Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uflorida!novavax!twwells!bill From: bill@twwells.uucp (T. William Wells) Newsgroups: news.admin Subject: Re: Scrap the current NG creation procedure, invent a new one Message-ID: <813@twwells.uucp> Date: 2 Apr 89 20:39:11 GMT References: <3010@looking.UUCP> <14200002@tippy> <3023@looking.UUCP> <4832@inco.UUCP> Reply-To: bill@twwells.UUCP (T. William Wells) Organization: None, Ft. Lauderdale Lines: 75 Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Keywords: In article <4832@inco.UUCP> mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes: : 1) Do we need any sort of policy-making body in Usenet, or for that : matter, do we need policies? Do we need the guidelines we already : have? Yes. We need the guidelines. Mostly so that responsible net.citizens have something to judge by. In other words, I, as news admin, *want* a set of guidelines that I can use to determine when I should pay attention to a newsgroup/rmgroup. Not because I couldn't use my own judgement, but, so long as the guidelines are reasonable, I can spend the time I would have had to in making decisions on better things. This, of course, applies to more than just newsgroup maintenance. There are many things on the net which depend on responsible individuals usually making similar decisions. Guidelines make that possible, without requiring everyone to become net.gurus or the existence of net.fascists. As for policy boards, no, I don't think we need one. I'd much rather see Usenet compete in its cooperative form against the other, more controlled, nets. Each has its merits. And besides, it makes a great experiment. : 2) Should we shift from a cooperative anarchy to some other form : of organization, such as a participatory democracy? If so, how : should we enforce the dictates of the majority? Should we have : the sort of "ruling council" that Brad has suggested? What happens : if the majority decide to ignore them? Does anyone remember the : Backbone Cabal? This is almost impossible. It would be possible for another net to eventually supplant Usenet, but Usenet itself can't be changed. Why? Because it would require the essentially unanimous agreement of the news administrators. That is so unlikely that I'd expect the sun to go nova first. I, for one, will refuse to participate in a net which is an absolute democracy, and you'd have to work very hard to convince me to participate in a constitutional democracy. And what would convince me is likely to offend others, etc. BTW, you have somewhat misrepresented Brad's proposal. Brad's "ruling council" is nothing of the sort, was presented as nothing of the sort, and would be laughed at if it were to try. As Brad said, such a council could only be advisory. You know, quite a bit of the controversy surrounding Brad's latest proposals was generated by such, I hope unintentional, misinformation. : Let's remember that the net is an anarchy not because everyone agrees : that that's the best way for it to be, but because there is no way to : impose any kind of order on it. There are no enforcement mechanisms. I'd like to slightly disagree with this. Usenet is not an anarchy, not quite; there are net.behaviors that will get you sh*tcanned by your friendly neighborhood government. This is not quite a minarchy either; there are no formal government rules, rather a nebulous out-there which we have to keep looking over shoulders to avoid offending. The closest I've seen is called "Propertarian", a kind of libertarian government. This form of government shares with anarchy a problem: that it seems unstable with respect to gangs growing in size and dominating the individuals. The net seems to be immune from this problem. Why I'm not sure. It may be that that is a pseudo-problem; it may also be that some factor peculiar to the net prevents it. Perhaps it is the fact that collective aggression *has* to be topography based (I can't agress against you without the cooperation of intervening sites) and the distribution of *ssholes and responsible individuals prevents that. --- Bill { uunet | novavax } !twwells!bill (BTW, I'm may be looking for a new job sometime in the next few months. If you know of a good one where I can be based in South Florida do send me e-mail.)