Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!odi!indirect!benson
From: benson@odi.com (Benson Margulies)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: A Thought Experiment about News.Groups
Message-ID: <372@odi.ODI.COM>
Date: 30 May 89 17:57:39 GMT
References: <371@odi.ODI.COM> <3400@looking.on.ca>
Sender: news@odi.com
Reply-To: benson@odi.com (Benson Margulies)
Organization: Object Design Inc., Burlington, MA
Lines: 34

This is intended as a reply to Mr. Spencer and Mr. Templeton.

Mr. Spencer appears to confuses my thought-experiment with a serious
proposal. I reply only to make it clear that I intended no serious
technical proposal to make Usenet mail-based. <though I do believe
that it could be made so convienient as to be indistinguishable from
the current state.>

Mr. Templeton states that the current group creation restrictions are
nominally justified in terms of namespace clarity. If that were so in
action as well as in theory, we wouldn't have quite the current level
of whining. Any newsgroup should be creatable so long as its name is
suitably descriptive. There could be soc.feminism.moderated and
soc.feminism.un-moderated. There could be talk.politics.misc,
talk.politics.guns, and talk.politics.misc_and_guns. There could, in
the extreme case, be rec.humor.funny_according_to_templeton and 
rec.humor.funny_according_to_jedr.  One might need a little more
explanation associated with each group than the current sentence.

One might as well require 100 YES votes to make it worth the bother of
propagating the group creation. So far, though, the idea of abolishing
NO votes seems more and more sensible (to me).

NO votes serve, in my obviously insufficiently humble opinion, only to
legitimize the kind of whining that demands that talk.politics.guns be
abolished so that talk.politics readers are FORCED to read gun
transactions, or that bemoans the moderation of some groups. Without
NO votes, it would be put-up or shut up -- either you have 99 other
people who want a group with your guidlines, or you can go start a
mailing list.

I probably won't post anything else about this for a while, if at all,
so don't expect short turn-around follups from me.
Benson I. Margulies