Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site Glacier.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!decwrl!Glacier!reid From: reid@Glacier.ARPA (Brian Reid) Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: the trouble with all these rules is... Message-ID: <10609@Glacier.ARPA> Date: Sun, 11-Aug-85 20:20:04 EDT Article-I.D.: Glacier.10609 Posted: Sun Aug 11 20:20:04 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 14-Aug-85 00:32:44 EDT Reply-To: reid@Glacier.UUCP (Brian Reid) Organization: Stanford University, Computer Systems Lab Lines: 52 There is a fatal flaw in the current set of rules, enumerated by Gene, about how a new group is created. That flaw is that virtually nobody reads net.news.group, and the set of people who read it are not at all representative of the netwide readership. In the beginning netnews was like ham radio--in order to participate you had to be a technologist yourself. I used to be a radio ham (WA3AEJ) many years ago (1962-1965). What I found was that all people ever talked about was ham radio equipment. It was a completely self-referential medium. USENET is only about 2% self-referential. By this I mean that only about 2% of the traffic on USENET is spent talking about USENET. This is really good. But if you want to make USENET into a true democracy--"Radio Free Usenet" as John Gilmore likes to call it--then you have to involve that fraction of the other 98% who actually care. I like what has just happend with net.bizarre. It is a "people's group". I think there is worthless bad craziness flowing on it, but then most of the "people's newspapers" of the 1960's had bad craziness in them too. Counter to the official USENET policy, I assert that the only true reason to prohibit every clown SA who know how to type "inews -C" from creating an "official" newsgroup is the name space pollution that Chuqui constantly worries about. This is a real problem, and basically nothing except authoritarianism can fix it. I would also like to assert that the way a person beccomes a USENET bigwig is to start acting like one. One of the ways he can start acting like one is to say important things and act official. Another way he can do it is to start creating newsgroups, and run the risk of Gene hating him forever, of being put in the same booth in computer purgatory that contains Frank Adrian. I'm in the mood to run that risk. I'd like to feel important. Sort of like the Rambo of USENET. In a few weeks I will most likely create a new newsgroup. I am going to call it "net.whimsy", and its purpose is to hold things that are whimsical. The official description that I will send around with it will look something like this: net.whimsy Whimsical things. This newsgroup is for posting things that you would love to show your mother, if only she read USENET. No followups permitted, no cross-postings permitted. If you post something here that would embarass you if your mother saw it, then you are a bad person. There has been a "whimsy" mailing list at Xerox PARC for about 5 years, and it is very very successful. Because it is a mailing list, its moderator can actually remove from it anybody who violates the rules. p.s. My mother reads USENET. She is {yale,princeton}!spock!breid. I'm sure she doesn't read net.news.group. -- Brian Reid decwrl!glacier!reid Stanford reid@SU-Glacier.ARPA