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From: woods@hao.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.misc,news.stargate,news.sysadmin,news.admin
Subject: Re: USENET constitution (Was Re: Spaf Pro-vote)
Message-ID: <772@hao.UCAR.EDU>
Date: Tue, 7-Jul-87 18:38:15 EDT
Article-I.D.: hao.772
Posted: Tue Jul  7 18:38:15 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 10-Jul-87 03:41:32 EDT
References: <266@brandx.rutgers.edu> <15982@gatech.gatech.edu> <6948@shemp.UCLA.EDU> <133@hippo.UUCP>
Reply-To: woods@hao.UUCP (Greg Woods)
Organization: High Altitude Obs./NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 43
Keywords: Consitution, practicality
Xref: utgpu news.groups:1104 news.misc:600 news.stargate:210 news.sysadmin:253 news.admin:568
Summary: Good idea, but probably not doable. You can't force a site admin to do anything with his machine that is against his better judgment

>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.

  I think the problem with this is that it is impossible to come up with
a set of rules that could cover every possible situation. For example, one
of the biggest problems right now is when to create/delete newsgroups. One rule
that we'd all like to see is that groups with a large amount of popular support
have a better chance of getting created than those that do not. Good, makes
sense. Then along comes something like net.rec.drugs. That group had a good
deal of popular support, but there was no set of rules in the world that 
could have forced me to carry it on my machine no matter how much support it
had, simply because I would be risking possibly my very livelihood and 
certainly my site's access to USENET by having a "red flag" like rec.drugs
appear in the newsgroup list. Many of the backbone admins felt the same way,
and so we refused to create and carry the group despite the fact that it
should have been created according to the rules that were in use at the time.
The problem was, those rules did not address this situation. OK, we could
make a rule that the name can't be controversial, or that newsgroups for
popssibly controversial subjects should have "hidden" names (like motss).
Fine, assuming everyone agreed to follow such a rule (another debate entirely;
in this case that was in fact suggested but refused by those pushing the group).
But what about the next unpredicted situation that comes along? The bottom 
line is, it is the responsibility and duty of the site admin to decide
the policies of the net as they apply to his machine. No set of "rules" can
force me to do something that is against my better judgment. My decisions,
unfortunately, affect a lot of sites downstream from us, but as long as they
depend on us for access to the net they have little choice (they are, of course,
free to arrange alternate feeds; some of them have done so for groups that
we don't carry and just to increase their connectivity -- more power to them).
If the backbone admins as a group decide to go against the "official" rules
in a given case, it is still going to raise a flame debate, and will still
effectively kill a group. Nothing changes. I don't think you can get any
site admin in his right mind (backbone or otherwise) to agree to let a
committee tell him what groups to carry and not carry on his machine.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for having the rules more clearly stated, and
I welcome suggestions, but I can never agree to ALWAYS abide by them.

--Greg
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