mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) (09/26/86)
Greg Woods writes: > At some point, we simply have to stop debating on where everyone's favorite >group should go and *do* it. There is nothing to stop us (and by "us" I now >mean the entire net, not the backbone) from moving a group later. Features >of 2.11 news (consider this a plug) will make this easier, as I understand >it, due to a different implementation of newsgroup aliasing. 2.11 will also >make posting to moderated groups easier, and allow mod groups to fit >*anywhere* in the namespace (not just mod.*). THis is completely at variance with the net *I'm* on. When consensus was the political force of the net, very very few groups ever got deleted, and I can't think of any that were ever moved. Under the current scheme, nothing gets moved until the backbone decides to do it, so that the opinions of the rest of the net are completely irrelevant except insofar as the backbone is badgered into listening to them. And I'm sorry, but new news versions are far from any solution to matters. People simply don't run around installing new versions. > We do not have the time to debate the particular merits of every single >newsgroup. It's out of the question. It isn't that the backbone doesn't >care about anyone else's opinion; we do, and some changes suggested by >non-backbone users *have* been implemented. Why, Mark Horton actually agreed >with Matt Weiner on creating a talk.headlines group! :-) (that's in the >works, by the way). The point is, we have to draw the line somewhere, and >wherever that is is going to be arbitrary, and will seem unfair to whosever >favorite group happens to be under discussion at that particular time. So far, a grand total of 4 newsgroups have had any controversy associated with them, by my count. This hardly represents an overwhelming controversy. The way that things were handled, however, is quite significant. net.motss was simply brow-beaten back to life. net.singles seems to be the talk group that everyone likes. The wobegonians were delivered a fait accompli, and I can understand why they're upset. And finally, there's the philo.tech spat. I'm sorry, but the impression I get of the discussion is that Greg Woods doesn't like Gene Smith. At the same time that net.philo is trying to lurch over to moderation (without a peep of controversy), there seems to be this willful attempt to squelch the creation of a group which was already a-borning anyway. There doesn't seem to be any connection whatsoever between the supposed principles of the reorganization and the way these things were handled. What is being suggested here by Woods is that everyone clam up until the thing is delivered, and then we can all start yelling. To whom? The backbone has acquired the function of deciding what groups get created; if they didn't want to deal with a lot of flack over how they do it, they shouldn't have acquired it in the first place. C. Wingate