn an official name into an unofficial one is vandalism. So Rick, if you don't want to carry comp.women, don't. But don't go installing bogus aliases. No one's forcing you, and thanks to NNTP, if ZERO backbone sites carry the group and most other people do, it'll still spread all over the country. But if you start screwing around with group names because you personally don't like them, you'll wreck the net. Start acting like the servant of your customers, who are paying you for the service of providing news, instead of their lord. -- - Joe Buck {uunet,ucbvax,pyramid,}!epimass.epi.com!jbuck jbuck@epimass.epi.com Old Arpa mailers: jbuck%epimass.epi.com@uunet.uu.net