Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!tank!ncar!gatech!bloom-beacon!apple!chuq
From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Newsgroup guidelines etc
Message-ID: <28488@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 6 Apr 89 16:34:25 GMT
References: <14681@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> <466@flatline.UUCP> <11241@well.UUCP>
Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps
Lines: 31

>I would abolish the current voting system entirely and let any site
>admin issue a newgroup any time they feel like it.

Down that road lies chaos. Look at alt.* as an analog. While alt works quite
well (and is significantly smaller than USENET) in most cases, there have
been a number of specious groups created and numerous rmgroup wars over the
last few years. Scale it up to USENET and I wouldn't want to see the
results.

>	* Moderate news.groups.  Restrict its content to newgroup
>	  and rmgroup proposals, and serious followup discussions.
>	  The moderator should reject flames.

If we adopt your previous suggestion, the first thing that would happen
would be the creation o net.groups.unmoderated, and nothing would change.
Either that or people would start sending out newgroup messages to
unmoderate news.groups again out from under you. If you don't enforce some
kind of control over group creation, you lose all protection for moderated
groups, because anyone can then pop in and unmoderated it. 

Which is a great reason to keep control over group creation, if you think
about it. 


Chuq Von Rospach       -*-      Editor,OtherRealms      -*-      Member SFWA
chuq@apple.com  -*-  CI$: 73317,635  -*-  Delphi: CHUQ  -*-  Applelink: CHUQ
      [This is myself speaking. No company can control my thoughts.]

USENET: N. A self-replicating phage engineered by the phone company to cause
computers to spend large amounts of their owners budget on modem charges.