sahayman@orchid.UUCP (01/01/70)
Brian Reid writes: >Although I haven't consulted any of the other "founders" of the alt network >on this issue, I am fairly confident that I speak for all of them when I say >that the policy for newsgroup creation on the alt network is that there is no >policy. If there is no policy, then what keeps people from deleting newsgroups at will? You'll need a policy soon. If I don't happen to like the idea of "alt.flame", I ought to be able to rmgroup it, at least according to these non-guidelines. Not being an anarchist myself, I wouldn't do it, but sooner or later someone will try. Steve Hayman
reid@decwrl.UUCP (09/13/87)
The alt subnet was created by John Gilmore and Brian Reid, with lots of input from various San Francisco Bay-area people, notably Gordon Moffett. We created the alt subnet because we thought that the "backbone" concept was not working. We don't think that tight central control is the right way to run our kind of network. The usenet backbone caught a bad case of Ferdinand Marcos disease, forgetting why it was in power and who its people were. John and Gordon and I are freedom-loving people. We believe in netnews as a new kind of communication, and we enjoy the unregulated free speech that it provides. We want you to have that freedom too, and we believe in it strongly enough that we are not going to try to regulate your use of that freedom. Although I haven't consulted any of the other "founders" of the alt network on this issue, I am fairly confident that I speak for all of them when I say that the policy for newsgroup creation on the alt network is that there is no policy. Certainly there is no "alt backbone cabal" that votes on new newsgroups. The whole point of the alt subnet is that alt groups go only to people who want them, and don't go to people who don't want them. Even Bob Webber is welcome to create an alt group. From what I've seen of his postings I don't think I'll want to get that group at my site, and I certainly won't read it. But that's my privilege. John Gilmore is the wizard of the alt net. That doesn't mean he has dictatorial powers over it. He isn't a "spaf", with right to rule. I'm sure that John does not want such powers. John is a peaceful man and probably doesn't want to rule anything or anybody. John's role is sending out the "checkgroup" messages each month for alt.all. He does that not for the purpose of defining what is an "approved" group and what is an "unapproved" group, but to gently encourage sites that are taking the alt groups to consider taking the new ones. Each of us "alt" founders has different pet peeves about the regular net. My pet peeve is the totally idiotic names. If you want to call your new group alt.sf-lovers.books or alt.rec.arts.sf-lovers.books, that's fine with me, although I will say "baaaa baaaa" about you a lot, behind your back. But on the alt network the backbone doesn't control the names, because the backbone doesn't want to control anything. You are free to call it alt.sf-books or alt.compendium or alt.sfbookworms or whatever you want. Alt.analog? Shake yourselves free of the kind of thinking that brought you ROTC and comp.sys.ibm.pc.digest before you start wanting to call your mother person.parent.female Brian Reid