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Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!polaris!herbie
From: herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong)
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Re: the recent rmgroups have started me thinking ...
Message-ID: <244@polaris.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 1-Nov-85 21:34:04 EST
Article-I.D.: polaris.244
Posted: Fri Nov  1 21:34:04 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 5-Nov-85 07:52:57 EST
References: <179@mit-eddie.UUCP> <1823@hao.UUCP> <255@mit-eddie.UUCP> <1835@hao.UUCP>
Reply-To: herbie@polaris.UUCP (Herb Chong)
Organization: IBM TJ Watson RC
Lines: 113
Xref: linus net.news:3460 net.news.group:3610
Summary: 

i've been following this discussion of and on for the past year or so
and i wouldn't be surprised if it dates much further back than
when i started reading this.  i've decided to put my two cents worth
in and what i have to say is my own personal opinion.

In article <1835@hao.UUCP> woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods) writes:
>  Isn't this, in practice, just about equivalent to the "backbone cabal"
>running things, which has been objected to so strongly? I don't like that
>idea either, even if I *am* on a backbone site. I'd much rather see us
>adopt, stick to, and when necessary, enforce a common set of rules
>agreed on by NETWIDE consensus that would reduce traffic in an ORDERLY
>manner.

if the backbone site is paying for a service that it alone doesn't stand
to break even from, never mind make money on, then it a very bad
business practice.  when USENET traffic rises to about twice the
current level, there will be only a few machines capable of handling
the message traffic in terms of raw CPU power, let alone disk space to
hold everything.  my own opinion is that this point will be reached in
perhaps two years.  somewhere along the way, either the net falls apart
into sections (communicating through moderated gateways) that are more
manageable, a large fraction of the newsgroups become moderated, or the
net falls apart.  i do not believe that there are any other likely
scenarios.

a problem with the last suggestion made by Greg is that the net readership
(and hence the posters) have a very high turnover.  by the time a consensus
is reached, half the people aren't on it anymore and the new half
hasn't heard of original arguments/issues.  you spend all you time
explaning the same thing over and over in the hopes that someone
will listen.  it is idealistic, and i think an admirable goal, but i
see little chance of it coming to pass without a lot of firm prodding
by the SA's of the backbone sites.  which get back to being a few people
making the decisions for the many.

>  True, we wouldn't. Instead, we would have made a quiet statement that it's 
>OK to violate the rules. 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 guess Gene believes (and I concur) that
>we can no longer afford not to enforce the rules that we have.

if the rules AREN'T enforced soon, there will be no net to work from.
there'll be a fragmented collection of sites exchanging information
to whomever will accept them and developing their own identity as
well as their own problems, isolated from the rest of the net.  to this
point, the net has had an identity that has been possible by the
fact that one group of people are making sure that there are no
unresponsible creation of newsgroups.  the contents of the groups
has been pretty much left alone except for moderated newsgroups. 

>  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?

no way at all, except to have the sites pay for a fraction of the
costs of a backbone site.  in fact, it may come to the point where a
comapany is formed solely to make a profit handling USENET mail,
though i sincerely hope that that never happens.  on the other hand,
we could then make demands for guaranteed service level requirements.

>> Also, the site vote would have to be a function of how
>> many outgoing feeds the site has
>  Sounds like a good idea, but an accounting nightmare.

not to mention not likely to be fair to everyone.  a greatly mistaken
belief that many people have is that a simple voting scheme where
majority rules is fair.  it isn't and never will be.  in a community
as large as the net, even a 5% minority is a sizable number of
people.

>Any rules that allow the creation of a "useful" group 
>such as net.internat must also include some OBJECTIVE criteria for defining
>what is "useful". What groups SHOULD be allowed to be created without
>prior demonstrated volume? Does that mean we should rmgroup those that 
>do not fit the existing criteria, or adopt "grandfather clauses"?

the only way to arrive at a reasonable set of criteria in a short time
is for a small number of people do it who already know a whole lot
about USENET.  unfortunately, this has already started a lot of flames
about the USENET "gods".

>   Whatever set of rules we adopt must take into account the fact that
>we can't allow total freedom any more. The backbone sites won't pay for it.

but people will still say that it's a right and not a priviledge,
injecting the words "censorship" and "freedom of speech" into the
issue.  the backbone sites are currently providing a service that they
are currently losing money at.  if they charged for what service was
rendered (CPU, disk, telephone lines), you can bet your local SA will
keep a watch on, or even kill news groups that are costing lots of
money.

>  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.

and so will begin the downfall of the net.

Herb Chong...

I'm still user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....

New net address --

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