Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!shamash!nic.MR.NET!xanth!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: <4862@inco.UUCP>
Date: 5 Apr 89 16:38:22 GMT
References: <3010@looking.UUCP> <445@flatline.UUCP> <3199@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <4833@inco.UUCP> <297@ubbs-nh.MV.COM>
Reply-To: mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack)
Organization: McDonnell Douglas-INCO, McLean, VA
Lines: 47

In article <297@ubbs-nh.MV.COM> noel@ubbs-nh.MV.COM (Noel Del More) writes:
>In article <4833@inco.UUCP> mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes:
>>
>>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.
>
>What you say is indeed true, however, it is the administrators that
>allocate system resources, pay the bills and put up the occassional grief
>in order to support usenet and its readers.
>
>This is fact, regardless of the size of the system involved.

True, but changing the voting procedure will not alleviate any of those
burdens and will probably make the problems worse, not better. Right now,
all a news admin really needs to worry about is who approved the newgroup
message. If it was somebody like Gene Spafford or Greg Woods and the path
looks reasonable, it's OK. If they really hate the group, or feel that
they shouldn't carry it for some reason, fine, no one can force them to,
but that's a local decision.

The proposed news-admin-only approach means that news admins have to
deal with a mailing list, which will, I guarantee, be as flame-filled
as news.groups currently is, *and* with the local users who can no longer
take it directly to the net. The first problem can be alleviated by
simply ignoring the mailing list, but the second won't go away.

As far as I can see, this approach will piss off 90+% of the net and
create additional burdens for the news admins. Everybody loses. It
seems like a bad idea.

>Perhaps a two tier approach should be considered, the first tier being
>composed of the readers, the second being system administrators who would
>then vote collectively upon the recommendations of the readers.

The system you're proposing currently exists, except that news admins
don't do it collectively, they do it individually. The interested members
of the net vote, then each admin decides whether or not to honor the
vote. If a sufficient number of news admins decide not to carry the
group, the fragmentation is sufficient to kill the group off except
in small pockets. 

-- 
Dave Mack