From: tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot)
Newsgroups: news.admin,alt.config
Subject: Re: ALT.GRAPHICS: Enough already!!!
Date: 15 Oct 92 15:04:08 GMT
Article-I.D.: mccall.1992Oct15.090408
Reply-To: tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot)
Organization: The McCall Pattern Co., Manhattan, KS, USA
Nntp-Posting-User: tp


In article <719058360.F00055@monly.wlink.nl.wlink.nl>,
Tim.Pierce@f1.n100.z60.wlink.nl (Tim Pierce) writes:
>In article <1992Oct12.112510@mccall.com> tp@mccall.com (Terry Poot) writes:
>>Which part of this do you reject?
>
>That alt has no arbiter of right and wrong, even by popular consensus.

But that was alt's whole rationale for existence. It was created as a reaction
against the "guidelines" used in the big 7 usenet groups. There is no control
mechanism other than peer pressure.

>There is an understanding (granted, a very general and loosely defined
>one) among news administrators regarding which alt groups are
>"properly" created and which ones are not.  

Maybe among some admins, but my understanding (and apparently at least a few
others) is that there is no such thing as an improper alt group, by definition.
Such has been my understanding since alt was created. There are certainly
annoying groups, but not invalid ones. Becker and I part company in that he
tries to enforce this on others. I think the idea of enforcing anything in alt
is also contrary to its concept. 

One might wish that alt was a _little_ bit saner, but it is hard to change
something that is explicitly an anarchy, especially when it was created as a
reaction to the evolved usenet, which started out like alt, and evolved much the
way many of us would like to see alt go. If alt evolves into another usenet,
we'll have 2 usenets, which is useless, and someone will create another alt in
reaction to that. I think the proper solution if you don't like how alt works is
to try to get the groups that interest you into a different structure, not to
change the structure of alt.

Bottom line (IMHO, of course) is that (ignoring the issue of posting forgeries),
what Becker and Poskanzer do is not wrong, it's just rude and annoying. I wish
they'd quit, but I accuse neither of them of violating any "rules". If they did
it in usenet, it would be wrong. Other than the forgery issue, there's no real
difference between Becker's and Poskanzer's actions. Neither is wrong, neither
is right (though both think they are right, of course). This has about as much
chance of being resolved rationally as a an argument between a priest and a
rabbi over whether Jesus was the messiah.

>"anyone can create an alt group at any
>time."  The attitude of apathy, I think, is self-defeating.

Much as you (and I) may dislike it, this is true simply by the definition of alt
when it was created. It isn't a matter of apathy at all. Alt was intended to be
free of all restrictions.

>>You are both guilty of sending out
>>messages that annoy large numbers of news admins with no consideration for
>our
>>feelings in the matter.
>
>Whine.  

Granted.

>Jef *could* put "becker" in the Path message for his rmgroup
>messages to hide their existence from the guilty party, presumably
>resulting in the lack of a following newgroup.  

Presumably Becker would then go to a weekly schedule the way Poskanzer has done
if this were to occur. He could put mccall in the Path line to shut me up, but
he'd have a mighty long path line if he honored all such requests. :-)

>Nevertheless, this is
>really out of proportion with the situation we're talking about.

Not really. Some of us have hit our annoyance threshold, so we bitched (whined
if you prefer). We get to get it all off our chest. Out of proportion would be
if someone started sending hate mail to the respective site admins and feeds
trying to get them thrown off the net.

>Imminent death of alt.graphics predicted, film at 11 ....

We can all wish.
--
Terry Poot <tp@mccall.com>                   The McCall Pattern Company
(uucp: ...!rutgers!depot!mccall!tp)          615 McCall Road
(800)255-2762, in KS (913)776-4041           Manhattan, KS 66502, USA
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.software.b