Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Cabal
Message-ID: <3045@looking.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 89 22:08:18 GMT
References: <14681@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> <28375@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton)
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 32

Is 5 too small?  My original thought was 11, but I think that would
cause too much noise within UNLAB.

As I have always stated, the real principle of usenet "power" (heavy use
of quotes) derives from who pays the bills to feed the information around.
(Smaller amounts of usenet "power," derived from the above, include
that of moderators and authors of networking freeware.)

So of course, the decision to carry groups is one that is made by sysadmins
of non-leaf sites.  I have always said this, although perhaps not as
explicitly as that.

So we could have a committee of 300 or so site admins.  But the question
I asked was, "do these site admins *want* to sit on such a committee?"

I felt no.  I felt such sysadmins would rather delegate that power off
to some other people they trust.   I do not feel that unreliable polls
of general readership were the sort of thing the question should be
delegated to.  So I thought up the UNLAB idea.

It has to be something that sys admins are willing to, most of the time,
delegate the initial decision to, something that can make reasonable
decisions that people are likely to go along with, and something that
people are willing to sit on.

It is the last requirement that selected the number 5.  I doubt good
people would want to sit on a board of 25 members or more, unless
discussion was very limited.  A number from 5 to 11 allows serious
discussion to take place in a friendly atmosphere without swamping
the members.
-- 
Brad Templeton, Looking Glass Software Ltd.  --  Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473