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From: eric@hippo.UUCP (Eric Bergan)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.misc,news.stargate,news.sysadmin,news.admin
Subject: Re: Spaf Pro-vote / Plea for Order
Message-ID: <133@hippo.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Jul-87 12:21:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: hippo.133
Posted: Mon Jul  6 12:21:15 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 7-Jul-87 05:56:46 EDT
References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu> <15982@gatech.gatech.edu> <6948@shemp.UCLA.EDU>
Organization: HEALTHCARE 2000
Lines: 56
Keywords: Coherent Rules, Exponential Flaming
Xref: mnetor news.groups:1179 news.misc:702 news.stargate:230 news.sysadmin:276 news.admin:624

In article <6948@shemp.UCLA.EDU>, dgreen@CS.UCLA.EDU writes:
> It really is time for a USENET constitution, or at least a set of clearly
> specified rules.  Otherwise this flaming stuff just keeps getting bigger.
> I've seen it happen before, in less electronic, but equally loud
> constituencies.

	First, let me state that I am in favor of moderation, assuming
sufficient safeguards are built in, and I applaud those people on the
backbone who have spend their time trying to keep the net afloat.

	Now, onto the meat of the reply:

	In addition to a constitution, how about a "board of trustees"
to help in deciding policy? It is clear that there is no way under
the current existance of news to enforce policy on all the systems
that make up the net, but I imagine if the decisions were open, and
reasonable, that most of the net would follow them.

	I think part of the resentment is due to people feeling that
there is a small group of backbone administrators plotting what the
rest of the world will read and think. (I certainly do not happen to
think that this is what is going on, but who knows...) It seems
clear to me that some sort of representative body is needed to make
decisions, since trying to reach a decision using the media of
news itself is an takes exponential time with respect to the
complexity (and or political sensitivity) of the issue. Suppose we had a
board of trustees.  This board would be responsible for deciding about
the creation of new groups, selection of moderators, and dealing with
the various problems that may arise.

	The membership of the board would be made up of:

	- representitives from each of the backbone sites. Since they
	  pay so many bills, both in time and money, they deserve
	  seats on the board.

	- members at large. Chosen from the net populace (by election?)
	  to represent the interests of readers and smaller sites.

	- moderators? Not sure about the wisdom of this. On the one hand,
	  they face the day to day problems of moderating a news group.
	  On the other hand, I don't think we want the board getting
	  too large to function efficiently.

	Obviously, none of the decisions reached by the board would
force any site to do anything (except as the decisions are implemented
in either new versions of news software, or by the site feeding you).
But hopefully the decisions will be reasonable, and a greater amount
of light (and less heat) will be shed on the decision making process.

	Comments? Is it unworkable?

-- 

					eric
					...!ptsfa!hippo!eric