From: jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard)
Newsgroups: news.groups,rec.music.synth
Subject: Re: *BAD* music group reorg will not be honored
Date: 5 Nov 92 22:45:42 GMT
Followup-To: news.groups
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston

In article <1992Nov5.213730.789@jato.jpl.nasa.gov> dave@jato.jpl.nasa.gov writes:
>I can't...but that doesn't mean that they don't exist. I do know that
>the group is echoed to at least one international MIDI BBS network. 
>I don't know how. 

So explain to me how the users on that international MIDI BBS network would
even know the change had been made if the gateway maintainer does his job.

>Well gee. Let's look at that logic. Given the amount of flame traffic in
>news.groups...MOST people probably kill based upon any "news.groups" in
>the header. But aside from that...what seems to happen over and over is
>that concern about a vote doesn't appear until after something bad happens
>to a group. 

There should be little to no crossposting between news.groups and any other
newsgroup (excepting, of course, news.announce.newgroups). I would expect that
there were less than 5 messages crossposted between rec.music.synth and
news.groups in the year before the initial RFD. This is hardly enough to
warrant a killfile entry. This is the reason behind the rule that discussion
of such things happens in news.groups ONLY.

The only reason the rename may be bad is because the gateway maintainers
aren't doing their job. Beyond that, who cares? What difference does it make?
How else could it harm the users of the group to have the name change from
rec.music.synth to rec.music.makers.synth?? (Typing 7 extra characters isn't
it; newsgroup names are typed very infrequently.) 

>The logic still stands that people in a newsgroup (readers AND posters)
>should have some say so over the name of their group. If (after the fact)
>there is a lot of complaining about a name change...then something is 
>wrong! I don't care how much legalese you use to back it up. The desired
>goal is a consensus, right? 

Those who would be affected by a change should have the ability to affect the
course of events. This includes not only those in a group but also those who
maintain news systems.

The only thing that is wrong with the current situation is that those who are
complaining didn't participate when they had a chance to change the outcome.
Just as I have no sympathy for those who didn't vote Tuesday and then complain
about Clinton's election, so I have no sympathy for those who didn't vote on
this issue and are complaining now.

>How about posting CFV's for renames ONLY to the group that is being
>renamed? That works. It also forces people who want to vote to read
>the group and get a sense of it. 

Sorry, but this would completely remove the input from the admins who would
have to make the necessary changes, as it would otherwise force them to read
every group they get on their system.

>I don't think they knew to do so. Some of those people have (and desire to
>have) little clue as to USENET and it's politics. They shouldn't have to
>have a clue when it comes to affecting their group.

If that's the case, then what do they care what the group is called -
especially those on the other side of a Usenet-to-something-else gateway?

>Please be precise. "...the expressed wished of a fractionally small subset 
>of the net as a whole". Or are you going to now claim that 271 people speak
>for an estimated 6 million? 

No more, and no less, than those who claim that the 43% of American voters who
went for Clinton two days ago speak for the entire country.
-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu      | adequately be explained by stupidity.
     We survived Jimmy Carter; we'll (probably) survive Bill Clinton.
Xref: sparky news.groups:20599 rec.music.makers:10786