newsgroup reorg
Joseph S. D. Yao
>In article <2...@bridge2.UUCP> p...@bridge2.UUCP (Paul V. Fries) writes:
>>Great attitude, huh?
If one is temperate in one's correspondence with Adams, I've always
found his responses reasonable. I suspect from the brief extract
that Fries' may not have been the most temperate of the many many
letters (including mine) that Adams received on the subject.
> 1. By what authority does Mr. Adams attempt to run this
> network with such a heavy hand? Arpanet is owned by
> DOD, but Usenet is not owned by anyone.
Bingo. DoD nor seismo nor AT&T nor anybody "owns" Usenet, especially
since it really isn't a single thing anyone CAN "own". As far as the
ARPAnet, DoD "owns" it in the sense that it tries to regulate use of
those lines which it pays for; but the non-DDN nets that are part of
the more general Internet (anything not on 10 or 26) are not "owned"
or run by DoD -- DoD only regulates how they interact with 10 and 26
(and then, imperfectly regulates that).
Seismo and other "backbone" sites, by virtue of the fact that THEY
and NOT YOU pay for their machines and the majority of the comms
costs for the news that passes through them, and in an attempt to be
as of much service as they can! without getting swamped! have a
perfect right to decide what goes through their machines, as do you
for your machines. They have repeatedly said that if you value an
alternate topic so much, you are perfectly welcome to set up alternate
comms routes that do not involve their news machines.
> 2. Do the readers of the net really want to permit what
> is tantamount to censorship of legitimate, civil
> communication? If it happens to net.rec.skydive, it
> can also happen to anyone else's group.
No. We are not. You are perfectly welcome to set up a mailing list,
net.rec.skydive. It is agreed by the responsible members of the net
that, to prevent net overload and total failure, we have to somehow
regulate the initialisation of new net news topics. The most fair
way seems to have been to take existing mail in an already overworked
topic (C from Unix, e.g.) and make a new topic. If any net.rec topic
threatens net.unix, I think it should be shunted to alternate comms
channels -- or shut off, if no one cares enough to do that.
>that he has taken his "job" far too seriously, and is in need of a nice
>long rest. It is he who should 'drop off the network', not any of us.
Did you read either of the relevant notes? Did you notice that Adams'
only "job", as far as this goes, was to type in the announcement that
was agreed on by the people who are spending their bucks (well, their
employers' -- from which fund their salaries are drawn) to bring us
news? Did you note that even HE did not agree with all of it? And
finally, are you sure that Fries' out-of-context quote:
>>>You are, of course, free to drop off the network.
>>>You certainly aren't doing ME a favor by "passing the shit along".
>>>Start a mailing list if its that important.
was not merely a response to Fries' (no doubt sarcastic) offer to do
so? That last is just a guess, based on knowing Adams' style. But I
personally think that's prob'ly what happened.
--
Joe Yao hadron!jsdy@seismo.{CSS.GOV,ARPA,UUCP}
js...@hadron.COM (not yet domainised)