Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ide!hobbes.ide.com!cda
From: cda@hobbes.ide.com
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: newsgroup creation rules
Keywords: democracy, facism, anarchy, usenet
Message-ID: <33@ide.UUCP>
Date: 4 Apr 89 18:11:10 GMT
References: <3010@looking.UUCP> <3011@looking.UUCP> <2147@viscous.sco.COM>
Sender: usenet@ide.COM
Reply-To: cda@hobbes.ide.com ()
Organization: IDE, San Francisco
Lines: 29

Democracy is a noisy, cumbersome process.  Anarchy is noisier and more
cumbersome than democracy.  Facism is quiet and efficient.  Personally,
I prefer anarchy and treasure Usenet as one of the few working examples
of an anarchistic system.  I have administered the netnews at two sites now,
one of them the UC Berkeley computer center, and I'm more than willing to
put up with any amount of noise in order to give even those dreaded
undergraduate students a chance to have some control over one small aspect
of their lives. 


I believe that people in this country are trained to be irresponsible,
individualistic, and passive, because they make worse citizens and better
consumers that way.   It's not easy for any of us to learn to be
responsible participants in a cooperative system.   Usenet gives people
a chance to learn these skills.  If we can't learn how to cooperate
responsibly in an area as limited and non-essential as Usenet, I for
one don't see much hope for the future of our species.  I would hate
to see this anarchistic experiment terminated because some net bigwigs
don't want undergraduate students to have as much to say about newsgroup
creation as they do.

I don't see anything wrong with the current newsgroup creation procedure.
I like it.  I don't have to pay any attention to it at all.  I don't want
to have to decide things for the newsreaders at this site, or take
opinion polls of the newsreaders at this site, just because I administer
the netnews.  And I certainly don't want ANY five people deciding ANYTHING
for the whole net.

Charlotte Allen