Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!pasteur!ames!lll-winken!uunet!inco!mack
From: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Scrap the current NG creation procedure, invent a new one
Message-ID: <4833@inco.UUCP>
Date: 31 Mar 89 20:23:11 GMT
References: <3010@looking.UUCP> <445@flatline.UUCP> <3199@ddsw1.MCS.COM>
Reply-To: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)
Organization: McDonnell Douglas-INCO, McLean, VA
Lines: 36

In article <3199@ddsw1.MCS.COM> karl@ddsw1.UUCP (Karl Denninger) writes:
>In article <445@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP (J. Eric Townsend) writes:
>>In article <3010@looking.UUCP> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>>>Replace it with what?  The next posting says.  If you have a real
>>>replacement, let's hear yours, too.
>>
>>Not having read the next posting...
>>
>>A cabal.  Not a backbone cabal, but a siteadmin cabal.  A mailing list
>>limited to "root", "postmaster" and "usenet" at each site on the Usenet.
>>
>>Anyone wanting a new newsgroup would have to convince a site's usenet
>>admin (needn't be their *own* siteadmin, just any site admin) to bring
>>it up on the mailing list.
>>
>>Site admins would "vote" on newgroup creation, with the vote count/names
>>posted to news.admin (or wherever).  Summaries of mailing list traffic
>>could be regularly posted to news.whatever.
>
>I like this idea, as it keeps the administrators from feeling
>disenfranchised from the process.  This is, after all, what we're trying to
>achieve, yes?   A process that the administrators will accept is important 
>above all -- after all, they are the ones who either (1) pay the bills, or 
>(2) have to answer to the people who do pay the bills.

News administrators make up less than 10% of the membership of the net.
(I assume something close to 1 news admin per site. There are around
11,000 - 12,000 sites. There are, according to the last arbitron stats
I saw, something like half a million readers.) This scheme may avoid
disenfranchising the site admins, but it does so at the cost of disen-
franchising the other 90+% of the population.

Is this really what we want?

-- 
Dave Mack