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From: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: Democracy at work: Big brother is watching
Message-ID: <3354@phri.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jun 88 01:56:58 GMT
References: <56436@sun.uucp> <15613@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <10932@agate.BERKELEY.EDU> <4342@medusa.cs.purdue.edu>
Reply-To: roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith)
Organization: Public Health Research Inst. (NY, NY)
Lines: 34


	I used to be one of those concientious SAs who read all of news.admin
and news.newgroups and all those other fun groups and kept track of what was
going on.  Over the past few weeks I've done a full about face and turned
into one of those who-gives-a-shit SAs who can't be bothered to keep up with
what groups are being created and what groups aren't.  Why the change of
heart?  Mostly this comp.women garbage.  I just absolutely can't believe that
*any* decision requires this much discussion; certainly not a decision as
trivial as whether to create a newsgroup or not.  Come on guys; you're all
starting to sound like lawyers (or possibly worse) government officials.

	Rule number one of running anything: when faced with a choice, make
up your mind and do it.  A bad decision is almost always better than no
decision at all.

	Personally, I don't think comp.women should be created (I do like the
comp.society.{risks,women,etc} idea).  But, obviously 250 or so people
disagree with me and took the time to send in their votes.  What more do we
need?  A few years back I proposed rmgrouping net.general; I barely got 250
votes total!  Create the damn group and get it on with your lives.  What
difference could it possibly make one way or the other that's worth all this
screaming and yelling?

	A suggestion: why don't all the involved parties just get together
at Usenix and duke it out; when you all get back, let us know how it turned
out and spare us any more public feuding.  You know, for a while I was sad
that I wasn't going to be able to make this Usenix; if you guys follow my
advice and argue about comp.women there, at least I'll have some reason to
be glad I stayed away.
-- 
Roy Smith, System Administrator
Public Health Research Institute
455 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016
{allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net