Xref: utzoo news.admin:5574 news.groups:8877 Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!rochester!rit!ultb!lmb7421 From: lmb7421@ultb.UUCP (L.M. Barstow) Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups Subject: Re: Cabals, Committees, Voting, ad nauseum Summary: that time again? Message-ID: <647@ultb.UUCP> Date: 10 Apr 89 19:07:08 GMT References: <6503@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> Reply-To: lmb7421@ultb.UUCP (L.M. Barstow (674SPS)) Followup-To: news.admin Organization: Rochester Institute of Technology, Information Systems Lines: 69 In article <6503@medusa.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@uther.cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford) writes: >Lots of interesting proposals have been made concerning how to decide >what groups to create/delete. > >They don't really address the problem. We have not defined why we >want new groups or why we would want to delete old groups. Unless we >understand (and to some extent agree) on this, there will always be an >unrepresented group and/or an unhappy set of readers. > > In 1986, a subset of that list met at the summer Usenix in Atlanta. > We brainstormed at a couple of meetings to see what could be done > to help improve the Usenet. News 2.11 was soon to be released and > it seemed like an opportune time to consider changes. Out of those > meetings came the "great renaming" and the current software to > handle moderated groups. The "checkgroups" control message was > also born at this time. Perhaps, then, it is once again time for a major rewrite of the news system. As I have not been on the net long (and am NOT by any means a UN*X wizard), I do not know entirely what this entails, however, there are a few things which could be incorporated into the news software... rmgroup could be made automatic (a control message of some sort could be easily inserted into the news packet format, I believe) to prevent problems of scattered sections of old dead groups. a similar group of control blocks could shift the addresses of moderated groups to new sites, etc.... as for the problem of defining reasons to want new groups, and how to go about counting these beasties, the current procedure is, if somewhat messy, a good start. Perhaps, as has been suggested over the past week or so, a moderated group called news.newgroup.votes could be created, the moderator being in charge of taking the votes and counting them (the moderator could take the votes by separating subject and summary lines eg...Subject: Re: sci.creation.koosh Summary: No being counted as a no vote for sci.creation.koosh) This would centralize all voting under one roof (whoever is "watching over" the net at the time). As for counts....it seems fairly obvious that, up to a certain point, it is easier to hold a conference via e-mail. For groups that receive only small numbers of votes, creation of a group is obviously , IMHO, stupid (to put it bluntly :-) I'll leave the definition of 'small' up to those who know what the net is capable of handling comfortably. Second, although this may seem a bit biased in favor of creation of newsgroups, I think it necessary that negative votes give valid reasoning for the non-creation of the group (ex I don't like the creator of the group doesn't quite cut it, although it MAY be a valid reason for asking for a new moderator on a moderated group. Similarly, the fact that the group is 90% covered in another group is obviously reason to think about not creating the group (unless, as a subdivision, it will cut down traffic, not promote cross-posting, and/or will cut out some unwanted discussion in the parent group...well, most everyone knows what the qualifications should be :-), I'm just stating the obvious because it seems that that MAY be necessary. A simple majority of 'Yes' votes vs weak 'No' votes should be sufficient to create the group, but a stronger (2/3, 3/4) majority should be considered if there are many valid 'No' reasons. Again, there is the possibility of another new group, news.newgroup.discussion (ack!) for discussing those controversial new groups. (I know this sounds like a lot of new news traffic, but it would clear the air of a lot of cross-posting and debates in parent groups.) Well, I've been long-winded enough... -- Les Barstow LMB7421@RITVAX.BITNET ...rutgers!rochester!ritcv!ultb!lmb7421.UUCP "I know you think you know what you thought I said, but you don't realize that what you thought I said was not what I meant"