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Date: Wed, 06 Nov 96 22:51 CST
From: Cu Digest (tk0jut2@mvs.cso.niu.edu)
Computer underground Digest Wed Nov 6, 1996 Volume 8 : Issue 78
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Date: Thu, 17 Oct 1996 15:35:23 GMT
From: tallpaul
[BEGIN INSERT]
On Oct 13, 1996 22:56:24 in
PROPOSAL FOR NEWS.GROUPS REFORM ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ I. INSTITUTIONAL SETUP
1) Group Advice, Group Mentors, and the Usenet Volunteer Votetakers (UVV) are henceforth abolished. Their present memberships are consolidated into a new body called the Usenet Coordinating Committee (UCC).
2) New members may periodically join the Usenet Coordinating Committee. New members must be nominated by a current member, and their nomination must be ratified by a 2/3 supermajority of the current UCC membership. Likewise, members may be expelled from the UCC by a 2/3 supermajority. Of course, UCC members may resign of their own volition at any time.
3) Tale shall retain his current position as moderator of news.announce.newgroups and as the issuer of newgroup commands. Should Dave Lawrence ever resign as Tale, a new Tale shall be chosen by a 5/6 majority vote of the UCC. Likewise, Tale may be forcibly removed from his post and a new Tale appointed only with the consent of 5/6 of the UCC.
II. MECHANICS OF NEWSGROUP CREATION
1) Anyone who wishes to form a new newsgroup shall contact the Usenet Coordinating Committee, who will assist in writing a formal proposal for a newsgroup.
2) Tale shall continue to post all formal proposals to news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, and other relevant newsgroups. The subject lines of such proposals shall bear the tag "PROPOSAL: group.foo.bar" in lieu of the current tag "RFD: group.foo.bar."
3) Members of the Usenet Coordinating may brainstorm names for the newsgroup in question, should the proposal itself contain an inadequate name. UCC members also may voice other objections to the creation of the proposed newsgroup, such as a lack of demonstrated traffic on the topic in question.
4) UCC members may communicate amongst themselves via private e-mail; however, they are urged to post their comments publicly to news.groups to add transparency to the newsgroup creation process. Usenet readers at large may also contribute input on proposals by crossposting to news.groups and up to two other relevant groups. The UCC shall extend all due consideration to such public comments.
5) The UCC shall vote on all proposals within two weeks of their posting to news.announce.newgroups. Tale may order an extension of this deadline if he deems fit, or if a majority of UCC members request it. Tale shall post notice of the vote in news.announce.newgroups and news.groups. Such notice shall carry the tag "VOTE: group.foo.bar" in its subject line, in lieu of the current tag "CFV: group.foo.bar."
6) Votes may consist of YES, NO, or ABSTAIN. Tale shall be repsonsible for tallying votes, or, if he chooses, he may delegate this responsibility to volunteers from the UCC, who shall report back to Tale. Votes shall last one week. The voting record of UCC members shall not publicized outside of
the UCC.
7) Any proposal that earns the support of a simple majority of the UCC shall be created within five days of passing its vote. Tale remains responsible for issuing newgroup commands.
8) Newsgroups that fail their votes may not be reconsidered for six months.
III. NEWS.GROUPS REFORM
1) News.groups shall be robomoderated to filter out the following posts:
A) Articles that contain more than 75 characters per line; B) Articles of more than 10 lines consisting of more than 3/4 quoted text; C) Articles crossposted to three or more newsgroups other than news.groups (excluding articles crossposted to news.announce.newgroups or news.answers); D) Articles that do not contain the tag words "PROPOSAL" or "VOTE" or "FAQ" in their subject lines. E) Article from certain individuals, as discussed below.
2) From time to time, certain individuals unfortunately post harrassing and/or off-topic messages to news.groups. With the consent of a 2/3 supermajority of the UCC, the robomoderator shall be configured to reject articles from such posters for a period of six months.
3) Tale shall periodically post various FAQ's on newsgroup creation to news.announce.newgroups, news.announce.newusers, news.answers, and news.groups. These FAQ's shall be proceeded with the tag "FAQ" in the subject line. These FAQ's shall also be automatically sent to every first-time poster to news.groups.
4) Discussion of proposals shall bear the tag "PROPOSAL" in their subject lines. Discussions relating to votes in progress shall bear the tag VOTE. FAQ's shall bear the tag FAQ. The robomoderator shall reject articles lacking such tags.
5) The UCC shall maintain a database of sites willing to host robomoderation programs. This information may be posted to news.groups periodically as a FAQ.
ADVANTAGES ^^^^^^^^^^ 1) This proposal eliminates much needless haggling on news.groups. For instance, we will not go through several weeks worth of wrangling over whether moderation constitutes censorship, or why obscure names such as rec.pets.cats.clowder are ill-conceived.
2) This plan offers the advantage of consistency in namespace. Since the same people will be voting on new groups, their preferences are unlikely to vary from one proposal to another without good reason.
3) The proposal eliminates the problem of vote fraud altogether. No longer will throngs of angry nationalist voters be able to nix newsgroups for ethnic groups they dislike. Nor will a determined proponent be able to ram proposals through news.groups -- thereby increasing the quality of proposals. As things currently stand, news.groups is a paper tiger. We cannot hope to defeat proposals such as soc.culture.indian.jammu-kashmir. My proposal puts an end to such nonsense.
Additionally, this proposal will vastly cut down on harrassment of UVV members and people whose e-mail addresses appear in RESULT postings.
4) The proposal makes it extremely easy for anyone who sincerely desires to participate in the creation of newsgroups to do so. Basically, any new poster who hangs out on news.groups for a while will be able to join the UCC if he or she wants to. At the same time, the proposal prevents net.kooks from disrupting the newsgroups creation process.
Furthermore, in some ways, my proposal makes the newsgroup creation process less intimidating to outsiders. By allowing discussion to be crossposted to two other groups besides news.groups, the proposal ensures that readers of all relevant groups are aware of a given RFD. News.groups will become more hospitable once robomoderation cuts down on all the racist spam we have seen recently. And by eliminating acronyms such as "RFD" and "CFV" in favor of clear English-language terminology, the newsgroup creation process seems less mysterious.
I hope that Russ Allbery will consider integrating his proposal for news.groups moderation with mine.
5) The proposal saves a lot of labor and time in the newsgroup creation process. Increasingly, creating newsgroups takes far too much time and effort. Bottlenecks in the newsgroup creation process are becoming all too frequent. The UVV does not have enough votetakers to cope with the mass of CFV's they must run, and more and more votetakers are quitting after proposals such as rec.music.white-power. The same is true of Group Mentors, and even Group Advice is overworked.
By streamlining the newsgroup creation process, the proposal eliminates many of these steps; it will also cut down on many time-consuming flamewars, such as the "clowder" debate that consumed news.groups in July.
6) The proposal recognizes that a CFV is not an interest poll, but rather a measure of a proponent's skill at campaigning. These days, most every CFV that fails does draw significant votes does not fail because of a genuine lack of interest in the topic, but because the proponent did not widely publicize the CFV.
Usenet has become so popular that virtually any topic will command some traffic. The trick these days is to name groups correctly, so that interested readers can readily find the groups they want.
The conventional RFD/CFV process, which relies on the goodwill of proponents to name groups properly, is producing gems such as soc.culture.scientists, misc.activism.mobilehome, sci.aquaria, rec.aviation.air-traffic, and so forth. Some of these absurdities pass their CFV in spite of the poor name. Even those groups that news.groupies manage to defeat would have made interesting groups had the proponent been more reasonable about selecting a good name. The new proposal eliminates this problem.
In short, a reformed newsgroup creation process allows us to get on with our business -- the creation of interesting, well-named newsgroups -- with a minimum of disruption. Therefore I urge support of this proposal for news.groups reform.
[END INSERT]
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Date: Thu, 21 Mar 1996 22:51:01 CST
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End of Computer Underground Digest #8.78
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