[news.sysadmin] Spaf Pro-vote / Plea for Order

dgreen@CS.UCLA.EDU (07/01/87)

In article <15982@gatech.gatech.edu> spaf@gatech.UUCP (Gene Spafford) writes:

>So here's the offer:  send me
>mail if you think I'm doing a rotten job at what I'm doing and/or you
>think the net is worse off under the current organization.  

I'll throw in my vote that you are doing a good job under trying 
circumstances.  However, as I have expounded at length in the 
moderators/backbone mailing lists, I feel very strongly that the net.anarchy 
has to end soon before we destroy the emotional stability of our fearless 
leaders and the confidence of the readership.  

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.

I'm confident that a set of coherent rules WILL be created eventually, because 
events will force them to be.  The question is whether it will be now, when
it is relatively easy, or later, when net.cabalites and net.readers have 
significantly battered each other.


 _D_a_n_ _G_r_e_e_n_i_n_g   _I_n_t_e_r_n_e_t  dgreen@CS.UCLA.EDU
                _U_U_C_P     ..!{sdcrdcf,ihnp4,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!dgreen

webber@brandx.rutgers.edu (Webber) (07/01/87)

In article <6948@shemp.UCLA.EDU>, dgreen@CS.UCLA.EDU writes:
> In article <15982@gatech.gatech.edu> spaf@gatech.UUCP (Gene Spafford) writes:
> 
> >So here's the offer:  send me
> >mail if you think I'm doing a rotten job at what I'm doing and/or you
> >think the net is worse off under the current organization.  
> 
> I'll throw in my vote that you are doing a good job under trying 
> circumstances.  ....

Glad someone finally responded to the net.  For the record, I view
each of these messages as clear support for the statement in my
original net ombudsman message to the effect that `spaf has done alot
of good for the net'.

I must really thank spaf for putting me on the cc's of all these
messages.  It has allowed me to personally reply to a number of people
who would not ordinarily have bothered to speak with me.  Of course,
less he think that I am saying anything bad about him behind his back,
I have made sure he was on the cc of all my replies.  Please keep them
coming. 
 
> 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.

Clearly.  Definitely. I hope the new net ombudsman (weemba@berkeley.edu)
take the addressing of this matter as a high priority item.

>I'm confident that a set of coherent rules WILL be created eventually, because
> events will force them to be.  The question is whether it will be now, when

Hmmm.  How do you stand on balanced budget ammendments?


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

marv@vsedev.VSE.COM (Marvin Raab) (07/03/87)

In article <6948@shemp.UCLA.EDU> dgreen@CS.UCLA.EDU (Dan R. Greening) 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.


     Not a bad idea but it could lead to:
 
        1) competition
        2) a "civil war" forcing the development of two or more separate
           networks...


     Is USENET becoming too large to be contained in one Net?


                                   -marvin

-- 
Marvin Raab                                      Arlington, VA 22202
   ...!seismo!vsedev!marv                        703-521-5449 (h)
   ...!verdix!vrdxhq!vsedev!marv
         (formerly MFRQC@CUNYVM.BITNET)   

elg@killer.UUCP (Eric Green) (07/05/87)

in article <6948@shemp.UCLA.EDU>, dgreen@CS.UCLA.EDU says:
> I'll throw in my vote that you are doing a good job under trying 
> circumstances.  However, as I have expounded at length in the 
> moderators/backbone mailing lists, I feel very strongly that the net.anarchy 
> has to end soon before we destroy the emotional stability of our fearless 
> leaders and the confidence of the readership.  
> 
> 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.

I must say that I agree. There's a variety of issues that need to be settled:
The problem of network flow and connectivity (the current ad-hoc approach to
getting a net connection isn't too effective, the sites at the ends of the
draw often have two-week delays, and many sites have a very hard time finding
a connection), the problem of unpopular actions taking place, the problem of a
vocal minority making it appear that an action is unpopular when it really
isn't, and other things of that nature.

I think it's time for the Net to graduate from being an anarchy, to being a
democracy.

I also think that the vote should be detirmined by the number of mail and news
feeds that a site has. With outgoing feeds getting a much higher value than
incoming feeds.  The guys who pay the most should have an appropriate voice in
the matter. The individual reader should lobby his system administrator, who
is paying the bills, rather than mailing "votes" as it is done currently.
Chances are that since system administrators are as lazy as all of us, they
wouldn't bother to vote unless their users urged them to doit...

One nice thing about the electronic media is that we really, truly can have a
"true democracy". That is, it shouldn't be too difficult to mail ballots to
the system administrators of all "registered" sites (of course, that
presupposes a registration mechanism!), about issues such as the moderation of
comp.sources.misc. Then when we get self-apointed "saviors" on the net, or
"net.fascists", we can just point at the ballot. Of course, that also brings
up another problem:  enforcement of edicts. What can we do about, say, a
backbone site that doesn't go along with what the rest of the net wants? (or a
peripheral site, but a peripheral site is just an easy case of this scenario).
Most sysadmins are lazy and certainly aren't going to mess with their uucp
dialing list just because some long-hairs somewhere "out there" said to..... 
so chopping them out of the net would be pretty impossible (although probably
enough sites could be re-routed to make them merely a "rib" site). The only
thing I can think of would be some sort of automated mechanism to
automatically do it for the system administrators... bringing up the
possibility of a net.fascist figuring it out and doing it himself... hmmmm...
it looks like there's no easy solution, after all!

In any event, I do think that we seriously need to look at organizing the net
and providing some means of representation for gathering the views of system
administrators.... 

  Eric Green {ihnp4,cbosgd}!killer!elg, elg@usl.CSNET

eric@hippo.UUCP (Eric Bergan) (07/06/87)

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

jpn@teddy.UUCP (John P. Nelson) (07/06/87)

>	In addition to a constitution, how about a "board of trustees"
>to help in deciding policy?
> ...
>	- members at large. Chosen from the net populace (by election?)
>	  to represent the interests of readers and smaller sites.

Gee, this sounds like more fun than a local government door-to-door campaign!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For USENET trustee, VOTE FOR:

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If elected, I promise to work for the restoration of an unmoderated
sources newsgroup! :-)

John P. Nelson
   decvax!genrad!teddy!jpn
   seismo!mit-eddie!genrad!teddy!jpn
   ARPA!talcott!panda!jpn