tp@ndm20 (09/23/85)
>> I propose the following rule -- each site can generate a weighted vote >> on any subject. The weight of the vote is equal to the number of >> OUTGOING news feeds a site supports. This means that a backbone such > >YES! As a leaf site administrator, I hereby vote to disenfranchise myself. So do I, because it makes sense. Forget the transitive closure stuff though, because as someone said, you can't determine it from current net topology. Besides, the only measure of how much each site supports the net is the number of full outgoing news feeds, regardless of machine size or number of users. The only other variable could be whether the feeds are long distance. As a leaf SA, I can control what comes in by only carrying what my site wants. As a matter of fact, I already do this, because we don't have the disc space to support a full feed. >on this. Certainly we don't want to make the site administrator the >"elector" for a site (i.e., the SA decides for him/herself what the >vote shall be). Does the SA become the local vote counter, and the Au contraire. The SA should be the only person to cast such a vote. How the vote is taken internal to that site depends on the site. The SA is responsible to his management for maintaining the system and allocating machine resources. The users aren't. If the SA decides or is told that such a group shall not/should not be carried by his site, nobody external to his site has the right to say otherwise. If his users disagree with his policies, that also is an internal matter and should not be interfered with by the net. He can take a vote, ask the responsible users for their opinions, or determine his decision in any way that makes sense for his environment. The size of a site makes no difference in terms of how much a site supports the net, only the number of full feeds, so feeding a micro ought to count for just as much as feeding a major corporation one removed from the backbone, with a 500 machine internal network. If the corporation has no outgoing feeds, they don't support the net. If the micro feeds another micro, he does. Terry Poot Nathan D. Maier Consulting Engineers (214)739-4741 Usenet: ...!{allegra|ihnp4}!convex!smu!ndm20!tp CSNET: ndm20!tp@smu ARPA: ndm20!tp%smu@csnet-relay.ARPA
al@infoswx.UUCP (09/27/85)
I agree with all that has been said, but I also believe there can be some problems. For example, at the Denver AT&T IS and the Holmdel Bell Labs, the computer centers are autonomous organizations. Many times these organizations do not have the insight to understand the needs and desires of their user community, nor is it practical for them to poll there user community. The Holmdel computer center probably has greater than several thousand UNIX users (my guess). I do not mean to put down these people, but to support this many users is a tremendous job. I guess I really like the idea of a benevolent dictator, or committee, combined with automatic newsgroup deletion. Maybe we should allow anyone to create a newsgroup for a 3-4 probation period. Automatic deletion would occur unless it is "blessed" by the dictator or committee. The dictator would also be able to delete a newsgroup immediately, in the event a newsgroup like net.slander&defame ( :-) ) was started. Al Gettier
tp@ndm20 (09/29/85)
>the computer centers are autonomous organizations. Many times these >organizations do not have the insight to understand the needs and desires >of their user community, nor is it practical for them to poll there user >community. The Holmdel computer center probably has greater than several >thousand UNIX users (my guess). Um, so you want to be able to send your votes (collected in some manner, note that auto-deletion based on usage is a form of vote) outside of your organization (to the net), to avoid their influence on the news that they have to administer and pay for? I still feel the net has no right to pay attention to anyone by the SA on such matters. Internal issues should remain internal. Holmdel could, for instance, appoint a user or committee of users to decide the vote for the site. Usenet, considered as an abstract entity, has no right to bypass the SA. The SA is in charge of resources, and that is the whole issue here. Any SA who doesn't want the burden can pass the buck. I'm sure if this idea gets anywhere, someone will post a vote collection program to ease the burden on a large site. Then Holmdel could just let the users vote into the system, take the results as their vote, and that is it. If someone writes such a thing it could have an option to automatically sample the votes, turn them into for/against votes, and mail them out to whoever gets stuck counting them.