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From: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: Proposed OFFICIAL Newsgroup Creation/Deletion Guidelines
Message-ID: <3007@epimass.EPI.COM>
Date: 24 Mar 89 02:06:59 GMT
References: <1634@ncar.ucar.edu> <11326@s.ms.uky.edu>
Reply-To: jbuck@epimass.EPI.COM (Joe Buck)
Organization: Entropic Processing, Inc., Cupertino, CA
Lines: 37

In article <11326@s.ms.uky.edu> david@ms.uky.edu (David Herron -- One of the vertebrae) writes:
>I have one change to suggest --
>
>That of the total number of votes, the yes votes need be greater than
>some percentage (66%?  75%?).  (While still being >100 vote margin)

While your proposal has some merit, the version that Greg Woods posted
has the advantage of representing the current consensus.  The three day
waiting period hasn't been specified explicitly before, but it's basically
the way things worked, since we generally waited until Spaf, Greg, or
some other generally recognized "important news honcho" posted the newsgroup.

In short, we already have a workable consensus on how to create groups,
and Greg has just spelled out existing practice.  Cases such as David
describes -- 400 vs 299 -- have never happened.  When we get large
numbers of votes it gets extremely one-sided.  I know they are possible,
but remember that since every news administrator is sovreign over his/her
machines, the rules only work if everyone assents to them.  How long
would it take before everyone agrees to some new formula?

Let's leave newsgroup creation rules as they are, since we already have
a rule that basically works.

(Oh, by the way, I applaud the choice of Greg Woods to fill Spaf's shoes).

However, we've never had a newsgroup deletion rule before, and I have
one major concern about Greg's suggestion.  Since a majority of 100
"yes" over "no" votes is required to KEEP a group, I'm concerned about
the possibility of "vote harrassment" -- essentially frivolous votes on
smaller groups where the people that benefit from that group have to keep
voting again and again.  (Bob Webber, are you still out there?  Think what
fun you could have with this rule!).  I'll cogitate on this one for a while
and see if I can come up with a better idea.


-- 
-- Joe Buck	jbuck@epimass.epi.com, uunet!epimass.epi.com!jbuck