Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wasatch!cs.utexas.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!bellcore!texbell!flatline!erict
From: erict@flatline.UUCP (J. Eric Townsend)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Scrap the current NG creation procedure, invent a new one
Message-ID: <473@flatline.UUCP>
Date: 6 Apr 89 09:49:36 GMT
References: <3010@looking.UUCP> <445@flatline.UUCP> <3199@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <4833@inco.UUCP> <3649@ficc.uu.net> <3130@alembic.UUCP> <462@flatline.UUCP> <4860@inco.UUCP>
Reply-To: erict@flatline.UUCP (J. Eric Townsend)
Organization: Cold Lampin With Flav'
Lines: 49

In article <4860@inco.UUCP> mack@inco.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes:
>In article <462@flatline.UUCP> erict@flatline.UUCP (J. Eric Townsend) writes:
>What does this have to do with newsgroup creation? Users shouldn't
>be allowed to vote because your spool directory fills up? Be serious.

No, that's not exactly it.  Stop picking nits.  My original asserition
was (and is) that the *final* responsiblity for creation/selection
of groups/policies/whatever should be left up to the people that actually
pay for (or answer to the people that pay for) all this stuff we call
Usenet.

Many people complained about the S/N ratio of news.groups.  I suggested
that we just pull the "unwashed masses" :-) out of the loop.  I'd be
just as happy with both news.groups and a moderated admin only group
where the actual details were hammered out.  news.groups could be
the playground for comp.soft-sys.andrew and all the other goofy ideas
that come along every other week.  news.groups.d (for example) would
be a forum for the final discussion and vote amongst admins that all
users would be able to read.  (I'm responsible for some alt.havoc
myself, so I can't really call anyone else a name. :-)

>Unfounded guess: most of the people who favor this proposal administer
>tiny sites with very few users. Warning to Karl Kleinpaste and Bob
>Sutterfield: from now on, you're the point of contact for all the OSU
>students who want a newsgroup created or deleted.

How many new newsgroups are suggested in a year, and from how many sites?
Not that many, IMHO.

>Eric, it's pretty obvious that you've never had to be responsive to the
>demands of a large group of semi-computer-literate users.

No, I've had to be responsive to large groups of computer literate or
computer illiterate, but never semi-literate. :-).  Seriously, though,
I've only admin'd over seasoned developers and braindead salesmen.
I've never had to deal with university vax potatoes. 

I'm really not out to change the system.  Brad T. saw a problem and
suggested a solution.  I didn't like the solution, so I proposed a
different one to solve his problem.  I'm not really that bothered
by the news.groups hassle, I live in alt.land and unix-pc.all for the
most part.


-- 
J. Eric Townsend | "Type 'make'.  If you get errors, stop and fix them."
 uunet!sugar!flatline!erict |  -- Eric S. Raymond, in TMNN documentation.  
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