Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!CUNIXB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU!ab4
From: ab4@CUNIXB.CC.COLUMBIA.EDU (A. M. Boardman)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Cabal
Message-ID: <8904072234.AA10892@cunixb.cc.columbia.edu>
Date: 7 Apr 89 22:34:37 GMT
References: <28368@apple.Apple.COM>
Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Lines: 31

In article <28368@apple.Apple.COM> Chuq writes:
>>Considering that some site administrators represent thousands, some represent
>>hundreds, some represent tens, and some represent a site of one user, How
>>do you come up with the conclusion that limiting USENET proceedings to
>>site administrators is "in principle sound and fair to all"?
>
>They (1) maintain the news system, and more importantly (2) pay the bills.
>The folks with the checkbooks are the people who should have the final say.

Let's deal with #2 first, taking this site as an example.  There are 782
student accounts, with a fee attached to each for each fall/spring/summer
that the account is active, supposedly paying for all normal maintenance costs.
The university I am told pays for major equiptment expenditures.  The news
admins are employees, and in no way "pay the bills".  Most (all?) major
site admins are employees rather than owners of their system, where system
support fees come either from the users in some way (often the case at *.edu),
or from a nebulous bureaucracy which thinks that a Usenet is something to
catch Uses with.  The users are the ones with the proverbial checkbooks in
most places.

For #1
-- why give the people who maintain the news system even more work?
-- if they are just employees, see refutation of #2 above, and if it's a
   private system, why the hell is the admin giving people accounts when
   he doesn't want them using the system?
-- define news admin, anyway - again taking this site as an example, you've
   got a whole slew of admin types, and even a two digit number of root
   accounts.  How do you determine which one is THE administrator??

Andrew Boardman, student at large
ab4@cunixc.columbia.edu ab4@cunixc.bitnet uunet/rutgers!columbia!cunixc!ab4