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Path: utzoo!linus!gatech!cbosgd!mark
From: mark@cbosgd.UUCP (Mark Horton)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Re: Newsgroup creations and deletions
Message-ID: <1390@cbosgd.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 11-Aug-85 14:30:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.1390
Posted: Sun Aug 11 14:30:44 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 13-Aug-85 00:02:05 EDT
References: <3091@nsc.UUCP> <494@cmu-cs-k.ARPA> <3107@nsc.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus, Oh
Lines: 27
Xref: linus net.news:3001 net.news.group:2776

It is true that, up until now, new moderated groups were created
by a relatively small group of people (namely, the people who have
volunteered to put time into making moderated groups work.)  This
is necessary with a prototype effort; can you imagine a startup
company with 30,000 stockholders having to ask permission of the
stockholders every time they did something?  They would never get
anything done.  (Note that the removal of net.general, which has
been postponed until such time as the net wants it, was never in
the hands of even this group.)

It appears now that moderated groups work well, at least for many
cases.  So I propose that we now change the mechanism for changes
to moderated groups (creation, change, deletion) to be the same
as for unmoderated groups, that is, publicly discussed in net.news.group.
(There is some argument for doing this in a moderated group, to
avoid the "I vote yes" messages being posted, but there are problems
with this; fast discussion and paranoia about censorship are two.)

Note that to have a moderated group, you have to have a moderator.
So the decision to make the group can't take place until someone
volunteers to be moderator.  This moderator may eventually have to
agree to observe some sort of standards in the group - these
standards are not defined currently, but to get the group broadcast
on StarGate, for example, s/he may have to promise not to let certain
kinds of material through.

	Mark Horton