Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!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: <4859@inco.UUCP>
Date: 5 Apr 89 15:13:36 GMT
References: <3010@looking.UUCP> <445@flatline.UUCP> <3199@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <3130@alembic.UUCP> <3658@ficc.uu.net>
Reply-To: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)
Organization: McDonnell Douglas-INCO, McLean, VA
Lines: 72

In article <3658@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>In article <3130@alembic.UUCP>, csu@alembic.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes:
>> In article <3649@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes:
>> >There is no "Franchise" on the net.
>
>> "disenfranchise[disfranchise], v.t., 1. to deprive of the rights of
>> citizenship, as of the right to vote or hold office. 2. to deprive of
>> a privilege, right, or power." -- Webster's New World Dictionary, Coll. Ed.
>
>> Now that you know what it means, may we proceed?
>
>1. The net is not a country, and we are not citizens.

The net is a community of interest and we, both admins and users, are
members of that community.

>2. Group creation is a privilege already restricted to site admins.
>   The right to create groups is restricted to major site admins.
>   The power to create groups is already restricted to site admins.

The actual act of sending the control message is restricted. The discussion
here revolves around the decision-making process that leads up to it. And
as the recent comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac newgroup demonstrated, *anybody*
with sufficient knowledge can send out the control message. Allowing only
a major site to send out the control message is a convention dating from
Backbone Cabal days and it's beginning to break down, in case you hadn't
noticed.

>What universal franchise do the readers and contributors of the net have
>that would be violated by restricting voting privileges to site admins?

It forces them to deal with their site admins to get what they want
rather than being able to say so directly. Imagine what kind of a burden
this would represent for the news admins at a university or a large
corporation. Anyone who can post to the net can currently vote for or
against any newsgroup. You are trying to remove this "right" - hence
the term disenfranchise.

>The right to flame about it in news.groups? But they'd still have that.

So what? The discussion period preceding a vote is useful (in theory) as
a means of clarifying the issues. The vote is the decision-making process.

>The right to vote? But many readers don't have that anyway. Look at all the
>complaints about votes not getting through. At least site admins would have
>a better chance of knowing how to get the vote recorded.

Are you serious? We should discontinue the voting procedure because some
of the votes don't make it to the vote-taker? Maybe we should discontinue
elections in the US because some of the voters can't find the correct
polling place.

>I'm not in favor of this proposal, at least not as a replacement for voting,
>but I think the emotional stance that there is some inalienable right to
>vote for groups is just plain wrong.

There is no such thing as an "inalienable right" any more than there is
such a thing as a "self-evident truth". We are trying to decide whether
or not we should change the current procedures on the net. It is my
position that users without root privilege are just as much members of
the net as the site admins and should have an equal voice in what
happens here. What happens at any particular site is the business of
the site admin and hir users, but I strongly oppose formalizing a
semi-feudal procedure where the site admin is the baron and the users
are the serfs. 

I also think representative government is obsolete and generally sucks,
but that's another issue.

-- 
Baron Mack of inco
welcome to SCAnet