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Path: utzoo!laura
From: laura@utzoo.UUCP (Laura Creighton)
Newsgroups: net.news.stargate
Subject: Re: Need for Stargate screening?
Message-ID: <4934@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 15-Jan-85 20:36:02 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.4934
Posted: Tue Jan 15 20:36:02 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Jan-85 20:36:02 EST
References: <494@vortex.UUCP>, <702@cbosgd.UUCP>, <831@hound.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 79

Reply to R. Grantges at AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel:

We are going to have to get some things straight. You may be paying
enough money to make usenet affordable *for you* and *your site*, but
there are a lot of sites out here who already think that we are paying
*too much money* for *too little worthwhile news*. Now we have a
wonderful chance to see if we can do something better, and you are
screaming censorship.

Hmm. Censorship is lousy. Censorship is lousy because it lets one group
of people enforce its particular idea of ``what's right'' over other
people who have dissenting views, right? Do you have any other reason
for thinking that censorship is wrong? Because, unless you do, you
are guilty of an ethical inconsistency -- it is the will of the
people who are setting up stargate to have moderated news, and you
want to enforce your particular idea of ``what's right''...

Bother!

Since we are going to do this, we had better keep some things in mind.
These are the ones I can think of -- everybody feel free to add.

1. Usenet (as is) is not getting retired. It may die a natural death,
   however -- at least in some areas.

2. Moderation should not be the same thing as censorship. Moderation
   is a fine way to keep 40 responses of ``that should be an
   off_t, not a daddr_t'' down to one. However, moderation could be
   a fine way to keep an interesting discussion from arising. This
   seems more likely in the non-technical news groups (say, with a
   mod.politics administrator who only accepts stuff he finds ``politically
   correct'') than in the technical ones, but even there -- what about the
   ``AT&T are schmucks for giving unix source to universities -- unix
   is *de facto* public domain software'' discussion? Was it appropriate?
   Maybe. Assume that the moderator thought that it was not and
   rejected it. Now what?
 
   There are several courses of action here. the first is that we could all
   vote for a new moderator. (if we knew that an injustice was being done,
   that is, and if we could find someone willing to run, and if we ever could
   get the rules set on who could and could not vote, and how to see that
   noone is voting 42 times on accounts made for the purpose, and if
   we could do it in reasonable time...) Nope. Elections are cumbersome.
   Always go for the supermarket-solution over the ballot-box solution
   unless unanimity is *essential*.
 
   What we need is a way to create *competing newsgroups*. We may never
   need them, but we had better get the mechanism set up *now*, 'cause
   if we ever need them we are likely to be so very angry and rushed that
   we won't do a very good job. What we need is a relatively straightforward
   way to ask ``shall we create this group?'' followed by ``who's going
   to moderate it?'' and, if there is sufficient [this one had better be
   #defined somewhere] interest, a relatively easy way to set it up.
 
   This will also keep the whole thing from becoming centrallised. This
   is a very good thing -- because this is my number one fear about the
   whole thing. (Am I reading the wrong newsgroups? How come nobody else
   has mentioned this explicitly? right -- it was in net.flame...).
   Centralised *anythings* have design flaws. The first is related to
   the censorship problem -- if you want to censor (as opposed to moderate)
   the first thing you try to do is centralise things.
 
  The second is, when something happens to the central node, all things
  drop dead. (ihnp4 crashes and nobody gets any mail...)

   The third is a matter of appearances. To an awful lot of people,
   ``central'' implies ``authority''. If we decided that Lauren is a
   nice guy, and not likely to be a censor, aand thus should be lord
   high central moderator and administrator, we will be setting him up
   as a target for lawsuits, hate mail, and other hassles which he can
   do without. Remember the registry problem? Once *it* got centralised
   people started saying ``and if you use my trademark, acronym,
   mother's best friend's cousin's first name, I will sue you...''.
 
  Such things make certain lawyers very happy, and very rich. But I'd
  rather keep my money in my pocket, and I figure Lauren would as well...
 
Laura Creighton
utzoo!laura