From: bschlesinger@nssdca.gsfc.nasa.gov (Barry Schlesinger)
Subject: Re: PROPOSAL:  Yes votes >= 200+2*No Votes
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Organization: NASA - Goddard Space Flight Center
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 15:38:00 GMT

In article <EMCGUIRE.92Dec12155241@mother.intellection.com>, emcguire@intellection.com (Ed McGuire) writes...
>In article <1992Dec10.174347.17435@midway.uchicago.edu> greg@dent.uchicago.edu (Greg Kuperberg) writes:
> 
>   Therefore I PROPOSE that the protocol for a call for votes be changed
>   so that in the future, yes votes must exceed twice no votes by 200 votes
>   before a newsgroup is created. In other words,
> 
>   Y >= 200+2*N
> 

This new rule would be considerably more stringent than the current 
rule.  Y>100+2*N would still cause any group that failed before to 
fail in the future but would still reject some proposed groups with 
strong opposition.  I think Peter da Silva's alternative is also worth 
considering.  The most frequent reason for a proposal gathering a 
large number of NO votes is controversy about the naming.  The most 
frequent reason for passage of a proposal despite a large number of 
votes is a sizeable audience that wants the group and doesn't care 
about the name space. 

>Will the proposed protocol improve the new group creation process?
>The goals of the process are: maximize customer satisfaction; minimize
>resource utilization.

I would say maximize some function that increases with customer 
satisfaction and decreases with resource utilization, but the balance 
between the two is not clear.

> 
>By customers I mean the owners of the news sites.  By resources I mean
>the network traffic and the time spent by news admins.
> 
>The appropriate rationale for creating a new group is that the traffic
>is already there, in a mailing list or a group that needs to be split
>due to heavy traffic.  The existing protocol was written with the
>assumption in mind that a newsgroup costs more to distribute than a
>mailing list while the membership is less than 100.  The validity of
>this assumption obviously varies depending upon the amount of traffic
>on the topic, but is most dependent upon the size of Usenet.  Given
>that Usenet has grown while the number has not changed, a new rule
>should be adopted.

Note that the rationale in the posting quoted above (>) is not
generally accepted. Ed McGuire is listed as a frequent voter against
groups that generally pass with a small amount of opposition.  Any
rule that is based on the rationale above would be counter to the
expressed wishes of the vast majority of users.  And many of the
groups on the net would not exist. The minimum number of YES votes
limit is designed to cover the question of lack of interest. 

> 
>However, rather than raising the number from 100 to 200, the new rule
>should instead figure in the number of Usenet sites and the existing
>traffic on the topic.  The latter might be difficult to measure.
>Perhaps it could be arrived at by consensus during the discussion
>period.
> 
>By the same rationale, we should consider turning some low-traffic
>newsgroups into mailing lists.
> 

A large potential audience may exist for groups that do not exist as 
mailing lists.  Users with limited disk space may not wish to 
subscribe to a mailing list that has a large number of daily messages 
that may use up space needed by the user for other purposes.  And it 
may not be the most effective use of disk space.  Consider the amount 
of disk space that might be taken up by duplicate messages on 
astronomy on machines at gsfc.nasa.gov, stsci.edu, noao.edu, and 
nrao.edu.  User convenience is not limited to the question of whether 
the information is received, but also how.  And the costs of 
distribution involves stress on resources of different kinds.
			...
>-- 
>Ed McGuire                   1603 LBJ Freeway, Suite 780
>Systems Administrator/       Dallas, Texas 75234
> Member of Technical Staff   214/620-2100, FAX 214/484-8110
>Intellection, Inc.           <ed@intellection.com>

				Barry M. Schlesinger
			`	NSSDC/NOST FITS Support Office
				(affiliation for identification
				 purposes only)