Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!spaf From: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: There isn't even a `backbone' alias any more Message-ID: <5034@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Date: 6 Oct 88 02:36:17 GMT References: <22931@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> <4996@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> <171@loquat.cis.ohio-state.edu> Sender: news@cs.purdue.EDU Reply-To: spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Lines: 78 In article <171@loquat.cis.ohio-state.edu> karl@loquat.cis.ohio-state.edu (Karl Kleinpaste) writes: >I remember getting your initial note saying you were debating doing >away with it. I don't recall being told that it would be gone by >thus-and-so a date. I never posted a deadline. I waited 3 weeks for responses & comments, and none came that weren't of the form "well, you're right, but let's not delete it because we don't have something else to replace it with" -- not a very convincing argument. >You may resent me saying this (and if so, I apologize in advance), but >I think you are carrying a really large and unhealthy grudge around on >this point. Not a grudge (and I don't resent your statement, but I do wish you understood) -- the very threat of such is why the backbone list was doomed. If the group that was supposed to come to consensus and negotiate agreements was breaking down that badly, it obviously was not functioning. The fact that the group couldn't agree on a definition of what an appropriate name was (and most didn't care enough to even respond) also said that the list wasn't working. >.... As Mel Pleasant >put it during the argument over c.s.w, I wanted us included because I >wanted us to have a say; and we have become sufficiently >well-connected that our loss of only 1 day's operation about 5 weeks >ago was described by one of our news neighbors as having caused a >`pathological news flow disruption' (or something like that; the exact >words escape me just now). Yes, but there are probably 100 such sites now. How do they get represented -- especially those that didn't want to get tainted with the name "backbone"? >I didn't consider `membership' in the backbone list to give us any >power of any kind - I just considered that it gave us opportunity to >have a say. And I did take that opportunity several (3? 4?) times. I never had any quibble with your expression of opinions. However, not everyone involved felt as you do, and not everyone outside the list saw the difference either. >The chaos in news.* is testament to the need. The deepest problem >was, as far as I can see, exactly what you stated in a note earlier >this week - that Usenet administrators, notably those on the old >backbone list, don't keep track of what's going on via news.*, nor any >other means, I suppose. That irritates me greatly: To find that >people running the Usenet at such major hosts just can't seem to be >bothered with the details of what people think of the Usenet. How do you propose to reach those people? Force them to read the mailing list you're going to set up? Or are you just going to mail it to them and hope they may read it? But you just said you were going to remove those who don't participate! As as far as people not caring -- that isn't it. But when people like Mark Horton and myself both stop reading much of the news we used to, what does that mean? And what do you do about it? Personally, I think the problem is bigger than any mailing list can solve. There has to be a major *social* change in the Usenet population, and I just don't see that happening. Meanwhile, alternate distributions and mailing lists increase in number as the overload on the traditional Usenet gets worse. Even Bob Webber seems to have tired of it and gone away, and Mark Ethan Smith is trying for a feminist "alt" group instead of the Usenet! I'm concerned about the future of the net, and I don't mean to nay-say your efforts. I encourage you to try another mailing list if you think it will help. I also encourage readers of news.admin to think about the future of the net and its current direction ... and then start some dialog here. -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-2004 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu uucp: ...!{decwrl,gatech,ucbvax}!purdue!spaf