From: stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley)
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy
Subject: Re: Newsgroup creation guidelines
Date: 4 Jan 1993 23:41:18 GMT
Organization: Oregon State University, College of Oceanography
NNTP-Posting-Host: skyking.oce.orst.edu

In article <1993Jan04.172717.43474@watson.ibm.com> strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom) writes:
>In article <1hi13aINNitm@gaia.ucs.orst.edu>, stanley@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:
>I think you are defocussing the discussion by bringing up
>irrelevancies such as my allegedly defective newsreader and 

At no time have I claimed that your newsreader was defective. I pointed
out to you that your style of quoting was confusing. Some people use
"|", some people use ">", and seeing the two together makes it look
like there are two levels of quoting going on.

>I want the net to change policies so that all readers, not just
>me, can spend less time reading news.  

They are free to spend as little time as they wish reading news.
Currently, they may freely skip RFD and CFV. You don't seem to have any
compulsion to read them, so why are you trying to claim that anyone
else is being forced to?

>No.  I claim to understand the current policy, not "understand
>and accept".  
Please refer to Message-ID: <1992Dec21.225351.18200@watson.ibm.com>.
It contradicts your current claim.

>Remember the purpose of this thread is to propose
>a *change* to the current policy.  Hardly apathetic.

Sorry, but if you understand what the current policy is, and you still
don't bother to read the CFV, then that is apathy. If you cared enough
about it, you would read CFV, because you claim to understand the effect
they have.

>Forced on pain of possibly missing a ballot.  

That is hardly being forced to do anything. I don't see most of the
ballots that appear, and I am none the worse for it. Ouch. Sorry, there
was a CFV posted that I didn't read. Such a stabbing pain it was.

>What's so difficult
>about the suggestion that ballots should have precise subject lines
>so that one doesn't have to read all ballots to find the ones one
>is interested in?

What's so difficult about understanding that CFV posted in a newsgroup
means that it has some relevance to readers of that group? The
difficulty in your proposal is that 1) it doesn't decrease the amount of
traffic and thus the amount of stuff that needs to be read, and 2) is
impossible to implement because even you don't think you need to follow
your own proposed rules in selecting a subject.

>If I am a reader of a.d.foo, the fact that group a.b.c, which I
>don't read, is going to be renamed a.d.e, does not change anything
>at any significant level of importance.  

Define "significant". Creating a new group in a hierarchy certainly can
change the nature of the hierarchy, including the implicit charter
changes that are supposed to force mentioning the group in the Subject
line.

>It doesn't change which
>set of postings are relevant for a.d.foo, it doesn't change
>the name of a.d.foo, it doesn't do a thing.

It certainly can change the "charter" of a.d.foo, for no longer will
a.d.e topics be allowed in a.d.foo. This, according to half of what you
say, it has a direct effect and mandates the inclusion of the name in
the Subject. The other half claims that there can be no effect, and
thus the name doesn't need to appear.

>That's not the only effect, as you know.  The newgroup message
>arrives at varying times at different sites, may or may not
>be lost by different sites. 

This has no effect on the user.

> There is a period of time when
>postings appear on one or the other group or both groups.  

So the user sees them in both groups. Big deal. Most modern newsreaders
won't show both articles. 

>|> It is clear from your own example that teis "syntactic rule" is
>|> useless, for you yourself don't believe it should be applied.
>|> 
>The CFV should specify the charter changes, so it is still syntactic.

I make the challenge once again: provide a copy of a CFV in the recent
(1 year) past that has been a vote on a charter change. This is not the
first time I have asked you to do this. This is not the first time you
have failed to do so.

>|> You should also be aware that your proposal will do nothing to decrease
>|> the "irrelevant to the reader" RFD that are posted -- in fact, it will
>|> INCREASE the likelyhood, since it will take more RFD to do the same
>|> thing as is being done now.
>
>What????  This is a proposal for *labelling* the RFD articles that
>go out.  

It is also a proposal for what can and cannot be done at one time. If
two things no longer can be done at the same time, then it will take TWO
RFD and TWO CFV to do the same thing that one of each will do now. Two >
one. More RFD and more CFV. Are you forgetting your own proposal
concering what can and can't be done on one CFV?

>|> Which specialized meaning are you using now? The one you defined in your
>|> proposed change which talks about "charter changes", or your "physical
>|> change" (the one character one) that you just brought up?
>|> 
>A group is affected by a change if either its name or charter changes.

Then you must include all three example names in the RFD. All three
have their "charter" changed.

>|> >I had assumed 
>|> 
>|> Present an example of a changed charter. Don't keep assuming things,
>|> because you have a horrible track record at assuming things.
>|> 
>I did.  You just deleted it!  Rec.scouting would have a different charter
>if rec.scouting.policy were created.  

You did not post the CFV for rec.scouting.policy, thus you provided no
example. I cannot delete that which you continue to fail to provide.

I am still asking you to provide one concrete example of a charter
being revised by a CFV. Not "I assume that the CFV author meant to
...", not "It is obvious...". Concrete, specific.

>|> >The context was my proposed guidelines.  
>|> 
>|> If your proposed guidelines say that reorganizing rec.ham-radio into
>|> rec.radio.amateur.* must be listed in the Subject as "rec.* reorg", then
>|> there is something seriously wrong with your proposal. I just want you
>
>Reread my posting, and reread my proposal.  I originally
>said:
>Got it?  

I got it. A long time ago.

>Calling it a rec.* reorg is absurd, 

That is what I said. You made the claim that such an action, under your
rules, would need to be called "rec.* reorg". Thus your rules are
absurd.

>|> Please stick to the topic. You implied very strongly that there would be
>|> fewer  arguments over reorganizations (whether they are logical or not)
>|> because of your rule. Your rule will have no such effect. Reading new
>|> user doumentation or not has absolutely nothing to do with it.
>|> 
>
>I still imply it very strongly.  

Your proposed rule will have absolutely no effect on arguments over the
propriety or validity or any other details of a reorganization. You can
imply that it will until the cows come home.

>Had my rule been in effect prior to the
>rec.music.makers reorg, the ballot posted in rec.music.synth
>would have been labelled "rec.music.synth renaming".  Dave Hayes
>and others wouldn't have had a leg to stand on if the
>vote still passed, and zillions of flamepostings would have
>been averted.

There was explict notification in rec.music.synth prior to the vote, and
there was still a flamefest. If the use of an explicit subject did not
solve that problem, then demanding the use of explicit subjects will not
solve that problem. 

Your proposal will do nothing to reduce the arguments over a
reorganization, and will provide another "rule" that opponents of a
successful vote can whine and moan about not being followed properly.
And, since we can't agree when there is only an example at stake, I can
guarantee that there will be squabbles over the CFV for contested
reorganizations.

>|> Just which "guidelines" are you talking about now?
>|> 
>You're nitpicking again.  Of course no one is literally required
>to read anything.  But if you're currently reading rec.music.synth
>and see a CFV labelled "rec.music.makers.* reorg", then according
>to today's policies, you're "required" 

The guidelines do not make reading CFV a requirement. 

>Under my proposed policies, you can safely skip the CFV

Unless your newsreader happens to truncate Subject lines, or the article
passed through a site that truncates subject lines, or the person
who wrote the CFV uses different criteria than you intended to determine
what groups are changed and what names must be in the Subject line.

>No!  Not unless the proposers intended it to!  

So now your proposal must be evaluated with "intent" in mind. It doesn't
matter whether a change will affect a group, it is only if there is
"intent" to change a group.  Is this written intent, or must we now
evaluate each proposal for hidden agendae? Does a proposer mean to
change a group?  

What if he intends to change the charters of 8 groups? What if someone
wants to take a topic that currently appears in 17 different groups and
make a new group to hold it? Under your "changed charter" definition, all
18 groups must appear in the Subject line. All 17 current groups will be
changed in exactly the same way your rec.scouting example used. What
does the Subject line say in this case?

>If there were a
>group called rec.radio.soap-operas, how would creating rec.radio.amateur.*
>change its charter?  What discussions would no longer be welcomed
>in rec.radio.soap-operas because of the creation of rec.radio.amateur.*?

If there were a group called rec.radio.non-commercial, then that charter
would certainly be changed by the creation of rec.radio.amateur.*. 

>It makes sense for the proposer of the new policy to suggest
>what documentation affected by that new policy should say.

Whey you start writing it, you can say what it will say


Newsgroups: news.admin.policy