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From: david@dhw68k.cts.com (David H. Wolfskill)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: OFFICIAL Guidelines (2nd try)
Summary: Agreement *better* be reached before voting begins...!
Message-ID: <22137@dhw68k.cts.com>
Date: 15 Apr 89 21:26:18 GMT
References: <2961@ncar.ucar.edu> <3156@alembic.UUCP>
Reply-To: david@dhw68k.cts.com (David H. Wolfskill)
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: Wolfskill & Dowling residence; Anaheim, CA (USA)
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In article <3156@alembic.UUCP> csu@alembic.UUCP (Dave Mack) writes:

[Quote from Greg's recent Guidelines, 2nd Ed. elided -- dhw]

>Sorry, Greg, but there's a problem here. This seems to imply that
>we have to achieve agreement on all the details during the discussion
>period. It ain't gonna happen. If we have to have a consensus before
>the vote begins, it's going to be amazingly difficult to create new
>groups.

You are proposing, as an alternative, starting the vote *before* the
perticipants in the vote have come to an agreement as to what it is that
they're attempting to decide?  

That seems to me to be an invitation to even more chaos than is usual on
the net (outside, I presume, of alt.*).

>The discussion period allows the individual calling for the vote to
>respond to input from the net in constructing the call for votes, the
>group charter, etc.

Quite so; and the individual in question ought to have done this *during
the discussion period* -- which is prior to the "call for votes."

>It's the vote itself that determines whether a group (as named and
>chartered, moderated, etc.) is really desired.

Agreed.

>Perhaps this is nitpicking, but I don't think we want this wording coming
>back to haunt us later.

On the contrary, I think we wouldn't want the *lack* of such wording
coming back to haunt us later.

The objective, as I understand it, it to come up with a reasonable
formalization of the currently-accepted guidelines for newsgroup
creation.  One of the reasons for doing this is to have a deterministic
method for deciding whether or not a given newsgroup proposal has, in
fact, "made it."

Counting "votes" that were submitted before the nature of the newsgroup
proposal has stabilized is asking for disputes as to the validity of the
process; that merely wastes net.bandwidth, time, and patience.  (Recall,
if you will, the controversy regarding the process of creating (what
eventually became) the newsgroup comp.society.women.)

At some risk of earning the label of "curmudgeon," I submit that if
enough folks can't agree as to the desired characteristics of the
(proposed) newsgroup, perhaps the newsgroup ought not be created.

david
-- 
David H. Wolfskill
uucp: ...{spsd,zardoz,felix}!dhw68k!david	InterNet: david@dhw68k.cts.com