Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site brl-sem.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!mit-eddie!think!harvard!seismo!brl-tgr!brl-sem!ron From: ron@brl-sem.ARPA (Ron Natalie) Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group,net.flame Subject: Re: Fear and Loathing on the Clouds Message-ID: <446@brl-sem.ARPA> Date: Thu, 24-Oct-85 16:26:24 EDT Article-I.D.: brl-sem.446 Posted: Thu Oct 24 16:26:24 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 26-Oct-85 04:11:04 EDT References: <614@h-sc1.UUCP> Distribution: net Organization: Ballistic Research Lab Lines: 36 Xref: watmath net.news:4144 net.news.group:3967 net.flame:12490 > > It seems that Gene Spafford has recently taken to reorganizing USENET > to suit his tastes. At first, he simply deleted a number of small, > inoffensive newsgroups which had practically no traffic anyway. But now he has gone out and created a whole shit load of mod.groups that have no readership potential. WHY? He has carefully hidden this effort in his stated effort of moving all the fa groups to be mod groups. Well I'm an ARPANET user and none of that mod.computers.* shit exists. He contradicts himself on his policies of list creation. The traffic from these idiotic group creation messages and the empty directories that they have started alone is probably a significant load on the symbiosis of the net. > Recently, however, Spafford has taken it upon himself to delete two > thriving, busy newsgroups --- net.internat and net.bizarre. The case > of net.internat is especially distressing, as this newsgroup's > signal-to-noise ratio has reached heights heretofore undreamt of on | Annoying yes, but not too distressing. As I pointed out the last time he tried to deep-six an thriving group, if you delete it it will just automatically come back. It is only the respect by the individual sites for the net-experts like SPAF that causes these lists to really go away. What is particulary annoying is that SPAF is not special in his powers, any self-righteous person whose willing to offer to serve a lot of other machines in their area (and become a de facto backbone site) can play net censor. I am currently fighting this out with our own management here, who would like nothing more than to quench net.jokes, net.motss, and other groups. If we do not fulfill our committment to not censor the news, we risk losing it all. Hence we pass all the news along without regard to content. -Ron Just what exactly is the "Clouds Project" anyway?