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From: mangoe@mimsy.UUCP (Charley Wingate)
Newsgroups: news.misc,news.admin
Subject: Re: Governing bodies
Message-ID: <7358@mimsy.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 23:26:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: mimsy.7358
Posted: Tue Jul  7 23:26:04 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Jul-87 07:23:15 EDT
References: <6875@e.ms.uky.edu> <139@hippo.UUCP>
Organization: U of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Science, Coll. Pk., MD 20742
Lines: 38
Summary: One big problem isn't solved
Xref: mnetor news.misc:719 news.admin:648

Eric Bergan writes, concerning backbone membership on the proposed BoD:

>	Agreed. But what is the likelihood of success if the "major"
>sites don't abide by the decisions, since they didn't have a voice
>in the policy making? (There seem to be some informed people on the
>net that feel the backbone is not as important as it once was - is
>this really the case? If so, why all the concern over the policies that
>the backbone sites want to institute?)

Well, this seems to me to indicate that a BoD doesn't solve anything.  If
the backbone is going to do what it wants, then why not simply name the
principals there as the BoD?  After all, it can hardly be expected that they
should be obligated to stay on the net if the BoD tells them to do something
which they don't want to do.

I've disagreed with various aspects of recent "backbone cabal" actions (and
it would be nice to see the net restructured so that the "backbone" were not
so concentrated, but this isn't going to happen).  But really, they have the
right to control what goes through their sites, and therefore they
effectively will hold most of the power over what happens.  Perhaps some
sort of advisory group to represent the views of non-backbone sites is
desirable.  In a sense, we already have this, though, in groups like the
ones in which you are reading this article.

One thing that would help is numbers that show news traffic in proportion to
other net traffic, such as the mail.  A while back someone at Berkeley (?)
indicated that they had and 8-to-1 proportion of mail to news.  If this is
really true, then we're barking up the wrong tree in many respects.  In
general, the lack of accurate information that everyone believes in is a
more important damper on rational decision making than having an advisory
board.  If the arbitron figures are correct, then obviously the mechanisms
now in place for adminstering the net are not adequate in many ways,
primarily because nobody is paying attention even to the point of reading
the right newsgroups.  THis is a problem which an advisory board will simply
whitewash over.  If we don't really know what is happening on the net, how
can anyone make an intelligent decision on what to do?

C. Wingate