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From: gds@mit-eddie.UUCP (Greg Skinner)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Re: the recent rmgroups have started me thinking ...
Message-ID: <278@mit-eddie.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Nov-85 16:18:13 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.278
Posted: Fri Nov  1 16:18:13 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 3-Nov-85 07:00:37 EST
References: <179@mit-eddie.UUCP> <1823@hao.UUCP> <255@mit-eddie.UUCP> <1835@hao.UUCP>
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> From: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)

>> What I was referring to is the decisions of individuals to do something
>> that has netwide effect.

>   Isn't that exactly what happens if the backbone admins decide to drop
> a group from their sites? Only worse, because many will still think the
> group exists when in practice only a small proportion of net readers
> will see what they post in that group.

You are again assuming that all the backbones will vote uniformly
against something the non backbones vote for.  For example, one SA of a
backbone site argued *against* net.bizarre, and several agreed to
continue passing net.internat traffic.  Perhpas a group like net.bizarre
would turn into a local-pocket group with only one backbone site passing
it, but net.internat would probaly still function, although the
propagation delays would be somewhat greater.

Even if a majority of the backbones drop a group, I'm still not
convinced this is a bad thing.  Generally, it is the same people who do
the flaming in the high-volume groups, and the only audience they care
about are the people they are flaming with.  It will be up to them to
see that their flames reach their destinations, putting the burden on
them to set up alternate news feeds.  For the casual poster, it is a
little more difficult, because no, their posting won't get everywhere
they think it is going.  But that is what we have the moderated groups
for, so that reasonable people have a netwide audience.  For every group
which is a *candidate* for deletion, perhaps a mod group can be created
(or used, if it already exists!) for netwide posting.  mod.music (my
group) is a perfect example of a mod group just waiting to be used -- I
encourage anyone who really wants to discuss music withouht getting into
kate bush arguments use mod.music.  If it shouuld come to pass that
net.music is rmgrouped, or fragmented, you'll still have a place where
your reasonable comments can be aired.

[Here I explain that the rmgroups cause a lot of flamage that wouldn't
otherwise have happened.]

> The reason we ARE shouting so much is that this quietness is exactly
> what has happened in the past. Now that someone (Gene) has decided to
> ENFORCE the rules, look what happens, PRECISELY because he (and those
> in his position) were trying to avoid the inevitable confrontation it
> would cause. 

I can recall occasions in the past when groups were created incorrectly
and persons (even Spaf) took corrective measueres to see that the group
was remade correctly, then the rmgroups on the old group were issueed.
Net.religion.xian comes to mind (someone shortened the name because they
thought notes wouldn't handle it).  After the error was corrected (use
of aliasing was suggested) net.religion.xian was rmgrouped.

I find it hard to believe that Spaf thought his rmgroup would not have
been met with opposition.  Anytime someone makes a drastic change (or
proposal) to the structure of USENET, it is met with flames.  We have
had a recent example of it here -- the keyword-based news incident.
Last year it was stargate and the creation of the mod groups.  If Spaf
had just tried to correct the error, at least in the case of
net.internat, by suggesting its renaming, we wouldn't be flaming half as
much as we are now.  Net.bizarre is an entirely different issue -- I
think enough sites would have soon dropped it to warrant its official
removal.

>> You seem to think that the netwide votes will always be in opposition to
>> the backbone votes.  

>  No, not that they ALWAYS will, just that they SOMETIMES might, and what 
> happens in those cases? If everyone EXCEPT those paying the lions' share
> of the cost wants to keep net.flame, say, (as a hypothetical example)
> how can we FORCE the backbone to pay for it?

Well, in those extreme cases, the backbones are free to resist.  But
this again assumes that the backbones will all vote the same way, and it
will always be against a YES vote to a noise group.

> ... hao!woods talks about the votes regarding removal of net.flame, so
> far 50:1 against

If enough site admins vote, I think we can reach a reasonable consensus
on what to do about net.flame.

In a later posting, I am going to propose how to go about taking the net
vote.  I have been giving the matter some thought and I think it
warrants a proposal at least.  I welcome comments when I release the
proposal. 

>> In the final instance, a site like ihnp4 can reject any netwide
>> decision and refuse to pass a newsgroup, which will undoubtedly reduce
>> traffic in certain high-volume low-content groups.

>  In that case, what's the point of taking a netwide vote?

So that a group is not altogether removed or created until every site
who has an opinion can be heard, and alternate solutions can be
proposed.

>> rmgrouping all the groups a set of individuals don't want to exist is
>> unfair to the rest of the net 

>  I have yet to see anything like this happen.

it just happened with net.bizarre and net.internat

> I don't think Gene, myself or anyone else who agrees with us has ever
> said we don't want net.internat to exist in some form. We just want to
> see it created PROPERLY, so that we don't HAVE to go through this again
> next time. 

If that's true then Spaf should have proposed a new name for it, and
waited for the traffic to move there, before removing the group.

[I comment on how the removal of the groups caused us to start yelling,
 thus replacing the traffic generated by the old groups.  hao!woods
 indicates that the yelling is a short-time thing, and the rmgroups were
 part of a long range plan.  He agrees that the rules should be changed
 for newsgroup creation.]

I'm glad to see we agree on something!  It is time to start thinking
about new criteria for groups in general, both new and old.  That's what
I'll be working on for a while.  I'd like to hear comments from all of
you on what constitues a worthwhile newsgroup, and criteria for judging
the worthiness of groups.

>  The way the net is currently set up, a couple of backbone sites dropping
> a group DOES drop it as a netwide group. It becomes a fragmented local group,
> with the readers and posters under the illusion that it is a netwide group.
> I feel it IS better to rmgroup it and let the individual sites or groups of
> sites create local groups for it if they still want it.

I haven't seen a USENET map lately, but I doubt that if two or three
backbones dropped a group the group wouldn't get across the net.
Perhaps after half of them dropped a group there would be local pockets.
But like I said above, I'm not convinced there's anything wrong with
this, and there are mechanisms in place to enable low-volume
high-content postings to traverse the net.

Guess I've rambled long enough on this topic.  Coming soon is the voting
proposal.  Followups to this discussion in net.news only please, since
this has turned into a discussion of USENET itself.
-- 
It's like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from goin' under.

Greg Skinner (gregbo)
{decvax!genrad, allegra, ihnp4}!mit-eddie!gds
gds@mit-eddie.mit.edu