Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!unisoft!peritek!dig
From: dig@peritek.UUCP (Dave Gotwisner)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Scrap the current NG creation procedure, invent a new one
Summary: proxy voting, like with stocks (LONG)
Message-ID: <604@peritek.UUCP>
Date: 6 Apr 89 01:46:18 GMT
References: <3010@looking.UUCP> <445@flatline.UUCP> <3199@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <297@ubbs-nh.MV.COM>
Organization: Peritek Corp., Oakland, CA
Lines: 119

First, I am including this article, although many others say similar things
(ie., have a group of people vote for the larger group of people on the net).

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.
> 
> 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.

    One way to work this approach (or Brad's, or any one else's that I have
read so far, other than the original guidelines post) is to do something
that public companies do all the time when it is time to vote on board
members.  Corporations have a small board which is empowered by the stock
holders (at elections) to represent their interests in the large number of
decisions which affect the share holders.  Other major decisions are made by
the share holders, usually in proxy elections.

    Why not do something similar with USENET (no, I am not saying to file
papers and make it a corporation)?  If we have a "board" elected by the
readers (or site admins, or whatever) to manage the day to day administering
(seems like there already is this -- moderators and other key netters),
and site admins hold the proxies for their sites, seems like everyone is
included.  I as site admin am notified by the board, and I in turn notify
my readers through mail.  On votes, I could collect the votes from my
readers, and forward them to the board (or some member of the board for
counting).  On calls for discussions, etc. the same thing would work.
Someone mails a board member requesting a discussion period for such-and-such
new group.  The board member (or a moderator?) could mail the admin's a letter
telling them of the discussion period, and which group the discussion will be
held in, and the admin will again notify his readers.

    Why do it this way?  Most readers probably aren't interested in day to day
net operations, otherwise they would request to be site admins :-).  They would
probably be willing to trust someone they have a relationship with (like the
person who administers their site) to pass all requests which are important to
them on to them.

I as an administrator also have some
idea of who reads news on my site (simple shell script if I cannot already
determine it).  I, as an administrator am responsible to the people on my
machine(s) for the news feed working on the machine I am administering, plus
making sure maps, etc are updated.  As an admin, I am willing to trust a body
of people (10-15 seems about right, herein called the BOARD) to make the
majority of the net-wide decisions for me (they do now, anyway).  I have
a sense that most people wouldn't vote, but this gives them the opportunity
and they cannot complain later that they weren't included when the group
passes/fails.

Again, if someone (any news reader) wants to
be in on the discussion, they could (and they would know about it)

This method allows the largest number of people to have access to discussion
and voting than any of the others seen so far, cause they don't have to
regularly subscribe to a particular newsgroup for finding out what discussions
are pending or what votes are in progress.  Readers only need to include
themselves if they are interested.

This does not address the other matter being discussed about weighting the
vote towards those who pay the bills should have the vote, cause I think that
is stupid, for one reason:  namely, the admin people aren't necessarily the
ones who pay the bills, get the phone lines, etc.  The bigger the company,
(or organization) the more likely it's going to be someone in middle to
upper management, or someone not even in an MIS or engineering type of
role (the person here accountable for the funding on our machine, buying our
TB+, getting a new disk, etc, has only logged onto the machine once and has
never read news, and we are small, think of DEC, IBM, SUN, etc.)  Also,
if the site is a corporate site and the company is publicly held, the
stock holders have some say on how the money is spent (should we mail all
stock holders of all public corporations on the net for group creation/removal
since they are the ones who pay the bills?).  Or what about the people who
buy the products that are manufactured by people on the net, should we ask them
to vote?  Or, if it is a public university, should the tax payers or other
students be asked (after all, your new disk or new modem might cause tuition
to go up or more tax dollars to be diverted to the university)?  In all of
these cases, I say no.  As you can see, I don't think the people paying the
bills should necessarily have any say about the net, since they are (largely)
ignorant of it (as people who pay the bills; the same person could also be
a reader or an admin).

Although I am an American, most other countries on the net are democracies
to some extent (Great Britain, Canada, West Germany, the Netherlands,
Australia, etc.), I say to be as democratic as possible (and put in some
structure to support the democracy) rather than take away the 1 person 1 vote
rule.

We could keep the current newsgroup creation procedure, of some percentage
of yes votes vs. total votes required for creation, if we could guarantee
that ALL those interested in the discussion/vote are included.  What I
suggest does this.  Again, removal could require some (large) percentage
vs. total votes required for deletion.  If we wanted to also base creation
out of the total number of votes available, we could do this because the
site admins could give the number of readers on their system.  I have no
idea what the numbers should be for the yes/no, and percentages.

Finally, if a site does not want a group that others want, they can request
the admin to not carry it.  If they want a group that others outside the
site don't want (or if a few sites want it, and no others do), they could
create either a local group or set up a feed with the other site and
set up a local group between them.
-- 
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Dave Gotwisner					UUCP:  ...!unisoft!peritek!dig
Peritek Corporation				       ...!vsi1!peritek!dig
5550 Redwood Road
Oakland, CA 94619				Phone: 1-415-531-6500