canasia.org

Probably a replacement would quickly grow in its place. Since the resource is its size and propagation, they would have to keep it running to maintain control of that resource.  But killing it completely is about all they _couldn't_ do to it. If Tale and UVV were taken over by evil forces, and they didn't kill Usenet completely, but _did_ do something less extreme (refuse to approve any newsgroups unless their charter explicitly bans allow unexportable encryption, to give a farfetched but plausible example), people would be helpless.

        thread over.  woopie. *plonk* Ah, a person who doesn't like Godwin's Law, eh? (plonking pirhana is not cool. bye-bye!) kate.    Kate the Short -( This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )- at the U. of Chicago    Read FAQs at: http://student-www.uchicago.edu/users/keweizel/faq.html

    ... For example, soc.support.pregnancy-loss has changed its charter, by consensus of the group, since the group was formed, but no official archive reflects that change. What makes the new soc.support.pregnancy-loss charter official?  That's a serious question. You can take a vote on anything at any time. That's just a vote. What makes it official? If there is an official charter as part of the RFD/CFV, as part of the uunet archive, which will become part of the archive at isc, and a newsgroup votes itself a new charter, what makes that new charter official? What's the basis on which you wave that charter at people? How do you claim that the new charter is what counts? Why does anyone accept that argument? I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm just raising a question as to what such a vote means. When tale says that the RFD/CFV process is not intended to create new charters is he just saying that this is a matter of process? The archives at uunet are not updateable. That's obviously not a technical problem, it's a policy statement. So the question is, what does that mean? Does it mean that if a group changes its charter that's fine, though the archives won't be changed, or does it mean that once you have a group, the charter is etched in stone forever? The philosophical question of what constitutes an official charter and what makes it official is far more important than making lists of unchartered newsgroups. I do agree that an archive of charters, extracted from the uunet archive, would probably be useful, though not very much so. You can't make people read charters and the more egregiously loony they are the less likely it is that they will read them. You would have to make the chartering/rechartering process at least as hard as creating a newsgroup or else you'd have proponents writing charters in two stages. You would see charters that are written to win the RFD/CFV process. And then you would see amendments offered that would have got a proposal killed in the group creation process but might be able to get a smaller majority than group creation requires. I don't have any trouble with the idea that newsgroups should have charters but I think that providing charters for existing groups that don't have them or rechartering groups that do have charters is problematical. It is likely to be hugely difficult in most cases. My general feeling is that it is not worth the hassle. Usenet is growing rapidly in terms of traffic. Most old, unchartered groups will need reorganization in the medium term. I think that's the time to do it. If the reorganization does not include a renaming, let the old newsgroups hang around unchartered. They will eventually become unusable. Concentrate on making good new groups. Charters are essentially useless where reasonable people are concerned. They know perfectly well what is appropriate on a given newsgroup and do not need the text to be tweaked. Charters provide a document that you can wave at unreasonable people when they get out of line. Then you are left with a document that is useful only as a means of exerting very minor pressure on people who are likely to ignore you anyway. The new readership, they of the I'm paying for my newsgroups, who the hell are you to tell me what I can do? attitude are not going to roll over and play nice just because you wave a charter at them. It's not clear to me that this is worth the effort. The problem on Usenet is not that there are groups without charters or that charters get outdated. The problem is that there has always been some off-topic posting but the newer readership does a lot more of it. It's not the old homogeneous geek Usenet any more. Certainly the spammers won't pay any attention at all. If you want to enforce a charter there is only one way to do it - provide a tough human moderator who will kick people in the teeth if necessary and tell them to go to hell. Henrietta will love that idea. Unmoderated newsgroups are not defined, in the end, by the charter or by the FAQ.  They are defined by who posts. In summary, I suggest that the real issues are: What constitutes an official charter? What makes it official? Whom are you trying to influence with a change of charter? Will that audience pay attention? How do you make the new charter credible?  How do you make it stick? That's not endgame. That's the whole game. Here on news.groups and on Usenet in general we care about namespace and charters and such precisely because we expect to have to live with the consequences. We beat each other up during a proposal, we crack heads and step on throats and then we vote. And then we live with what we get, while we go on to beat up some new proponent. Once you set up a rechartering provision you set up constant warfare on any controversial group. If you want to avoid that you have to make rechartering or retro-chartering sufficiently difficult and infrequent that people don't spend meaningful amounts of time defending existing groups. Obviously it isn't my business what other people spend their time doing. I'm just offering the opinion that this will be a lot of effort for very little gain. - Shankar

What makes the new soc.support.pregnancy-loss charter official?  That's a serious question. You can take a vote on anything at any time. That's just a vote. What makes it official? If there is an official charter as part of the RFD/CFV, as part of the uunet archive, which will become part of the archive at isc, and a newsgroup votes itself a new charter, what makes that new charter official? Here's the way I'm looking at this: Charters currently aren't very useful at all after the group has been created because they can't be changed.  This means that they don't necessarily accurately reflect the content of the group.  They also aren't very accessible currently. FAQs are more important than charters.  Absolutely.  I highly doubt anyone with much experience with newsgroups over time is going to question that. But FAQs are also much *longer* than charters, and often don't provide what people are looking for, namely a quick and relatively thorough answer to just the question what is this group about.  I think charters could fill that role *if* it were possible to update them. The intention is to set up an archive of charters, by group rather than by proposal to make them easier to find, and including *just* the charters (not the rationale and all the other stuff in the current archives).  This archive would be maintained completely separately from the current news.announce.newgroups archive and would not necessarily be tied to the newsgroup creation process (although there would certainly be interaction).  Some procedure will be adopted for changing the charters (that's still to be determined). And then the archive will simply be there. Like everything else on Usenet, it will be precisely as official as people want it to be.  If the idea catches on and everyone thinks it's a wonderful concept and starts pointing everyone at it, mentioning it in new user documents and so forth, then it will become as official as the news.announce.newgroups archive is now.  If everyone ignores it, it will never become official at all. The definition of official on Usenet is people pay attention to it. The goal is to set up a system that people will consider valuable enough to pay attention to. Nothing is going to be forced on anyone at all.  Groups that currently don't have charters may not want them.  Or they may figure out what sort of charter they want if they find the idea valuable.  It will be their choice.  Similarly, it will be entirely the choice of the Usenet community as a whole whether or not to take the entire undertaking seriously. That at least is my conception.  From what Henrietta's said on the subject, I think it's hers too, or fairly close.

John David Galt wrote about An Open Letter to David C Lawrence concerning <gov.  JDG You're much too late.  Usenet is already governed, by an autocrat.  JDG The imperative now is either to come up with a Magna Carta and make him  JDG accept it, or to work around him, probably by organizing a committee of  JDG sysadmins to take his place. I think we differ over word choice. Tale does not govern Usenet. The most one could say of his authority and actions is that he administers it. Everything he does is subject to acceptance by individual news administrators. He has no authority over their actions. He cannot force them to accept a newsgroup nor can he deny them the authority to accept one he has not authorized. He functions a great deal the way an administrative judge does. His responsibility is to ensure, to the degree that his authority permits, that newsgroup proposals are properly prepared and correctly placed in the newsgroup hierarchy. If one looks at his functions with an uncritical eye, they do not seem very much different from the functions of the participants in news.groups. Tale doesn't even really have very much more real authority (aside from his position as moderator on n.a.n.) than the participants on news.groups. He accomplishes most of what he does because he has the respect and trust of news administrators, things he has earned over the years. Joel

Henrietta Thomas wrote about An Open Letter to David C Lawrence concerning <gov [...much snippage and trimming...]  HT  HT [snip]....  To this point, you seem to be obsessed with finding some means, any  means, to diminish tale's authority. You are poking and probing at  everything he does in what seems to be an all fronts attack on those  many responsibilities he has voluntarily assumed.  HT Looking for better ways to get the job done with or without  HT diminishing tale's authority because it seems to me the job is too much  HT for one person to handle all by him/herself. That, my dear, is _your_ opinion. It may even be true. But that which you propose seems to be gaining more resistance than support. There's an obvious message to you in that.  And all your proposals seem designed to replace an easy going and  slightly informal approach to managing Usenet with a strictly controlled  and wholly inflexible set of rules and regulations .  HT Some   rules and regulations need to be inflexible, mainly those which  HT have been in effect for many years, such as the basic procedures  HT outlined in the Guidelines. There is a basic incompatibility between our viewpoints. I subscribe to the traditional Usenet idea that a group of intelligent people do not require hard-and-fast rules by which to conduct themselves. A set of guidelines which only roughly outline what each should expect of the others would suffice. You, on the other hand, appear to expect that even the most mature adult needs to be told exactly what she or he can do, when it is to be done and the manner in which it is to be done. I will concede that there are some people who cannot live outside the boundaries and confines of such strict laws. But I also think such people could benefit from some professional help.  HT Nobody is suggesting throwing everything out, but only to have a basic  HT set of ground rules which should not change execept for due cause. I  HT would like to see these ground rules written down. They are already to  HT some extent (in the Guidelines and related documents), but I think they  HT ought to be more clearly codified and publicized within the Big 8. The fact that the founding fathers of Usenet thought that documents _title_d Guidelines rather than ones _title_d Policies and Procedures or Rules and Regulations would suffice should give you some insight into what they had in mind for the governing of Usenet. Joel