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From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: Proposed OFFICIAL Newsgroup Creation/Deletion Guidelines
Message-ID: <27806@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 24 Mar 89 20:23:24 GMT
References: <1634@ncar.ucar.edu> <37740@bbn.COM>
Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps
Lines: 66

>1. On your proposed waiting period - I'm not sure 3 days is anywhere near
>enough, given net propagation delays. I would say 10 days would be the minimum
>to ensure that all objections have been seen.

I'd leave it at some small, reasonable time. Three days isn't unreasonable.
If you look at the propogation times from uunet, most messages get through
the backbone very quickly, and it's very unlikely that a site far enough out
not to see a message in three days is going to be a site that's in the
middle of a controversy. 

Remember, if a group is created and a controversy erupts, it can always be
un-created if it was found to have been created incorrectly. There is
precedent for that. There's no reason to wait unless there's a general
feeling that the vote is going to be challenged, and I think it's a safe bet
we'll know in advance what votes are going to be controversial.

>2. On deletion - I think it should be harder to delete a group than it was to
>create it in the first place. On the other hand, if nobody cares enough to
>vote, the default should probably be to delete. I propose an alternate set of
>guidelines: 50 votes to keep are enough to keep the group, and votes to delete
>aren't counted at all.

Make the size of the required margin dependent on the volume. A group that
is rarely/never used should be easier to get rid of than a group that has a
high volume. And I disagree that it should just be "keep" votes. Put the
burden of proof on the people who want to delete a group by making the
default to keep it. Therefore, the vote should be some percentage of votes.

Hmm. A thought just occurred to me. The "100 more yes than no votes" has
always been somewhat controversial because the absolute number is relatively
easy to overcome. Thinking about it, a better way is to define succeed/fail
in terms of percentages. How about this:

o A group creation vote succeeds if 67% of the vote is for creation.

o A group deletion vote succeeds if 67% of the vote is for deletion.

o In both cases, if the number of spoiled or proven missing ballots exceeds
  2% of the total vote, or if enough spoiled/missing votes are found that
  would have changed the result of the vote, the vote must be re-taken
  by an agreed-upon neutral third party.

o Any vote with less than 150 total votes will be considered failed for 
  lack of interest.

This puts the bias against creating groups and against deleting existing
ones. A group that cares about it's survival should be able to roust enough
votes to stay above the 33% limit. And it sets up the success to be relative
to the total interest in the group rather than trying to set some arbitrary
number (with a low-end limit set in to keep ennui from taking hold).


>3. It seems to me that deleting a moderated group should follow the same
>guidelines. What we need is some way to ensure that the call for votes gets
>out, to the group, even over the moderator's objection.

>4. Finally, it seems to me that we may need a way to force replacement of the
>moderator of a moderated group.

Whenver there is a controversy over a moderated group or a moderator, I
think it's critical that any voting be monitored by a neutral third party.
That way neither side can claim bias and muddle the proceedings with their 
noisy whimperings. 

Also, there should be procedures for turning groups moderated and
unmoderated, as well as changing moderators.