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From: webber@aramis.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Answers to many of the `Re: The Requested ...' messages
Message-ID: <1006@aramis.rutgers.edu>
Date: Fri, 10-Jul-87 06:59:58 EDT
Article-I.D.: aramis.1006
Posted: Fri Jul 10 06:59:58 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 13-Jul-87 01:15:23 EDT
References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu> <8225@utzoo.UUCP> <272@brandx.rutgers.edu> <2811@ncoast.UUCP>
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
Lines: 117
Summary: on why the criticisms of the quota plan that have been presented so far do not appear to me to be reasons for rejecting it.

First I would like to thank allbery@ncoast.UUCP (Brandon Allbery),
mjl@tropix.UUCP (Mike Lutz), dovich@ge-dab.UUCP (Steven J. Dovich),
reid@decwrl.DEC.COM (Brian Reid), and lou@hoxna.UUCP ( L. Marco ) for
their news postings critical of my quota proposal (or related issues)
and even more so thank the people who mailed to me criticisms of the quota 
proposal.  I will send personalized replies to the mail messages, but all 
of you have addressed some closely related issues to which I will outline 
herein why I do not feel they are over-riding objections.  I would also 
like to anonymously thank the person who sent me a message explaining how the 
system could be implemented under the current version of news without 
re-coding (at the moment I certainly wouldn't want to brand them by 
indicating that they were the person that took the wind out of the sails 
of the `implement it first' people).

Of course, most of you are aware that I am not proposing a parallel news
system, but rather an alternative way for individual sites to handle the
current problems (both quota and news.group name restrictions could coexist).
Some of you are also aware that when I speak of communications bandwidth,
I am referring just as much to limitations on the cpu's at the ends of the
wires (such as disk space) as I am to the communication hardware that the
computer views as a peripheral.  Practically everyone has realized that both
the quota system and the moderator system claim to solve the same problems
with regards to resources dedicated to news.  The question seems to rest with
the fact that these two approaches yield very different environments for news 
to continue under.  What I will address below is why I feel that the 
environment created by quota is to be preferred to that created by moderation
(even `good' non-censoring moderation).

It seems to me that people who have been proposing moderation have been using
as their vision of news some kind of online library where people go to get
reliable information.  While this is a worthy goal, I find it completely
alien to what the news system has been about for the last 5 years or so.
First I should introduce myself, I am a reader of news.  I have been reading
news off and on for the past 5 years and yet prior to the moderation 
discussion, my postings have never generated any but the smallest of reply
streams (incidently, I am quite happy with this and look forward to it once
this topic has passed).  Hence, I am much more a `reader' than a `poster.'

When I ask myself what is the essence of Usenet, I say that it is direct
unfiltered communication between a very large number of people (most of whom
have above average educations and experience with computers).  Reading the
soc, talk, and rec groups, you will realize just how varied the people on 
the comp and sci groups are (many people contribute in both sections).  In
my opinion, placing a filter on news (which is what both the moderators and
the people who use group names as a basis for deciding what to get are doing)
is completely unwanted.  I use a news reader that notifies me of subject
lines and authors of all messages and I am quite happy to pick and choose
what messages I read on the basis of this information (and the experience I
have built up from doing this).

Of course, it is claimed that the filter will raise `quality' and remove
redundancy.  This is exactly what I do not want.  When I go to an expert
on computer monitors and ask them what is the best monitor for displaying
CAD work, they will tell me their opinion.  When I go to the net and ask
this same question, I see not only their opinion, but how other people
react to that opinion and whether or not and to what degree other people 
share that opinion.  Although a moderator might feel quite justified in simply
saying that here is a typical message and 20 other people said basically 
the same thing, I would actually want to read them.  The same thing applies 
to other topics in the sci, soc, misc, news, and talk groups.  This is 
something that only net news has been able to reliably handle because of
the size and type of user community it has attracted and because the postings
are completely unfiltered.  (Although this may appear to address only the
redundancy issue, I believe it also addresses the quality issue).

Some people have indicated that they strongly feel that it is in their
company's best interest to subscribe to certain technical groups, but
not the other nontechnical groups.  This is difficult to evaluate.  When I see
a posting to a newsgroup that says ``Please mail replies, I do not read this
group,'' I figure there is someone who is attempting to benefit from the group
as if it were some kind of library.  However, if someone is actually tracking
a group, then that person would probably also be interested in other postings
by the same people on other subjects (both technical and nontechnical) in 
order to get a context within which to evaluate the opinion that is being
offered to that group.  So assuming that a company has employees that have
the time to process the net, I think there is some true benefit to getting
the whole thing.  In most cases, I suspect that people would be better off
purchasing better documentation, hiring qualified consultants, and buying
source licenses, than trying to use the net solely as a `library.'

I personally think that people have overvalued the usefulness of sources
and binaries that are over 64k (current net message size limit) and usually
aimed at some specific application.  My proposal did not say that one couldn't
use uucp to move such items around, only that this should be separated from
the function of news.  I am particularly distressed by the posting of binaries.
Although I can understand how for a few months after a computer comes out
this might be the only reliable way to distribute code, non-optimizing
C compilers for standard architectures (such as 68000s, 6502s, and 8088s)
just aren't that hard to write.  Access to the source of compilers is not
that difficult to come by, besides the Gnu C implementation, I have also
seen books containing full source to P-Code pascal compilers.  While these
may not be everyone's idea of `good' languages, they have certainly been
sufficient for people running on `larger' machines (when was the last time
you saw a SunIII binary or Pyramid binary posted to the net?).  So it is
really just a matter of a small portion of a user-community that is clearly
doing alot of coding deciding to sit down and port a compiler.

Some people have felt dismay that under the quota system they will miss
messages from certain `experts,' since the quota system will inevitably
loose messages (unless it should magically turn out that there really
is enough bandwidth to support news unchanged, which is something we will
probably never know if the net goes moderated and technology improves).
I can only say that that is true.  The implementation of the quota system
is the turning point at which we must decide whether we want to build a
futuristic interactive library or we want to continue to provide the 
traditional netnews service of unfiltered access to a broad range of opinion.
I hope people will realize the worth of the latter.  I think there are 
plenty of other people already working on the former, and so it is not
necessary to convert netnews over to that task.

Finally, let me indicate that I often benefit from `incorrect' comments 
that have sometimes been posted to the net.  The reason is because they 
have sometimes motivated me to think about why they are incorrect and 
why someone would say them and have thus lead to some thoughts that I have 
enjoyed (and which I have occasionally shared with the net).

--------- BOB (webber@aramis.rutgers.edu ; rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!webber)