Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!purdue!haven!ames!oliveb!amdahl!apple!well!tneff
From: tneff@well.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Newsgroup guidelines etc
Message-ID: <11269@well.UUCP>
Date: 7 Apr 89 22:47:32 GMT
References: <14681@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US> <466@flatline.UUCP> <11241@well.UUCP> <28488@apple.Apple.COM>
Reply-To: tneff@well.UUCP (Tom Neff)
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, Sausalito, CA
Lines: 58

In article <28488@apple.Apple.COM> chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) writes:
>[Neff writes]
>>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.

Chuq is making me face reality, which I absolutely HATE! :-)

Unfortunately it's as easy to rmgroup something or un-moderate it (two
actions with real potential to annoy the net) as it is to create a new
group (which I would argue is far less annoying and a Good Thing
overall).

This is already true today, but conventions of good behavior prevent
anarchy.  Chuq suggests that if we adopted a "newgroup at will"
philosophy, the rest of the alt.* shennanigans would ensue
automatically.  I am not sure if I agree completely here -- surely some
of the rmgroup war mindset is due to the "playpen" aura alt.* seems to
cultivate?

I guess there's plenty of room to disagree on this one.

>[he points out that moderating news.groups conflicts with the first
> goal and would cause more anarchy]
>Which is a great reason to keep control over group creation, if you think
>about it. 

There is an automated solution if you want to build it.

Create a newsgroup list maintainer at one major site.  Let it collect
votes continuously for any proposed newsgroup's creation, removal or
status change.  Votes would be EXPIRED, WEIGHTED and COUNTED daily
and appropriate action taken.  EXPIRING would consist of discarding 
everything over a month old, simple enough.  WEIGHTING would be
complex but rewarding.  Someone sits down and creates a formula 
that takes Usenet map and/or arbitron data into account and weights
each site's vote so that sites which (a) feed lots of people downstream
and/or (b) call a long way to get stuff would count for more than 
that don't.  I couldn't begin to list all the variables worth considering,
but it would be fun to come up with something.  When the weighted count
reached an action point the maintainer site would automatically issue
the newgroup or whatever, as well as notify folks in news.groups.
As a fun added frill, perhaps you could mail to vote-check@maintain
to find out the current status of an ongoing vote.

Then let all well connected sites (and anyone else careful enough to keep
their patch level up) change the news software to accept newgroup and
rmgroup messages for the major hierarchies ONLY from the list maintainer
site.  If some leaf rmgroups sci.misc for jollies it wouldn't propagate.
However if nj.toxic.dumps goes moderated that's their business.

-- 
Tom Neff                  tneff@well.UUCP
                       or tneff@dasys1.UUCP