mangoe@mimsy.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (06/16/88)
Max Hauser writes: >| the backbone is very close to ignoring it's own rules for group >| creation and seriously considering vetong the group anyway. >Regardless of the current comp.women argument, I am surprised to see >such an assertion made *now* with apparent outrage. In the last couple >of months vocal members of the backbone have forcefully asserted their >privilege to do exactly that -- even to the point of rewriting the >guidelines-for-creation-of-a-new-newsgroup to make it clear that they >consider voting "advisory" only. ... and the guidelines for various things have been changed several times when the "rules" promulgated by the "backbone" were taken seriously as rules to the extent that outsiders interpreted them as binding upon the backbone. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing; I was one who argued for clarification rather than "rules" as I understood very well that the backbone was going to do what it wanted. But what I find interesting is that, after years of talking about the net as an anarchy, we find backbone types complaining bitterly when other backbone types act unilaterally, or threaten to. In short, they seem to be complaining that the backbone is starting to act like an anarchy! The message here seems to be that anarchy works as long as there is a pretty much overwhelming guarantee of consensus. Given the trend of group creation, philosophizing about the net, and the line of discussion in many groups, it was inevitable that someone could combine them all into a proposal for a group whose content was meritorious but whose creation was going to be highly controversial. Such a group would never find a consensus. And in fact we had as many "no" votes as most proposals collect at ALL. Part of the problem, I think, centers around the voting. The most recent interpretation handed down from the backbone is that it is essentially a means of collecting information. But the information, I should note, is summarized in the "yes/no" result from the vote. Votes are quite indifferent as to the size of the victory; by naming something as a positive result, I think there is a certain commitment made to honoring the results; at the least, there is a commitment made to be upfront about decisions not to honor the vote. If you are going to let the vote proceed, I think there is some commitment made to abide by the results; if not, the anarchic nature of the backbone is going to present an immovable stumbling block. It seems to me, then, that there are three ways to resolve this: (a) go for comp.society.women as a compromise. (b) insist on the acceptance of the voting results, and create comp.women. (c) change the voting rules to reflect a denegration of controversial creation attempts, and create no new group. As a nay-sayer in the voting, I prefer (a), even though it delays the fundamental problem. (b) is, I think, ultimately unpalatable to the backbone. (c) rewards negative controversy, although it protects consensus; in the balance, I don't think we need to encourage people to stir up trouble. At any rate, this episode is valuable as an illustration that some of the principles espoused by the backbone are truer than they may have thought. C. Wingate