Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site im4u.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!ut-sally!im4u!jsq
From: jsq@im4u.UUCP (John Quarterman)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: net.internat -- A solution proposal
Message-ID: <602@im4u.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 27-Oct-85 13:11:55 EST
Article-I.D.: im4u.602
Posted: Sun Oct 27 13:11:55 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 29-Oct-85 04:39:34 EST
References: <1704@gatech.CSNET>
Organization: U. Texas CS Dept., Austin, Texas
Lines: 145

Spaf mentioned my name:

>    -- Mod groups present a better opportunity for "official" contacts
>    (e.g., mod.std.unix and John Quarterman) should any formal standards
>    organization wish to take part in the discussions.

so I'm going to make a few comments.

Major points listed at the outset:
	Net.internat should exist in some form; the traffic is demonstrated,
		if the original EUUG mandate wasn't enough.
	It should be moderated; the verbosity and repetition in the net group
		is sufficient demonstration.
	There are precedents for outside organizations mandating newsgroups.
	Deleting net.internat was Real Bad Idea regardless of its ugly name
		and it not having been created according to the rules.
	The name net.internat is really ugly and incredibly unfortunate.
	What the name of the newsgroup should be.

The first point needs no further elaboration.

Spaf has given most of the arguments for moderation of the newsgroup,
but there are still a few other things worth mentioning.  Some have
complained that they will have to pay twice:  once to mail a submission
to the moderator, and again to receive it.  (If I understand correctly,
most UUCP links in Europe run over X.25 links supplied by the
government postal and telephone departments, so that every message is
paid for individually.)  Well, if you post one message in ten of those
which appear in the newsgroup, you will have to pay ten per cent
extra.  If it's not worth that to you, maybe you shouldn't post.  If
you were planning on posting a higher percentage than that, maybe you
should think twice about whether you really have that much to say, or
whether you could say it more concisely.

Spaf called for volunteers to moderate mod.std.international,
thinking that no one has volunteered before.  It's not so.
I volunteered at the outset of the original discussion about
net.internat (yes, Virginia, there was discussion, though much of it
took place by mail) to funnel the net.internat traffic through
mod.std.unix.  (Though I have enough trouble keeping up with the small
traffic already in mod.std.unix.) I also pointed out that there was no
real reason that there couldn't be another moderator in Europe to avoid
the problem of having to mail submissions across an ocean.  Since spaf
tells me that he now has several other volunteers in N.A. for moderator,
I withdraw myself.

Ut-sally isn't a backbone site, and we don't have the telephone bills
of a backbone site.  However, the amount of CPU cycles and disk space
USENET eats up on that machine (and im4u) are not inconsiderable.
I sympathize completely with the backbone administrators who are
trying to keep their load from growing to the point they can't
afford to support it (we couldn't pay for their present loads:
that's why we're not a backbone site).

All you who are flaming spaf might consider that he's not Young Hitler
out to take over the net; he's just trying to preserve what there is
and maybe improve on it.  You may not like his methods (I may not like
them either) and he may make mistakes, but he's well intentioned, and
he does listen to reason (though not to flaming very well).

To you in Europe who proposed the newsgroup:  have a heart!
Moderate it, and pick a better name.  Like mod.unix.international
or mod.std.international.

Several people have written that mandates from outside organizations
have nothing to do with newsgroup creation on USENET.  Well,
mod.std.unix is an example of a newsgroup which does in fact exist
because it was mandated by a group outside of USENET:  the IEEE/P1003
Portable Operating System Environment Committee, with collaboration by
the USENIX board.  There was little or no prior demonstrated traffic.
There was *no* public discussion in net.news.group.  So far as I know
the only discussion directly related to USENET was in the moderators
mailing list and private mail.

You may say "but that's a moderated newsgroup, and besides we don't do
it that way even for them anymore."  What about net.usenix?  Doesn't
fit into a rational naming scheme, has very little traffic, what there
has been of late has been mostly about skiing: thus low signal to noise
ratio.  I hear no one calling for deletion of that newsgroup, or asking
if it was created properly.  Could it be because USENIX is its de facto
sponsor?

Even if there were no precedents, it is downright rude and insulting
to EUUG to ignore their call for a newsgroup.  It is true that
net.internat is an incredibly ugly name, but is "mod.std" any
prettier?  It is true that the proposers of the newsgroup did not
follow the letter of the rules for creating newsgroups.  However, this
ain't net.bizarre we're discussing:  it's a world-wide technical
newsgroup of the sort that I, at least, think USENET should support.

(I don't say that we shouldn't have non-technical newsgroups.  I've
helped create a couple myself (ones which mostly stick to their
intended subjects).  But posting or reading news is *not* a right,
especially if you don't pay for it, and you cannot expect other people
to pay for endless drivel like net.bizarre.  The bulk of transmissions
does matter.  The signal to noise ratio does matter.  (This is, of
course, the main reason it should be moderated, not net.internat.))

Deleting the existing newsgroup before establishing a replacement was a
Real Bad Move, especially when the people in EUUG behind it had
demonstrated their amenability to reason (by their agreement in public
in net.internat that they hadn't completely followed the rules).  Were
all the backbone site administrators who made the decision in North
America?  Were even any Canadians consulted?  Not to mention Europeans,
Japanese, Koreans, and Australians?

If this was a purely U.S. decision, you backbone site administrators
deserve all the invective you've gotten from Europe.  Sure, you bear
the brunt of the costs of the network (at least on this continent), and
you *can* do it.  Without even consulting anyone overseas.  But have
you never been overseas?  Do you know nothing of American history?  Do
you not understand that it's exactly that sort of thinking and practice
that makes the rest of the world view the United States with such
ambivalence, if not outright contempt?

The newsgroup name net.internat is not appropriate, because it should
be a mod group, and it should not be a top level group.  The traffic in
net.internat to date indicates that many people are not interested
soley in discussing internationalization of UNIX.  So spaf's idea of
mod.std.international would be appropriate.  Someone who was at the
EUUG BOF where the newsgroup was mandated points out that it was
intended to be specifically about internationalization of UNIX.
That considered, mod.unix.international would be better.  Even that
ridiculous abbreviation mod.unix.intnl would be better than net.internat.

The insistence of others that it be called whatever.internat makes me
wonder if they've never seen the word "internet", and, if so, why don't
they realize how easy it is to confuse their made-up word with the
other, real, one?  If the idea was to limit the length of the name to
fourteen characters or less, I say let everyone update their software.
Four years since B news 2.9 is long enough.

So.  I applaud spaf's proposal for mod.std.international.  He has
compromised somewhat.  EUUG have compromised by proposing net.unix.intnl.
Let's split the difference and call it mod.unix.international.

Credentials.  Some people have been going on about how if you haven't
contributed to the upkeep of USENET, you shouldn't verbalize in public
about it.  I wrote uuhosts, which is used to display information from
mod.map.  It's not pathalias or uucp, but some people find it useful.
I also run a system which distributes news to a couple dozen others,
and I moderate a newsgroup.
-- 
John Quarterman,   UUCP:  {ihnp4,seismo,harvard,gatech}!ut-sally!jsq
ARPA Internet and CSNET:  jsq@sally.UTEXAS.EDU, formerly jsq@ut-sally.ARPA