karl@ficc.uu.net (karl lehenbauer) (04/08/89)
In article <14681@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US>, jfh@rpp386.Dallas.TX.US (John F. Haugh II) writes: > Allowing any and all comers to vote is also wrong, IMHO. The leafs > outnumber the rest of us by large margins. Letting the site admins > of bazillions of leafs dictate USENET policy will be no better than > better than the current situation. Just because John has a fetish for carrying a lot of uucp connections does not that much differentiate rpp386 from a leaf per se, unless this includes newsfeeds. Who foots substantial long distance phone bills and/or sources a lot of newsfeeds quickly separates the "trunks" from the "minor branches." There really isn't anything wrong with the current policy. People show by casting their "votes" that there is enough support for a group that it'll actually be used if it gets created. So far, no group (to my knowledge) has been denied creation simply on the basis of inadequate net resources. If we are still to "take all comers," with the intrinsic safety valve that each and every siteadmin has the ability to not carry or forward any group they please, the current proposals to create a ruling oligarchy seem, at best, ill-considered and unnecessary and at worst, gratuitously risky. IDOTNAWKI. I'll try this again: Create all the groups that pass the vote. If a site cannot handle the traffic, they can cut it down by deciding what not to receive. If they want to carry it all, they can buy more hardware. This is better than having a set of net.gods arbitrarily deciding what passes and what doesn't on the basis of some theoretical site's limitations, else we'll have something like: "comp.unix.i386? Granted, hand me my signet ring. talk.religion.islam? Denied, there's too much traffic on the net already." It's working OK, noise levels in news.* notwithstanding -- let it be. -karl, member of the ferranti and hackercorp cabals -- -- uunet!ficc!karl "An expression of deep worry and concern failed to -- karl@ficc.uu.net cross either of Zaphod's faces." -- Hitchhiker's Guide