From: davidg@aegis.or.jp (Dave McLane)
Newsgroups: alt.bbs
Subject: Re: Shame on Fidonet
Date: 11 Sep 92 22:34:28 GMT
Organization: Aegis Society, Kyoto Japan

cblaise@moose.uvm.edu.UUCP (Chris Blaise) writes:

>	Or the occasional "thank you" either.  I'm not saying that fidonet
>administators (some of them) don't deserve the kind of cutting you gave them
>-I have heard stories about such gross abuse.  However, in my net (325),
>things have always run more or less smoothly and there is *great* dialogue
>and connection between the SysOps in it.  If we don't like what our admin
>is doing, we tell him so and he doesn't "get back" at us.  A few weeks ago
>someone very verbally complained that they had not received a node number
>for about a month.  He probably said it more abusively than he needed to,
>and because of that, had I been in our administator's shoes, I might not
>have reacted as favorably and responsively as he did.

>	IMHO, administation in fidonet is not much different than
>usenet.  You have your good guys and your bad guys.

Excuse me, but I don't believe you can compare the administration of
Fidonet and the non-administration of USENET. 

Likewise, while somebody may think of somebody else as "good" or
"bad" there is no official designation of such. The convention in
USENET is you speak for yourself. 

Just in case you haven't read it, attached is a statment of the
current conventions.

Dave

--
Dave McLane 
JUNET: davidg@aegis.or.jp (ONLY within Japan: post otherwise)
Nagaokakyoshi, Kyoto Japan Tel: +81-75-951-1168 Fax: +81-75-957-1087


| From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford)
| Newsgroups: news.announce.newusers,news.admin,news.answers
| Subject: What is Usenet?
| Date: 4 Sep 92 03:52:01 GMT
| Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ.
|
| Archive-name: what-is-usenet/part1
| Original from: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg)
| Last-change: 19 July 1992 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)
|
| The first thing to understand about Usenet is that it is widely
| misunderstood.  Every day on Usenet, the "blind men and the elephant"
| phenomenon is evident, in spades.  In my opinion, more flame wars
| arise because of a lack of understanding of the nature of Usenet than
| from any other source.  And consider that such flame wars arise, of
| necessity, among people who are on Usenet.  Imagine, then, how poorly
| understood Usenet must be by those outside!
|
| Any essay on the nature of Usenet cannot ignore the erroneous
| impressions held by many Usenet users.  Therefore, this article will
| treat falsehoods first.  Keep reading for truth.  (Beauty, alas, is
| not relevant to Usenet.)
|
| WHAT USENET IS NOT
| ------------------
| 1. Usenet is not an organization.
|
|    No person or group has authority over Usenet as a whole.  No one
|    controls who gets a news feed, which articles are propagated
|    where, who can post articles, or anything else.  There is no
|    "Usenet Incorporated," nor is there a "Usenet User's Group."
|    You're on your own.
|
|    Granted, there are various activities organized by means of Usenet
|    newsgroups.  The newsgroup creation process is one such
|    activity.  But it would be a mistake to equate Usenet with the
|    organized activities it makes possible.  If they were to stop
|    tomorrow, Usenet would go on without them.

     [* remainder omitted *]
Xref: sparky alt.bbs:5694 comp.bbs.misc:872 comp.misc:3583