sjb (12/14/82)
Well, it has now been a bit over a week since the apocalypse, and I'd like to make one BIG point: Has the net suffered? I admit, I may have made a mistake with net.wines and net.info-terms, but these groups are now back. The others have NOT reappeared (with the exception of net.trivia, which will take some time...) and are not being missed. Instead of complaining for the sake of complaining or maybe doing so because you feel I may be overstepping my bounds, PLEASE think about this: The groups that have not come back obviously don't have the traffic to make it. Did it hurt to remove them? The groups that did come back are living on. Did it hurt to remove them? The answer is 'no' is both cases. We live on.
z (12/14/82)
Adam, you say "Did it hurt to remove the newsgroups which were still being used?", and then answer "No", with the implication that the fact that they're back means that all is well once again. Unfortunately, this is not the case. When these newsgroups were deleted, all of their subscribers lost all of their unread messages in them. Were these messages important? Were they unimportant? We'll never know. It's bad enough that this happened once, but your message displays the attitude that this is not a serious problem, and one is left to wonder about how careful you'll be in the future. To everybody else: There have been objections to a centralized policy on newsgroups on various grounds, and many of these objections have merit. However, I think that what is being largely overlooked is that there is already a centralized policy. It is designed and implemented by Adam Buchanan, who was not elected or appointed by anyone, nor has any mandate from the net. The mere fact that he has a fair amount of vocal support is meaningless; the fact that the New Right is quite vocal does not and should not give them the authority to make the laws in this country. What it comes down to is that it is time for the net to develop a rational policy about how it wants to conduct itself, and until it does, no one should presume the authority to make netwide policy themselves. I would propose that at the January Usenix meeting, the suggested BOF session on Usenet be held and that it decide on various policy alternatives for Usenet. These alternatives could then be voted on by a formal netwide referendum shortly after the conference. Steve Zimmerman decvax!cca!z z@cca