From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3069 of news.admin: From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) Subject: What is Usenet? Date: 21 May 91 04:49:10 GMT Organization: Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue Univ. Original from: chip@count.tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) [Most recent change: 19 May 1991 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 the opinion of the author, 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. Usenet has no central authority. In fact, it has no central anything. There is a vague notion of "upstream" and "downstream" related to the direction of high-volume news flow. It follows that, to the extent that "upstream" sites decide what traffic they will carry for their "downstream" neighbors, that "upstream" sites have some influence on their neighbors. But such influence is usually easy to circumvent, and heavy-handed manipulation typically results in a backlash of resentment. 2. Usenet is not a democracy. A democracy can be loosely defined as "government of the people, by the people, for the people." However, as explained above, Usenet is not an organization, and only an organization can be run as a democracy. Even a democracy must be organized, for if it lacks a means of enforcing the peoples' wishes, then it may as well not exist. Some people wish that Usenet were a democracy. Many people pretend that it is. Both groups are sadly deluded. 3. Usenet is not fair. After all, who shall decide what's fair? For that matter, if someone is behaving unfairly, who's going to stop him? Neither you nor I, that's certain. 4. Usenet is not a right. Some people misunderstand their local right of "freedom of speech" to mean that they have a legal right to use others' computers to say what they wish in whatever way they wish, and the owners of said computers have no right to stop them. Those people are wrong. Freedom of speech also means freedom not to speak; if I choose not to use my computer to aid your speech, that is my right. Freedom of the press belongs to those who own one. 5. Usenet is not a public utility. Some Usenet sites are publically funded or subsidized. Most of them, by plain count, are not. There is no government monopoly on Usenet, and little or no control. 6. Usenet is not a commercial network. Many Usenet sites are academic or government organizations; in fact, Usenet originated in academia. Therefore, there is a Usenet custom of keeping commercial traffic to a minimum. If such commercial traffic is generally considered worth carrying, then it may be grudgingly tolerated. Even so, it is usually separated somehow from non-commercial traffic; see "comp.newprod." 7. Usenet is not the Internet. The Internet is a wide-ranging network, parts of which are subsidized by various governments. The Internet carries many kinds of traffic; Usenet is only one of them. And the Internet is only one of the various networks carrying Usenet traffic. 8. Usenet is not a UUCP network. UUCP is a protocol (some might say "protocol suite," but that's a technical point) for sending data over point-to-point connections, typically using dialup modems. Usenet is only one of the various kinds of traffic carried via UUCP, and UUCP is only one of the various transports carrying Usenet traffic. 9. Usenet is not a UNIX network, nor even an ASCII network. Don't assume that everyone is using "rn" on a UNIX machine. There are Vaxen running VMS, IBM mainframes, Amigas, and MS-DOS PCs reading and posting to Usenet. And, yes, some of them use (shudder) EBCDIC. Ignore them if you like, but they're out there. 10. Usenet is not software. There are dozens of software packages used at various sites to transport and read Usenet articles. So no one program or package can be called "the Usenet software." Software designed to support Usenet traffic can be (and is) used for other kinds of communication, usually without risk of mixing the two. Such private communication networks are typically kept distinct from Usenet by the invention of newsgroup names different from the universally-recognized ones. Well, enough negativity. WHAT USENET IS -------------- Usenet is the set of machines that exchange articles tagged with one or more universally-recognized labels, called "newsgroups" (or "groups" for short). (Note that the term "newsgroup" is correct, while "area," "base," "board," "bboard," "conference," "round table," "SIG," etc. are incorrect. If you want to be understood, be accurate.) DIVERSITY --------- If the above definition of Usenet sounds vague, that's because it is. It is almost impossible to generalize over all Usenet sites in any non-trivial way. Usenet encompasses government agencies, large universities, high schools, businesses of all sizes, home computers of all descriptions, etc, etc. CONTROL ------- Every administrator controls his own site. No one has any real control over any site but his own. The administrator gets his power from the owner of the system he administers. As long as the owner is happy with the job the administrator is doing, he can do whatever he pleases, up to and including cutting off Usenet entirely. Them's the breaks. PROPAGATION ----------- In the old days, when UUCP over long-distance dialup lines was the dominant means of article transmission, a few well-connected sites had real influence in determining which newsgroups would be carried where. Those sites called themselves "the backbone." But things have changed. Nowadays, even the smallest Internet site has connectivity the likes of which the backbone admin of yesteryear could only dream. In addition, in the U.S., the advent of cheaper long-distance calls and high-speed modems has made long-distance Usenet feeds thinkable for smaller companies. There is only one pre-eminent UUCP transport site today in the U.S., namely UUNET. But UUNET isn't a player in the propagation wars, because it never refuses any traffic -- it gets paid by the minute, after all; and besides, to refuse based on content would jeopardize its legal status as an enhanced service provider. All of the above applies to the U.S. In Europe, different cost structures favored the creation of strictly controlled hierarchical organizations with central registries. This is all very unlike the traditional mode of U.S. sites (pick a name, get the software, get a feed, you're on). Europe's "benign monopolies," long uncontested, now face competition from looser organizations patterned after the U.S. model. NEWSGROUP CREATION ------------------ As discussed above, Usenet is not a democracy. Nevertheless, the current most popular way to create a new newsgroup involves a "vote" to determine popular support for (and opposition to) a proposed newsgroup. The document that describes this procedure is entitled "How To Create A New Newsgroups." Its common name, however, is "the guidelines." If you follow the guidelines, it is probable that your group will be created and will be widely propagated. HOWEVER: Because of the nature of Usenet, there is no way for any user to enforce the results of a newsgroup vote (or any other decision, for that matter). Therefore, for your new newsgroup to be propagated widely, you must not only follow the letter of the guidelines; you must also follow its spirit. And you must not allow even a whiff of shady dealings or dirty tricks to mar the vote. So, you may ask: How is a new user supposed to know anything about the "spirit" of the guidelines? Obviously, he can't. This fact leads inexorably to the following recommendation: >> If you are a new user, don't try to create a new newsgroup. << If you have a good newsgroup idea, then read the "news.groups" newsgroup for a while (six months, at least) to find out how things work. If you're too impatient to wait six months, then you really need to learn; read "news.groups" for a year instead. If you just can't wait, find a Usenet old hand to run the vote for you. Readers may think this advice unnecessarily strict. Ignore it at your peril. It is embarassing to speak before learning. It is foolish to jump into a society you don't understand with your mouth open. And it is futile to try to force your will on people who can tune you out with the press of a key. IF YOU ARE UNHAPPY... --------------------- Property rights being what they are, there is no higher authority on Usenet than the people who own the machines on which Usenet traffic is carried. If the owner of the machine you use says, "We will not carry alt.sex on this machine," and you are not happy with that order, you have no Usenet recourse. What can we outsiders do, after all? That doesn't mean you are without options. Depending on the nature of your site, you may have some internal political recourse. Or you might find external pressure helpful. Or, with a minimal investment, you can get a feed of your own from somewhere else. Computers capable of taking Usenet feeds are down in the $500 range now, and UNIX-capable boxes are going for under $2000, and there are at least two UNIX lookalikes in the $100 price range. No matter what, though, appealing to "Usenet" won't help. Even if those you read such an appeal are sympathetic to your cause, they will almost certainly have even less influence at your site than you do. By the same token, if you don't like what some user at another site is doing, only the administrator and/or owner of that site have any authority to do anything about it. Persuade them that the user in question is a problem for them, and they might do something (if they feel like it). If the user in question is the administrator or owner of the site from which he or she posts, forget it; you can't win. Arrange for your newsreading software to ignore articles from him or her if you can, and chalk one up to experience. WORDS TO LIVE BY #1: USENET AS SOCIETY -------------------- Those who have never tried electronic communication may not be aware of what a "social skill" really is. One social skill that must be learned, is that other people have points of view that are not only different, but *threatening*, to your own. In turn, your opinions may be threatening to others. There is nothing wrong with this. Your beliefs need not be hidden behind a facade, as happens with face-to-face conversation. Not everybody in the world is a bosom buddy, but you can still have a meaningful conversation with them. The person who cannot do this lacks in social skills. -- Nick Szabo WORDS TO LIVE BY #2: USENET AS ANARCHY -------------------- Anarchy means having to put up with things that really piss you off. -- Unknown -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825 From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3131 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Fri, 24 May 91 20:05:49 GMT In article <14692@ector.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) writes: >Original from: chip@count.tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) >[Most recent change: 19 May 1991 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)] I find that this essay includes a good deal of wisdom but also has what seem to me some quite glaring omissions in the light of recent events, despite having been updated so recently. I would appreciate any light that others with more experience of Usenet can shed on the issues raised below. >WHAT USENET IS NOT >------------------ > 1. Usenet is not an organization. > > Usenet has no central authority. In fact, it has no central > anything. Not having a central authority seems to me to imply that Usenet is decentralized, not that it isn't an organization. Most organizations have central authorities because of the great benefits of doing so, but the two concepts are by no means synonymous. Quite plainly there is a GREAT DEAL of organization involved in keeping the news flowing. It would be surprising if this was achieved without any central authority, though not impossible. I always get suspicious when somebody says, authoritatively, that "there are no authorities here". My suspicion is that there is indeed an authority but it does not welcome scrutiny. > 2. Usenet is not a democracy. > > A democracy can be loosely defined as "government of the people, > by the people, for the people." However, as explained above, > Usenet is not an organization, and only an organization can be run > as a democracy. Even a democracy must be organized, for if it > lacks a means of enforcing the peoples' wishes, then it may as > well not exist. > > Some people wish that Usenet were a democracy. Many people > pretend that it is. Both groups are sadly deluded. I have heard MANY arguments about why people who "wish" that some organization were more democratically organized are "sadly deluded", but that is about the weakest. Even Governments generally have quite limited central authority and no matter how democratically organized they may be, they are unable to enforce their wishes on matters considered outside the sphere of Government authority. Private organizations are called democratic when they have a membership which has a right to determine the leadership and policies of the organization by some kind of majority voting system. Many other forms of organization exist, such as the Catholic Church and Usenet, but democratic forms of organization do not imply a means of enforcing the wishes of the membership over anything other than the organization itself. For example if Usenet was a fully democratic organization that would NOT imply any kind of authority to enforce the decisions of the majority of members as to what members should do with computers they own, whether they should subscribe to certain newsgroups and so forth, because the organization itself has no such authority any more than a democratically elected Government can decide what you should eat for breakfast. It can be argued that Usenet should be run by site sysadmins or by a small group of "backbone" sysadmins or by a smaller group of exceptionally wise and experienced "netgods" rather than by all users. The Catholic Church has got on quite well without any concessions to democracy. But simply saying that advocates of democracy are "sadly deluded" with arguments that would not convince a schoolchild in any other context, only highlights the inadequcy of such views. >WHAT USENET IS >-------------- >Usenet is the set of machines that exchange articles tagged with one >or more universally-recognized labels, called "newsgroups" (or >"groups" for short). Well, if it is a set of machines then of course it cannot be an organization, and certainly cannot become a democratic organization, since such things are comprised of sets of people, not machines. I think this statement is clearly inaccurate - when I see messages that say they are asking "the net" a question or telling "the net" something I am sure they are addressing a group of people. Describing Usenet as a set of machines obscures the fact that there IS a definable (though unregistered) group of people who can be said to be "members" of "the net" (and who are a much larger group than the site administrators). That leaves something like this: "Usenet is an organization which facilitates the exchange of articles tagged with one or more universally-recognized labels, called "newsgroups"..." But HOW does it organize this? Not by providing any telecommunications equipment, or computer equipment or software or even software standards, let alone article content etc. The GLARING omission from the essay that I see, is that it takes the "universally-recognized labels" for granted instead of explaining how they come to be "universally-recognized". I would be more inclined to describe Usenet as the organization which defines a certain set of labels used to tag articles. After all, the essay points out that there are other organizations which do this, distinguishing their separate exchange of articles from those that are involved in Usenet. As well as the alt hierarchy (which has even less of a central authority and no more democracy) there are also name spaces organized by clarinet as a business or emanating from FidoNet echos and so forth. The regular lists of currently active newsgroups sharply distinguish between the lists of comp soc rec misc news and sci which are "official" and those provided for some other namespaces, which are "unofficial". It is hard to square the concept of an "official" list of "Usenet" newsgroups and moderators, distinguished from "non-Usenet" newsgroups, with the claim that there is no Usenet organization or that whatever Usenet organization there is has no central authority. Who else makes the lists "official"? >NEWSGROUP CREATION >------------------ >As discussed above, Usenet is not a democracy. Nevertheless, the >current most popular way to create a new newsgroup involves a "vote" >to determine popular support for (and opposition to) a proposed >newsgroup. The document that describes this procedure is entitled >"How To Create A New Newsgroups." Its common name, however, is "the >guidelines." > >If you follow the guidelines, it is probable that your group will be >created and will be widely propagated. > >HOWEVER: Because of the nature of Usenet, there is no way for any user >to enforce the results of a newsgroup vote (or any other decision, for >that matter). Therefore, for your new newsgroup to be propagated >widely, you must not only follow the letter of the guidelines; you >must also follow its spirit. And you must not allow even a whiff of >shady dealings or dirty tricks to mar the vote. Here I see another GLARING omission. There is simply no mention at all of the "official" lists of active newsgroups and their moderators or the corresponding checkgroups messages. Yet unless I have misunderstood the setup COMPLETELY (which no doubt some kind soul will point out with enthusiasm :-) those do play a sufficiently important part in the organization of Usenet that it would be difficult to avoid mentioning them by accident. Specifically, my understanding is that there are large numbers of system administrators who treat the "official" lists as in some way authoritative. Many sites simply take a "full feed" of the official list while far fewer take a "fuller feed" that includes all the available alt groups etc. The "full feed" sites include most of the more important ones that ensure wide propagation. Many other sites use the "official" lists as a basis for selection, excluding entire hierarchies or individual groups on the basis of the descriptions provided, and adding other groups independently if they happen to know of them and are interested. None of this implies that any site participating in Usenet is obliged to take a full feed or to pay any attention to the "official" lists at all. But I would suggest that providing such "official" lists is very central to what Usenet as an organization DOES. Ignoring that and describing the propagation of newsgroups without mentioning it is quite misleading. So what? Well, in the recent m.a.g. flamewars there were a lot of announcements about how this or that site wasn't going to carry the group and a lot of lectures about how nobody could impose their will on sysadmins through a vote (together with some gratuitous advocacy of feudalism as a model for Usenet). A lot of that could have been avoided if it was understood that the issue was whether m.a.g. would appear in the "official" lists, not whether any particular site would therefore take it. The advice that new users should wait at least six months before attempting to start a news group strikes me as very sound in the light of m.a.g. events. But it would also have been helpful to provide a better description of what Usenet is and the role of the "official" lists. Of course it can be argued that the lists are not really official, since Usenet is not an organization and has no central authority, just as the essay I am responding to, and the guidelines mentioned in it are just the opinion of their authors. However I think that just evades reality. If an alternative list was published, claiming to be "official" and listing different groups or different moderators and topics for the same labels, that would be widely seen as a disruption of Usenet whereas adding another alt group would not be regarded the same way. Participants in Usenet would not just say "oh well, that one is spaf's list and shows who he thinks should be moderators of certain groups and the other one is so-and-so's list". Moderators on spaf's list would be quite pissed off about mail for them being diverted to some usurper. In short, Usenet is an organization, and it has a central authority, the main function of which is to publish the "official" lists. So, is that organization democratic? Well, as the essay notes, there is a voting procedure, which decides not merely who leads the organization and takes decisions, but what the decisions are to be on each issue as it arises. That is more than you get in most democratic organizations. On the other hand the people who implement the results of the votes and give them an "official" seal on behalf of the organization are not democratically elected and neither are the people who write the guidelines according to which those votes are conducted (and neither are the returning officers under those guidelines, but that is a separate issue). I would say the Usenet organization meets most of the criteria for being democratic, but has an unelected leadership of "authoritative" figures who volunteer or are "universally recognized" as a result of their wisdom and experience rather than being elected. That is not uncommon, especially with informal organizations. It is quite an achievement, and required a long period of evolution, to establish guidelines and "official" lists that are so widely respected by sysadmins. It would be pointless implementing procedures that resulted in lists which were NOT widely respected by sysadmins. That can be the basis of arguments for and against broader democracy and even for or against particular controversial newsgroups. But ignoring the whole issue under a facade of "there are no authorities here" merely denigrates what has actually been achieved by those authorities. Certainly ANYBODY can establish an alt.group, which is VERY democratic, but not nearly as useful as establishing a Usenet group, which gets far wider propagation as a result of the efforts of the central authorities that run Usenet. Some people say that Usenet has "netgods" but I don't think it is a glaring omission for the essay not to mention them. The term is generally used tongue in cheek to refer to people whose wisdom and experience makes their views authoritative. Although I have seen messages which actually call for a decision by netgods in the most grotesquely obsequious way, that is a reflection on the individual authors of those messages and does not require refutation in the regular posting on "What is Usenet". The far more widespread misunderstanding of the propagation of newsgroups and the role of the "official" lists in that does make THAT omission a "glaring" one. I think the essay should explain that the "official" lists and guidelines for voting are published by individual volunteers because there has not yet been any need for Usenet to establish a formal constitution that specifies such matters in the way that less informal democratic organizations do. If that explanation is not correct, then some other explanation should be provided. But I suspect the complete omission of any mention of the "official lists" or of how the guidelines are decided on reflects some kind of quite unnecessary embarassment over the lack of "democracy", which also could explain the ridiculous arguments about why democracy would be inappropriate. So, my conclusion is that Usenet IS a partial democracy with an unelected leadership and an uncodified constitution. Britain is a democracy with an uncodified constitution and it works quite well. So does Usenet. The British head of state is unelected and the head of government is only indirectly elected. That does not make it any less of a democracy. Since the day-to-day decision making in Usenet is based on votes open to all members, the lack of democracy in electing leaders is unimportant and would only become important in some kind of "constitutional crisis". People like Gene Spafford and David Lawrence are not Gods or even absolute monarchs but more like equivalents of Bagehot and Hansard. (An authoritative commentator on the British Constitution, and an authoritative Parliamentary reporter.) That is VERY different from the "feudalism" which some people advocate, let alone from the absolute monarchy which would be implied if the volunteers providing a public service by issuing "official" lists and essays on the constitution actually had the authority to overide votes of the members. Denying that Usenet is an organization and has a central authority is simply denying reality. That does not make reality go away but contributes to the "what is an elephant" flamewars. The Usenet central authority has no powers over individual sites and does little but issue official lists of Usenet groups and moderators. It would be a dangerous illusion to imagine it has authority over more than that and an equally dangerous illusion to imagine that just because it consists of self-appointed (or universally recognized) volunteers that therefore Usenet is not a democratic organization and it's central authorities could ignore the wishes of the Usenet membership as expressed through votes. It IS a dangerous illusion to pretend that there is no central authority issuing official lists of newsgroups and their moderators and future issues of "What is Usenet" should correct that illusion. Even if there WERE "netgods" they would be "constitutional netgods" that existed only while believed in. If people did not regard Elizabeth Windsor as Queen of Australia then she would not be. That does not change the fact that she is, nor does it change the fact that if she forgot that in Australia the people and not the Queen have sovereignty she would very rapidly cease to be Queen. (Some time ago a British monarch lost his head for such an oversight and there have been few problems from "royals" since then. :-) -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3144 of news.admin: From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 25 May 91 07:14:21 GMT <1991May24.200549.16629@newshost.anu.edu.au> Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI In article <1991May24.200549.16629@newshost.anu.edu.au> cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) writes: >Original from: chip@count.tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) >[Most recent change: 19 May 1991 by spaf@cs.purdue.edu (Gene Spafford)] I find that this essay includes a good deal of wisdom but also has what seem to me some quite glaring omissions in the light of recent events, despite having been updated so recently. I would appreciate any light that others with more experience of Usenet can shed on the issues raised below. >WHAT USENET IS NOT >------------------ > 1. Usenet is not an organization. > > Usenet has no central authority. In fact, it has no central > anything. I always get suspicious when somebody says, authoritatively, that "there are no authorities here". My suspicion is that there is indeed an authority but it does not welcome scrutiny. Gene Spafford has put himself in the position of being an authority of what is authoritative and what is not. All which would be necessary to topple him from this position would be someone to invest the time and energy to provide an alternative to the lists and documents he posts month after month. Given a reasoned second opinion on what are (e.g.) all of the valid sci.* newsgroups, a determined individual with a good sized amount of spare time and network research skills could produce a document or database which would remove Spafford from the position of authority which he now claims. However I think that just evades reality. If an alternative list was published, claiming to be "official" and listing different groups or different moderators and topics for the same labels, that would be widely seen as a disruption of Usenet whereas adding another alt group would not be regarded the same way. Participants in Usenet would not just say "oh well, that one is spaf's list and shows who he thinks should be moderators of certain groups and the other one is so-and-so's list". Moderators on spaf's list would be quite pissed off about mail for them being diverted to some usurper. If an alternative list were published which merely were meant to disrupt, confuse, or otherwise throw a monkey wrench in the works of usenet, then that would be cause for alarm. However, it's hard to argue that the current "checkgroups" messages that are sent out are much use beyond that of deciding which groups are official or not. They don't tell you much of anything about the group -- where the discussion is archived, who was the advocate for newsgroup creation, what the newsgroup charter is, where archives of related materials are kept, which other groups have related or similar discussions, or what topics are best discussed elsewhere. All of these materials could be generated by people suitably motivated to watch the group and describe the contents of the discussions. Should someone go to all this trouble and then have the side effect of producing a list (even a list as devoid of use as Spafford's ``official groups'' list) it would be welcomed. In short, Usenet is an organization, and it has a central authority, the main function of which is to publish the "official" lists. Note that just about anyone with a copy of perl and a monthly cron job can come up with a reasonable list; write something once, post it every month, and people will start to believe it. Mythology is a powerful tool. The myth of the "official list" is but one of the controlling myths that organize usenet. People like Gene Spafford and David Lawrence are not Gods or even absolute monarchs but more like equivalents of Bagehot and Hansard. (An authoritative commentator on the British Constitution, and an authoritative Parliamentary reporter.) Don't give Spafford too much credit. Most of his residual authority comes from materials he developed years ago; while they reflect his opinions on how the net should be run, they do not provide a proper framework for the next 10 years of net growth. It IS a dangerous illusion to pretend that there is no central authority issuing official lists of newsgroups and their moderators and future issues of "What is Usenet" should correct that illusion. Your appropriate role in this is to refine this commentary on "What is Usenet", and post it each month to the appropriate newsgroups at about the same time that the "What is Usenet" article comes out. After about six months of discussion, debate, proposal, counterproposal, you will have changed the generally accepted wisdom as to the way things work. -- Edward Vielmetti, vice president for research, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com On the Net, the Net-way is best. It's just that we are trying to figure out what the Net-way is. e. miya From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3163 of news.admin: From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 26 May 91 04:37:33 GMT Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd. There are no true analogs for usenet, but the following might help. Usenet is closer to a cooperative than any other type of organization, but co-ops in the real world tend to be democratic and centrally organized, so it is not a great analogy. To understand how something can exist without being an organization, consider "ham radio." "Ham radio" is not an organization, but it is similar to USENET. It does undergo worldwide regulation (one of the few things that does) and that makes it different, but in other ways it is similar. Ditto for "The phone system." Also regulated, but it could exist without it. You can't talk about "the phone system" as any sort of entity, just as you can't talk of "usenet" or "ham radio" as an entity. But you can refer to it and know what it means. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473 From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3167 of news.admin: From: csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Keywords: SACRILEGE!!! Date: 26 May 91 09:40:34 GMT Organization: Alembic Computer Services, McLean VA In article <1991May24.200549.16629@newshost.anu.edu.au> cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) writes: >In article <14692@ector.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.EDU >(Gene Spafford) writes: >> 1. Usenet is not an organization. >> >> Usenet has no central authority. In fact, it has no central >> anything. > >Not having a central authority seems to me to imply that Usenet is >decentralized, not that it isn't an organization. Most organizations >have central authorities because of the great benefits of doing so, >but the two concepts are by no means synonymous. Quite plainly there >is a GREAT DEAL of organization involved in keeping the news flowing. >It would be surprising if this was achieved without any central >authority, though not impossible. Albert Langer, you have been tried in absentia by the Usenet High Council and have been found guilty of heresy, to whit the referenced article disputing the validity of the Writings of St. Spaf the Omniscient. This Council hereby decrees that, on or as soon as practicable after the day of your arrest, you shall be taken to the Place of Punishment and there you shall be buried alive beneath alt.flame articles and that you shall remain interred there until you are dead and for thirty-six days after the day of your death, after which time your family, if they so choose, may claim your rotting corpse for burial in unhallowed ground. May Uunet <> have mercy upon your soul. So shall all be treated who attempt through profane word or thought to defile the Pure and Holy Writ of Usenet. The Usenet High Council hath spoken. So shall it be. Amen. -- Cardinal Mack Principle Inquisitor for the Usenet High Council "No one expects the Usenet Inquisition!" From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3168 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Sun, 26 May 91 13:49:20 GMT In article nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu (aka NELSON@CLUTX.BITNET) writes: >A dog is a partial rabbit with a carnivore diet and shorter ears. > >In other words, Usenet is an anarchy, and I don't want no chocolate dog >for Easter. Uh... you mean Usenet is a partial anarchy... like an anarchy with a central authority that issues "official" lists of Usenet newsgroups based on democratic voting? Whaddya mean p-partial wabbit? What's up doc? I don't want no chocolate in my ears. -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3169 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Sun, 26 May 91 14:35:35 GMT In article <1991May26.043733.29043@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes: >There are no true analogs for usenet, but the following might help. > >Usenet is closer to a cooperative than any other type of organization, but >co-ops in the real world tend to be democratic and centrally organized, so >it is not a great analogy. Perhaps it isn't such a bad analogy at all. Usenet is some type of a coop and co-ops tend to be democratic and centrally organized. Therefore Usenet is likely to be... whoops, bad analogy :-) Just because you don't like the conclusion that's no reason to deny either the premises or the rules of logic. After all, not only are "type of" and "tend to" there as qualifiers but there was an explicit restriction to "the real world" :-) Seems to me that some coops are more or less democratically and/or centrally organized than others, and some are quite informal. Informally organized groups establish more formal organizations as and when they need to, and don't bother if they don't need to. The unique thing about Usenet is the SCALE at which an informal coop without a codified constitution operates. Most groups can't get past a couple of dozen participants at a single location before needing a more formal organization. The difference I think is that an organization functioning through email and news has such superior communications facilities that it is POSSIBLE to do so on a larger scale - e.g. everyone can potentially vote on every decision as with setting up newsgroups, without HAVING to arrange meeting times or a smaller executive. But that doesn't mean there is no organization, as claimed in the "What is Usenet" regular posting. >To understand how something can exist without being an organization, consider >"ham radio." "Ham radio" is not an organization, but it is similar to >USENET. It does undergo worldwide regulation (one of the few things that >does) and that makes it different, but in other ways it is similar. The analogy with Ham radio seems more applicable to "The Matrix" including all networks and BBSes etc. Usenet is only a part of that, defined by an "official" list of "Usenet newsgroups" as opposed to "non-Usenet" newsgroups such as alt groups, Clarinet and so forth. Fortunately Usenet is not organized like the north American Amateur Radio Relay League or the Wireless Institute of Australia etc but that does not mean it is not organized. It is plain silly to speak of an informal coop that has almost continuous decision making votes with hundreds of people taking part and decisions announced in "official" lists as not being an organization. Most organizations don't have that level of participation whether they have formal constitutions or not. Ham radio operators as such don't have those kinds of things. Only those who belong to specific organizations like the ARRL and WIA do. BTW even anarchists have organizations. >Ditto for "The phone system." Also regulated, but it could exist without it. >You can't talk about "the phone system" as any sort of entity, just as you >can't talk of "usenet" or "ham radio" as an entity. >But you can refer to it and know what it means. Again, I think you are mixing Usenet up with "The Matrix". Also I think "the phone system" is a LOT more organized than "The Matrix" is and could not provide the communications links on which Usenet and the rest of the Matrix depends if it wasn't. It's an interesting analogy though, because the various phone companies and the organizations that unite and regulate them have no important say in what anybody uses their telephones FOR but are VERY far from being an "anarchy". Relations between national PTTs in the CCITT and the Universal Postal Union may have some analogy with relations between independent sites in Usenet. They are VERY jealous of national sovereignty and relations are generally bilateral rather than between each PTT and a supra-national authority, but there IS a CCITT and there IS a Universal Postal Union and without them neither the phone calls nor the mail would flow as freely between countries, many of which are not on speaking terms. Without those organizations there would be no universally recognized name space (numbering plan and postal regulations) for addressing phone and postal messages, just as without the internet organizations there would be none for email and without Usenet there would be none for Usenet newsgroups. (International phone and mail traffic could still exist - it would just flow less freely, just as email could and did exist without domain addressing and just as the alt groups exist but have less propagation than the Usenet groups). -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3173 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Sun, 26 May 91 16:21:57 GMT In article emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) writes: >Gene Spafford has put himself in the position of being an authority of >what is authoritative and what is not. All which would be necessary >to topple him from this position would be someone to invest the time >and energy to provide an alternative to the lists and documents he >posts month after month. Given a reasoned second opinion on what are >(e.g.) all of the valid sci.* newsgroups, a determined individual with >a good sized amount of spare time and network research skills could >produce a document or database which would remove Spafford from the >position of authority which he now claims. I doubt that. Generally people get to be regarded as authoritative as a result of some real contributions they have made and some real insight they are still providing and generally a determined individual can only put himself or herself in a position of being authoritarian rather than being authoritative. Whether an organization is democratic or not, being an authority is ALWAYS a position conferred by others, not claimed by onself. As I said, I have found the insights in "What is Usenet", the "Guidelines" and other regular postings very valuable and I have no doubt many others have also. I think they are plain wrong on a specific point so I am challenging it. I doubt that the view that Usenet is an anarchy with no organization and no central authority and therefore is not, could not be and should not be a democracy is a view that Gene Spafford is imposing on the net from an artificial "claimed" position of authority. On the contrary I think it accurately reflects the prevailing consensus (which happens to be wrong :-) >If an alternative list were published which merely were meant to >disrupt, confuse, or otherwise throw a monkey wrench in the works of >usenet, then that would be cause for alarm. My point was that in order for it to be possible to disrupt Usenet by throwing a monkey wrench in the works with an alternative list showing different newsgroups and different moderators, then there must indeed be a "works" to disrupt - contrary to the essay's claim that there is no Usenet organization which would imply that the "official" lists are just some individual's opinion. If you publish a Hungarian-English phrasebook that translates the Hungarian for "Where is the railway station?" into the English "Please fondle my buttocks." you will undoubtedly cause trouble and may even get into trouble. That would not be the case if there was no Hungarian language. In order for an alternative list to disrupt and confuse Usenet, there has to be a "proper" list of what constitutes Usenet. >However, it's hard to >argue that the current "checkgroups" messages that are sent out are >much use beyond that of deciding which groups are official or not. >They don't tell you much of anything about the group -- where the >discussion is archived, who was the advocate for newsgroup creation, >what the newsgroup charter is, where archives of related materials are >kept, which other groups have related or similar discussions, or what >topics are best discussed elsewhere. All of these materials could be >generated by people suitably motivated to watch the group and describe >the contents of the discussions. Should someone go to all this >trouble and then have the side effect of producing a list (even a list >as devoid of use as Spafford's ``official groups'' list) it would be >welcomed. I am sure improved lists would be most welcome, whether produced by Spafford, Vielmetti or the Library of Congress. But there is a connection between the current "official" list and the "guidelines" and decisions that thousands of sysadmins make while editing their sys files which should not be obscured. The current "What is Usenet" essay obscures that connection. So do your remarks about better cataloging. A well organized catalog of available newsgroups should include all the information you mention for ALL the alt groups and all the mailing lists as well. That will be very useful. But only a SELECTIVE list that EXCLUDES some (many) groups that have not gone through an "approval" procedure can hope to achieve the kind of propagation that Usenet groups achieve. Eventually I imagine there will be so many news groups that it will be pointless attempting to achieve near universal propagation through a common list. Given the increasing costs of academic publishing I would expect most learned journals to make a transition to (moderated) news groups and later most other periodicals. (Major newsagencies are already included in the Clarinet distribution). That brings in a role for "publishers", "reviewers" and "distributors" to draw users attention to newsgroups that may interest them just as with ordinary serials. X500 directory services can provide access to distribution lists. But at present Usenet is playing the role of a cooperative publisher or reviewer, issuing a specific list of newsgroups which is taken very seriously by major distributors in deciding which groups to stock. That role can be supplemented, but not replaced by better cataloging. >Note that just about anyone with a copy of perl and a monthly cron job >can come up with a reasonable list; write something once, post it >every month, and people will start to believe it. Mythology is a >powerful tool. The myth of the "official list" is but one of the >controlling myths that organize usenet. Myths that organize are not mere myths. When people believe somebody is King, they are King. If they chop that person's head off, that person ceases to be King. Don't underestimate the importance of the "official lists" in achieving wide propagation of newsgroups. Just compare the propagation of alt groups that are not on those lists. Don't underestimate the importance of the voting procedure in giving that legitimacy to the "myth" of official lists. During the m.a.g. discussion some people started threatening to rmgroup any such group regardless of the vote and I pointed out that if a minority could get disruptive then a majority could also learn how very quickly. Some "paraphrasing" of that started a rather pathetic discussion on accusations of net terrorism. During the somewhat protracted interval between the m.a.g. renaming vote and announcement of any result I have remarked that ever since a British monarch who forgot that Parliament and not the King was sovereign had his head chopped off (without the Royal Assent customarily applied to Acts of Parliament :-) there have been few problems with royals. No doubt I shall be accused of advocating regicide and assassination. But let me make it clear, I DON'T think it would be as simple as writing a perl script and a couple of cron jobs. There would be a GRADUAL loss of respect for authorities that produced bogus lists not corresponding to the "real" Usenet and civil war would be unlikely to break out until MANY other measures had been attempted. > People like Gene Spafford and David Lawrence are not Gods or even > absolute monarchs but more like equivalents of Bagehot and Hansard. > (An authoritative commentator on the British Constitution, > and an authoritative Parliamentary reporter.) > >Don't give Spafford too much credit. Most of his residual authority >comes from materials he developed years ago; while they reflect his >opinions on how the net should be run, they do not provide a proper >framework for the next 10 years of net growth. "Too much credit"! I thought demotion from net god to Parliamentary reporter was fairly strong stuff. Really I don't think you give our Bagehot and Hansard sufficient credit for accurately reporting the prevailing consensus on what the net is and how it should be run. Defining the Usenet Constitution is no easier than defining that of Britain and balancing the claims of those sysadmins who would be feudal Barons against the claims of those Commoners who they would like to see as serfs has resulted in a transfer of power from Lords to Commons far more rapid and smooth than was achieved in England. I'm for the King against the Barons. >Your appropriate role in this is to refine this commentary on "What is >Usenet", and post it each month to the appropriate newsgroups at about >the same time that the "What is Usenet" article comes out. After >about six months of discussion, debate, proposal, counterproposal, you >will have changed the generally accepted wisdom as to the way things >work. Even if civil war breaks out in the next few weeks I'm going to have to opt out due to other commitments. Generally the accepted wisdom as to the way things work trails behind the way things actually work. That is hardly unique to Usenet, and I see no "imminent demise of the net" that needs a rush to resolve. It isn't so much discussion and debate that changes perceptions as major events which force an awareness of what has ALREADY changed - such as a King getting his head chopped off, or disgruntled Barons being overuled by the Commons and the King acquiescing. The King's head would not have been chopped off if Parliament was not ALREADY sovereign, nor would the Barons have been overuled if the Commons did not ALREADY have the power. Usenet has had a democratic organization for quite a while. I'm surprised it isn't recognized but I would be even more surprised if anyone was silly enough to try and overthrow it. It's been said that you can't maintain a dictatorship if more than 30% of the population have telephones. I doubt that anybody would try an email dictatorship against a population equipped with email. Let it take six months or a year, or two years to acknowledge. As long as voting results are being announced and acted on EVERY MONTH democracy is becoming more deeply entrenched and the power of feudal barons is diminishing - whether they choose to admit it or prefer to console themselves with diatribes about the delusions of upstart serfs. -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3174 of news.admin: From: nelson@sun.soe.clarkson.edu (Russ Nelson) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 26 May 91 16:14:35 GMT <1991May24.200549.16629@newshost.anu.edu.au> <1991May26.134920.4757@newshost.anu.edu.au> Organization: Clarkson University, Potsdam NY In article <1991May26.134920.4757@newshost.anu.edu.au> cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) writes: In article nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu (aka NELSON@CLUTX.BITNET) writes: >A dog is a partial rabbit with a carnivore diet and shorter ears. > >In other words, Usenet is an anarchy, and I don't want no chocolate dog >for Easter. Uh... you mean Usenet is a partial anarchy... like an anarchy with a central authority that issues "official" lists of Usenet newsgroups based on democratic voting? The central authority only has the authority we grant it. The official lists are only as official as we believe them to be. The democratic votes are merely advisory. Usenet is an anarchy. That doesn't mean that there aren't authorities (centralized or otherwise), nor does it mean that there aren't rules, nor does it mean that there is no organization. Power *always* flows from obedience. Hitler's evil came from his power to convince people to follow him. Otherwise he would have been another nut. The IRS (US govt's taxing authority) does not have the power to compel us to pay taxes. The tax system only works because nearly everyone pays taxes voluntarily. Unlike other systems of governance, obedience in an anarchy is acknowledged to be voluntary. Other systems of governance pretend that obedience can be compelled. -- --russ I'm proud to be a humble Quaker. Clear cutting is criminal, spiking trees is criminal, and using hyperbole of this magnitude in a serious discussion is criminal. -- Irv Chidsey From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3179 of news.admin: From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 26 May 91 19:18:56 GMT Organization: Teltronics/TCT, Sarasota, FL According to cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer): >I find that this essay includes a good deal of wisdom but also has >what seem to me some quite glaring omissions in the light of recent >events, despite having been updated so recently. The article in question is new; its recent posting was its first. >>WHAT USENET IS NOT >>------------------ >> 1. Usenet is not an organization. >> >> Usenet has no central authority. In fact, it has no central >> anything. > >Not having a central authority seems to me to imply that Usenet is >decentralized, not that it isn't an organization. Most organizations >have central authorities because of the great benefits of doing so, >but the two concepts are by no means synonymous. "If Usenet is an organization, what is its mailing address?" -- me "c/o The Daily Planet, Metropolis." -- Jeff Daiell >Quite plainly there is a GREAT DEAL of organization involved in keeping >the news flowing. Usenet flows across organizational boundaries. It does not oppose or compete with organizations. It uses and transcends them. >It would be surprising if this was achieved without any central >authority, though not impossible. Be surprised. Be very surprised. >I always get suspicious when somebody says, authoritatively, that >"there are no authorities here". "There is no cabal." -- The Cabal Of Daves (TINC) >...indeed an authority but it does not welcome scrutiny. That's plural: "Authorities". Each admin is an authority to himself or herself. The burden of proof is on those who would disagree. (And, by the way: I don't mind scrutiny, or I wouldn't post.) >> 2. Usenet is not a democracy. (I knew someone would disagree with this. Heh.) >Private organizations are called democratic when they have a membership >which has a right to determine the leadership and policies of the >organization by some kind of majority voting system. Anyone who believes that this paragraph describes Usenet must be on some network I've never used. >>WHAT USENET IS >>-------------- >>Usenet is the set of machines that exchange articles tagged with one >>or more universally-recognized labels, called "newsgroups" (or >>"groups" for short). > >Well, if it is a set of machines then of course it cannot be >an organization, and certainly cannot become a democratic >organization, since such things are comprised of sets of people, >not machines. This point is well taken. I shall change the article to say "the set of people who read and/or post articles..." >The GLARING omission from the essay that I see, is that it takes the >"universally-recognized labels" for granted instead of explaining how >they come to be "universally-recognized". Is cooperation so unusual that it must be explained? >The regular lists of currently active newsgroups sharply distinguish >between the lists of comp soc rec misc news and sci which are "official" >and those provided for some other namespaces, which are "unofficial". I'm sure Gene will forgive me for stating the obvious: Gene Spafford is not a net.god. There are no net.gods, not really. There are those who used to have some measure of control over the net (i.e. former backboners), and there are those who through persuasion or sheer verbosity influence the thoughts of others, but there are no net.gods any more. Sure, Gene posts a list of active newsgroups. I could do the same. ANYONE could. Gene's been around for a long time (in net.years), he knows Usenet better than most, and he's been doing the newsgroup list thing for a long time (since backbone days, I think). THAT DOESN'T MAKE HIM AN AUTHORITY. Gene's list does *proscribe*, it *describes*. Learn the difference. >There is simply no mention at all of the "official" lists of active >newsgroups and their moderators or the corresponding checkgroups >messages. > >Yet unless I have misunderstood the setup COMPLETELY (which no doubt >some kind soul will point out with enthusiasm :-) those do play >a sufficiently important part in the organization of Usenet that >it would be difficult to avoid mentioning them by accident. Well, I don't know about other administrators, but I gave up on the checkgroups control messages long ago. It's not worth the trouble to merge in descriptions of our local and regional groups, the special hierarchies (gnu and biz), etc. All I do with newsgroups is in response to control messages and the "article arrived with unknown group" log messages. >Specifically, my understanding is that there are large numbers >of system administrators who treat the "official" lists as in >some way authoritative. To be blunt: That's their problem. >But I suspect the complete omission of any mention of the "official >lists" or of how the guidelines are decided on reflects some kind of >quite unnecessary embarassment over the lack of "democracy" ... Hahahaha(h). If I were embarassed that Usenet is not a democracy, would I have listed it as #2 under "What Usenet Is Not?" ...and the rest of the referenced article takes as givens that Usenet really is an organization and that Gene's lists really are official, but that no one will admit it. Given those false premises, it is not surprising that all kinds of false conclusions follow. There's no point in rebutting them individually when their basis is so wrong. -- Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT , perl -e 'sub do { print "extinct!\n"; } do do()' From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3182 of news.admin: From: spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 27 May 91 02:57:31 GMT <1991May24.200549.16629@newshost.anu.edu.au> Organization: Department of Computer Science, Purdue University Well, I've read most of the posts on this topic over the past few days. A few comments: 1) I've been posting the list of lists and informational postings for almost 10 years now. It was only around the time of the grand renaming of groups and the short-lived "backbone cabal" that I had any slight delusion that the postings were in any sense "official." Every six months or so, I post a reminder to people that the postings are advisory. I list things that appear appropriate to me, as derived from things other people send me and based on what I observe. Thus, if someone sends me a description of a new hierarchy of groups, I list it. If I see a new group created that looks like the majority of sites might be likely to carry it (e.g., not patently silly or illegal), I include it in my list. Let me stress again that I consider these things as advisory. I treat the "votes" that occur for new groups as advisory as well, as it seems to be a good clue about whether a group will be widely carried. I never complain about any site that carries more or less than what I have in my lists. I do not threaten, coerce, plead, or lecture others about the contents of the postings. I list mailing lists and newsgroups no matter what their content, as long as they are clearly intended seriously and are not being established primarily for illegal activities. That is, perhaps, one reason why the lists have endured: I am largely successful in keeping my personal agendas well-separate of the postings. Some people seem to find the postings helpful. I'm glad if that is the case. It takes a fair amount of effort to keep the postings as up-to-date as they are, and I don't always have the time. 2) I don't pretend that I will do these lists forever, or that they are any kind of basis for future growth. Someday, when the load gets unbearable, or the percentage of crap on the net gets still higher than it is now, I will simply stop posting the articles. Some people think I should have stopped long ago, perhaps because my view of the world doesn't match theirs. Others are in some sense jealous because fewer people heed their views of how the net should be organized than who adhere to the view embodied in the postings. Either way, I understand that not everyone appreciates the work or the contents of the postings. A combination of extra workload and pneumonia kept me from posting updates between January and earlier this month. It didn't seem a lot of people noticed. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but maybe the postings aren't serving the same purpose now as they were a few years ago. A few years ago, when I made noises about quitting, I got lots and lots of main asking me not to. Would it happen now? I dunno.... In general, I suspect that as the net evolves, and especially as the lack of simple consideration becomes more prevalent on net postings, reminders on etiquette and proper places to post will become anachronisms (if they haven't already). 3) I really don't like the term "net.god" especially when someone refers to me that way. If people respect the tenacity, effort, moderation, or dedication -- great. I don't maintain the postings for any sense of "power" or to get "fans" -- I do it because I believe it helps others get more out of the Usenet, and makes it a better place for me to exchange information. Besides, I haven't yet seen any Usenet groupies! 4) Usenet is as much an organization as is the group of people who visit the park on a Sunday afternoon. The composition changes from day to day, no one takes formal attendance, and everyone is doing pretty much what they fancy; luckily, most of the people are staying on the paths and not pissing on the flowers. 5) If you don't agree with me or my postings, congratulations. If you do agree, great. If you don't care, join the rest. If you have suggestions or corrections, mail them to me and I'll consider them for the next batch. I'll also gladly accept any new articles to include in the group if they seem informative and non-redundant. In case you haven't noticed, the following people wrote the original articles I maintain and dozens more have made small contributions: Randall Atkinson asp@uunet.uu.net (Andrew Partan) brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) chuq@apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach) hoptoad!gnu (John Gilmore) jerry@eagle.UUCP (Jerry Schwarz) mark@stargate.com (Mark Horton) ofut@gatech.edu (A. Jeff Offutt VI) rsk@hazel.circ.upenn.edu (Rich Kulawiec) taylor@intuitive.com (Dave Taylor) woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods) I credit each and every one of them every time I post their works. I have never pretended to be the font of wisdom about the net. A source of experience, perhaps; wisdom is something made clear only by the passage of time, and not by one's own judgement. -- Gene Spafford NSF/Purdue/U of Florida Software Engineering Research Center, Dept. of Computer Sciences, Purdue University, W. Lafayette IN 47907-1398 Internet: spaf@cs.purdue.edu phone: (317) 494-7825 From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3187 of news.admin: From: nreadwin@micrognosis.co.uk (Neil Readwin) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 27 May 91 00:41:27 GMT Organization: Micrognosis, London, UK. In article <1991May26.162157.5631@newshost.anu.edu.au> cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) writes: >In order for an alternative list to disrupt and confuse Usenet, there has to >be a "proper" list of what constitutes Usenet. Your analogy is bogus. The Hungarian language continues to exist even if there are no phrasebooks at all and I don't see that writing a phrasebook constitutes organization (regardless of how it translates 'Please fondle my buttocks'). -- Phone: +44 71 528 8282 E-mail: nreadwin@micrognosis.co.uk Everything is a cause for sorrow that my mind or body has made From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3210 of news.admin: From: wayne@ledgepc.uucp (Wayne Brown) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 27 May 91 15:24:57 GMT Organization: Weyerhaeuser Paper Co., Columbus, MS USA In article <1991May26.162157.5631@newshost.anu.edu.au>, by cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer): [ stuff omitted ] > Let it take six months or a year, or two years to acknowledge. As > long as voting results are being announced and acted on EVERY MONTH > democracy is becoming more deeply entrenched and the power of feudal > barons is diminishing - whether they choose to admit it or prefer to > console themselves with diatribes about the delusions of upstart serfs. The question is, do the upstart serfs have any power to force the barons to listen to their wishes? The extreme case would be one in which a sysadmin decided to block his users from sending in votes at all. A more common prcatice is to allow the voting, but ignore the results. In some places, the serfs would howl loudly enough that higher management would force the baron to listen (or replace him). In other places (where the baron _is_ the higher management), the serfs would be out of luck. Actually, the whole situation reminds me more of the ancient Greek city-states than of feudal baronies. Some of the cities, such as Athens, operated along democratic lines during at least part of their history. Others, like Sparta, were very rigidly authoritarian. The cities were very independent and very proud of their soveriegnty. Loose alliances would form, then dissolve as the cities squabbled among themselves. The one thing they all agreed upon was that they were all Greeks. A Spartan and an Athenian might not give each other the time of day ordinarily, but they'd team up like long-lost brothers to beat up a Persian or Macedonian. Considering the amount of squabbling in which _we_ engage over net.politics, I think it's interesting that the Athenians coined the word "idiot" to refer to someone who had _no_ interest in politics. I think they'd feel right at home here. :-) -- Wayne Brown wayne@ledgepc.uucp uunet!{loft386,dsuvax}!ledgepc!wayne 72447.2645@compuserve.com Warning: .signature truncated; maximum trivia level exceeded. From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3233 of news.admin: From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 28 May 91 17:08:13 GMT Organization: Teltronics/TCT, Sarasota, FL According to cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer): >It is plain silly to speak of an informal coop that has almost >continuous decision making votes with hundreds of people taking >part and decisions announced in "official" lists as not being an >organization. Q: Why the quotes around "official" in the quote above? A: Even Albert Langer recognizes that Spaf's lists aren't really official. Besides, newsgroup votes are most definitely *not* "decision making votes." They are opinion surveys, nothing more. As proof, consider "comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac", which passed a vote run by the letter of the guidelines. Nevertheless, it is neither widely carried nor included in Spaf's newsgroup list. If Usenet were a democracy, and if newsgroup votes carried any weight of authority, such a flouting of the "democratic process" could not have happened. >the various phone companies and the organizations that unite and >regulate them have no important say in what anybody uses their >telephones FOR but are VERY far from being an "anarchy". I disagree. They are an an anarchy at the highest levels. Can the U.S. government force the Canadian phone system, or the Mexican phone system, or any of the European PTTs, to do anything? Of course not. But they cooperate for the common profit. Er, the common good. :-/ >there IS a CCITT and there IS a Universal Postal Union and without >them neither the phone calls nor the mail would flow as freely >between countries, many of which are not on speaking terms. So where is Usenet Inc.? Where is the CCIU? Where is the Universal Usenet Union? They don't exist. Thus the analogy falls apart. -- Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT , perl -e 'sub do { print "extinct!\n"; } do do()' From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3234 of news.admin: From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 28 May 91 17:32:43 GMT Organization: Teltronics/TCT, Sarasota, FL According to cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer): >Generally people get to be regarded as authoritative as a result of >some real contributions they have made and some real insight they >are still providing and generally a determined individual can only >put himself or herself in a position of being authoritarian rather >than being authoritative. Gene Spafford is neither authoritarian nor authoritative. Claims to the contrary come entirely from people who imagine that Usenet has some authority, and who desperately want *someone* on whom to pin it. Gene is experienced, and his opinion is widely respected. That's all the "power" he has. Period. >My point was that in order for it to be possible to disrupt Usenet >by throwing a monkey wrench in the works with an alternative list >showing different newsgroups and different moderators, then there >must indeed be a "works" to disrupt - contrary to the essay's >claim that there is no Usenet organization ... Usenet is not an organization. To create an organization, someone has to organize. And no one is doing (or can do) netwide "organizing" of Usenet. It is true, of course, that Usenet displays some order. But that is no surprise when we consider how Usenet grows. Usenet is the result of thousands of sites cooperating. Such cooperation occurs, not by imposition, but by imitation. Each new site gets its feed volunarily. It gets its software, its newsgroup list and its policies from its feed and/or any other resources it can find (such as the Nutshell handbook). Thus the fact that many sites run with similar newsgroup lists and similar policies is no surprise. It's not organization, it's inertia. >In order for an alternative list to disrupt and confuse Usenet, there >has to be a "proper" list of what constitutes Usenet. Usenet is already disrupted and confused in certain areas. How many sites carry comp.unix.{wizards,internals}? How about sci.aquaria? If Gene's list were authoritative, then everyone would follow it, and that would be that. But it isn't, and they don't, so it isn't. :-) A rival list's expanding confusion into new areas would not change Usenet's basic nature. >Eventually I imagine there will be so many news groups that it will >be pointless attempting to achieve near universal propagation through >a common list. That point has already been reached, IMHO. >Myths that organize are not mere myths. When people believe somebody >is King, they are King. If they chop that person's head off, that >person ceases to be King. Yup. And most of us, by your own admission, do *NOT* believe that Gene's list is authoritative. Therefore, it isn't. QED. -- Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT , perl -e 'sub do { print "extinct!\n"; } do do()' From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3235 of news.admin: From: gregory@csri.toronto.edu (Kate Gregory) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 29 May 91 02:31:21 GMT Organization: CSRI, University of Toronto The analogy I prefer is that Usenet is a conversation. Now, when 2 humans sit down and converse, they follow a whole load of rules (speak the same language, don't both talk at once, look at the person who's talking, etc: oddly enough the net tends to break all those), but my point is there is no referee watching, no authority to enforce these rules of human conversation and yet they are followed. Telephone conversations are different from face to face conversations in many ways, and by observing those differences you can deduce a lot of information about the rules you and your circle use for each type of conversation. Who taught you those rules? Who enforces them? Who is in charge of your chatting? There are some topics I won't discuss with certain people; that list isn't "official" and no external party enforces it, but it is still real. Plenty of usenet sites carry groups that aren't on "the list", and don't carry all the ones that are. I agree with the earlier poster who said the lists were descriptive rather than proscriptive. Usenet is a bunch of people who vaguely co-operate because it is more pleasant to co-operate than to be frozen out of the conversation. Usenet votes should probably be renamed "opinion survey" or "interest survey" and then people wouldn't jump up every six months claiming this is a democracy. Kate From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3243 of news.admin: From: dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu (Dan Schlitt) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Summary: It's a slimemold! Date: 29 May 91 16:12:40 GMT Organization: City College of New York - Science Computing Facility Someone or other says: > >Usenet is not an organization. To create an organization, someone has >to organize. And no one is doing (or can do) netwide "organizing" of >Usenet. > >It is true, of course, that Usenet displays some order. But that is >no surprise when we consider how Usenet grows. > If you want a fairly good biological analog of Usenet consider the slimemold. (They didn't choose the name with Usenet in mind, but ....) It appears to have a high degree of organization but really consists of an agregation of remarkably independent cells. -- Dan Schlitt Manager, Science Division Computer Facility dan@sci.ccny.cuny.edu City College of New York dan@ccnysci.uucp New York, NY 10031 dan@ccnysci.bitnet (212)650-7885 From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3252 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Thu, 30 May 91 02:07:47 GMT In article nelson@clutx.clarkson.edu (aka NELSON@CLUTX.BITNET) writes: >The central authority only has the authority we grant it. >The official lists are only as official as we believe them to be. I won't argue with those two statements. >The democratic votes are merely advisory. This one however is ambiguous and it is precisely that ambiguity I am trying to clear up. Advisory to who? My impression is that the "official" or "standard" USENET lists are "merely advisory" to the administrators of each independent site. If that is what you and others mean by "anarchy" then I think that is an inaccurate use of the term. All kinds of things are "merely advisory" without anybody being under the illusion that the organizations producing them are anarchistic. For example most "standards" are just as "advisory" as the "standard" USENET list, without anybody thinking that ANSI, IEEE standards board etc are not organizations or have no central authorities. However I'm not really interested in debating the correct use of the term "anarchy". My concern is that there is another possible interpretation of "merely advisory" and that the "What is Usenet" essay obscures rather than clarifies the issue. It could be thought that the votes regularly organized in news.groups.announce are "merely advisory" to anyone compiling a list of "official" ("traditional" or "standard" newsgroups) or are "just an opinion poll" (as stated recently by Chip Salzenberg though not expressed so openly in his essay on "What is Usenet"). If that was so, it would not establish that USENET is an anarchy or has no organization, but it would certainly establish that whatever organization it has, is not democratic. I believe that understanding of the nature of USENET would be as misleading as to claim that the decisions of Parliament are "merely advisory" to a constitutional monarch. As I pointed out, one British monarch lost his head for making that mistake, and the decision to remove it from his shoulders was carried out, despite that particular Act of Parliament never having received the Royal Assent. >Usenet is an anarchy. That doesn't mean that there aren't authorities >(centralized or otherwise), nor does it mean that there aren't rules, >nor does it mean that there is no organization. I agree that an anarchy can have an organization, and even "rules" (though in a more limited sense than is often understood by that term). But your contention that an anarchy can have centralized authorities indicates you are using the term in a quite different sense from any that I am familiar with. Again, I see no real point in debating the semantics. Call it what you like - if we are agreed that USENET has a centralized authority which is bound by the votes of members when issuing lists of "standard" Usenet newsgroups, but that has no authority over members or anybody else, then you may call it an anarchy or even a cheesecake for all I care. The point under discussion is that others would disagree with that description of the characteristics of this particular cheesecake, not whether an entity with those characteristics should or should not be called a cheesecake. >Power *always* flows from obedience. Hitler's evil came from his power to >convince people to follow him. Otherwise he would have been another >nut. The IRS (US govt's taxing authority) does not have the power to >compel us to pay taxes. The tax system only works because nearly >everyone pays taxes voluntarily. The IRS does have power to compel individuals to pay taxes. Since many people do NOT pay taxes "voluntarily" but only because of the legal compulsion to do so (whereas they may for example donate to charities "voluntarily"), the IRS is an excellent example of how power does NOT always flow from voluntary conviction. Like most (though not all) private organizations, and unlike Government agencies such as the IRS, USENET has no means to compel obedience. That does not mean it is an anarchy any more than any other voluntary association is an anarchy. >Unlike other systems of governance, obedience in an anarchy is acknowledged >to be voluntary. Other systems of governance pretend that obedience can >be compelled. Unlike other systems of governance, anarchy is imaginary. But we are not discussing systems of governance. A more conventional definition of anarchy asserts that social affairs can be administered through voluntary associations without any need for the compulsion of State Power. My point is that USENET is an example of such an (informal) voluntary association with no power to coerce. If USENET Governed some country then that country would indeed be an anarchy. There are many thousands of voluntary associations with no power to coerce organized for one purpose or another, but none of them are organized for the purpose of governing countries so they are not examples of "anarchy". I have never heard of voluntary associations being confused with "anarchies" before and I suspect you must be suffering from the fantasy that "netland" is a country. BTW Abraham Lincoln took the position that when the people grow weary of their Government they have TWO rights - their constitutional right to reform it and their revolutionary right to dismember and overthrow it. That is consistent with your view that Government compulsion of individuals only works when the people voluntarily accept the power of Government. That view is generally described as (revolutionary) democracy, not anarchy. -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3259 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Thu, 30 May 91 05:21:44 GMT In article <28400A20.5766@tct.com> chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes: >The article in question is new; its recent posting was its first. Sorry, when I saw the "updated 19 May by Gene Spafford" line I (incorrectly) assumed that I must have missed some earlier posting. BTW, the ONLY email I got on this issue that wasn't supportive argued that since your "FAQ" (sic) had "worked" for some time therefore it wasn't broken and did not need fixing. No doubt that view will be more widely held if your essay gets reposted along with the others month after month without being challenged. >"If Usenet is an organization, what is its mailing address?" -- me >"c/o The Daily Planet, Metropolis." -- Jeff Daiell I doubt that writing to The Daily Planet would put you in touch with the Usenet organization. However according to the "Guidelines", if you want to create a new Usenet group, you should write to a moderated newsgroup called "news.announce.newgroups" and if the group is actually created, the newgroup control message will be issued by the moderator of that group who is currently David Lawrence (tale@rpi.edu) So I would say that Usenet has an address (unlike certain kinds of secret cabals which are nonetheless also organizations). Like most organizations, somebody is responsible for handling correspondence received at that address, and I imagine that like most organizations that person is not THE organization but is carrying out a function FOR the organization. >That's plural: "Authorities". Each admin is an authority to himself >or herself. The burden of proof is on those who would disagree. Well I for one do not disagree. I simply don't see it as relevant to whether Usenet has an organization or whether that organization has central authorities or is democratic. Perhaps you too are under the illusion that we are discussing the "governance" of some mythical country called "netland"? I happen to FULLY AGREE with the statements in your essay about how Usenet has no authority over individual sites and that it is therefore pointless expecting it to deal with complaints etc etc. I imagine that if the Postal Service was regularly the subject of complaints about material transmitted by post, or the Library of Congtress was regularly the subject of complaints about the contents of the material they catalog, then they might find it necessary to issue similar explanations. But I doubt that they would conclude that therefore they are not organizations or that they have no central authorities. >>Private organizations are called democratic when they have a membership >>which has a right to determine the leadership and policies of the >>organization by some kind of majority voting system. > >Anyone who believes that this paragraph describes Usenet must be on >some network I've never used. My next sentence, not quoted by you, was: >>Many other forms of organization exist, such as the Catholic Church >>and Usenet, but democratic forms of organization do not imply a means >>of enforcing the wishes of the membership over anything other than >>the organization itself. In your anxiety to avoid discussing the (lack of) connection between powers of coercion and democratic forms of organization you seem to have also ignored my explicit statement that Usenet is NOT described by the definition I gave for democratic forms of organization, any more than the Catholic Church is. (I later pointed out that since the membership DOES determine the policies directly by some kind of majority voting system the lack of an elected leadership was unimportant except in case of a "constitutional crisis" and that therefore Usenet meets "most of the criteria for being democratic" and is "a partial democracy with an unelected leadership and an uncodified constitution". Since then I have referred to it as having a democratic organization which is becoming more entrenched with each vote taken.) You are fully entitled to disagree with both my premises and conclusions, indeed I gather you would reject my assertion that the membership determines policy by majority voting just as much as you would reject the assertion I did NOT make about the membership electing the leadership by majority voting. But please refrain from quoting me as though I am describing USENET in a patently incorrect way when I EXPLICITLY state that I am not describing USENET at all. [re USENET as a "set of machines"] >This point is well taken. I shall change the article to say "the set >of people who read and/or post articles..." Thank you. Perhaps we may also end up agreeing that this set of people has some kind of organization? A mere "set of people" can include such sets as the set of people with red hair that clearly involve no organization, yet USENET is involved in complex common activities which seems to make it different from such unorganized sets. >>The GLARING omission from the essay that I see, is that it takes the >>"universally-recognized labels" for granted instead of explaining how >>they come to be "universally-recognized". > >Is cooperation so unusual that it must be explained? In an essay explaining "What is USENET", the method by which cooperation results in a certain set of newsgroup labels being "universally" recognized among some 37,000 sites scattered around the world should certainly be explained. Frankly this strikes me as so obvious that I believe your reluctance to attempt explaining it is due to realizing that any believeble explanation would contradict your desire to pretend that there is no Usenet organization. If I am wrong about that, please present an explanation of how this cooperation is achieved here, even if you do not believe it is of sufficient general interest to include in an essay on "What is USENET". >[...] Gene's list does *proscribe*, it >*describes*. Learn the difference. My understanding of words such as "proscribe", "describe" and "proscribe" is sufficient to enable me to guess that you really meant to say "prescribe" rather than "proscribe" and that you really meant to say that Gene's list does NOT prescribe rather than saying it DOES prescribe. Please refrain from using phrases like "Learn the difference" that imply our disagreements arise from my inferior understanding of the English language. That would assist me to control the character defect that renders me unable to delete this pointless display of sarcasm. :-) As for USENET and the various lists, my understanding would be that arbitron describes, news.announce.newgroups prescribes and checkgroups proscribes. If you disagree, perhaps you could explain how it comes to pass that the newsgroups merely "described" in news.announce.newusers come into existence AFTER they are "described" there and also how they come to be listed (whether accepted or not) in the sys files of some 37,000 sites. >>There is simply no mention at all of the "official" lists of active >>newsgroups and their moderators or the corresponding checkgroups >>messages. >> >>Yet unless I have misunderstood the setup COMPLETELY (which no doubt >>some kind soul will point out with enthusiasm :-) those do play >>a sufficiently important part in the organization of Usenet that >>it would be difficult to avoid mentioning them by accident. >Well, I don't know about other administrators, but I gave up on the >checkgroups control messages long ago. It's not worth the trouble to >merge in descriptions of our local and regional groups, the special >hierarchies (gnu and biz), etc. All I do with newsgroups is in >response to control messages and the "article arrived with unknown >group" log messages. Well, in an organization with so little coercive power as Usenet I would not expect to see the checkgroups lists that proscribe rather than prescribe having all that much use :-) (Though I am sure they are useful for sites that have a policy to accept recognized groups but don't want to either automatically accept or manually process all newgroup and rmgroup messages that happen to arrive from any source.) I don't know either, but my speculation is that the vast majority of the 37,000 sites through which news passes simply don't have the time or inclination to even monitor the discussions in news.groups, let alone take decisions about each newsgroup as it is created. Some participants in news.groups discussions seem to take great delight in informing the world about how they are not going to accept particular groups and so their downstream sites won't get them either (with a barely suppressed nyah! nyah!). My impression is that they are not particularly representative of typical news administrators who genrally have a better sense of priorities. >>Specifically, my understanding is that there are large numbers >>of system administrators who treat the "official" lists as in >>some way authoritative. >To be blunt: That's their problem. I am not clear whether you regard it as some kind of "problem" that most news administrators respect the guidelines which say: "Any group creation request which follows these guidelines to a successful result should be honoured, and any request which fails to follow the procedures or to obtain a successful result from doing so should be dropped, except under extraordinary circumstances.[...]" More likely you are merely saying that it is unimportant. Either way, you do not seem to be disputing that this is the way things ARE, yet you have not seen fit to mention it in an essay explaining "What is USENET". The reason it strikes me as a very important aspect of USENET, which would be difficult to omit mentioning by accident, is that it explains how the "cooperation" you mention is achieved, despite your reluctance to explain it. That cooperation is immensely important. Without it, i.e. without the Usenet organization and central authorities that make it possible, all the "standard" or "official" newsgroup hierarchies would be in EXACTLY the same position as the alt hierarchy - where there is indeed no central authority and no "official" lists (but nevertheless "alt" groups DO function and one of them is the most popular newsgroup available). The advantages which the USENET groups obtain from having a central authority that issues "official" lists include: 1) Sysadmins that do not wish to spend time on selecting groups are not forced to either spend that time or accept any group that happens along but can rely on the "standard" list, excluding sub-hierarchies by broad subject area and adding other groups as they wish. 2) That immense saving in effort results in far wider propagation of "standard" USENET groups compared with alt groups. 3) That in turn produces a further immense saving in sysadmin time and effort because leaf sites can generally rely on being able to obtain any USENET group they want from nearby feeds, without having to waste time on negotiating large numbers of separate feeds for different groups or incurring extra long distance phone costs due to particular groups not being available nearby. 4) Finally, users are able to consult lists of active groups to find topics of interest to them, without having to badger sysadmins to make special arrangements for each group. The mere existence of a common subject classification also makes it much easier to discuss what new groups are required to fill gaps etc. If things were as you pretend or wish, then we would not enjoy these benefits. >>But I suspect the complete omission of any mention of the "official >>lists" or of how the guidelines are decided on reflects some kind of >>quite unnecessary embarassment over the lack of "democracy" ... > >Hahahaha(h). If I were embarassed that Usenet is not a democracy, >would I have listed it as #2 under "What Usenet Is Not?" I think you are embarassed to admit that Usenet is an organization which has a central authority because if you admitted it then you would not so easily get away with claiming that people who believe it either is, or should be, a democracy are "sadly deluded". Your advocacy of feudalism with Barons and serfs in recent news.admin discussions has considerably less appeal than dressing things up in terms of "anarchy" and "no organization". >...and the rest of the referenced article takes as givens that Usenet >really is an organization and that Gene's lists really are official, >but that no one will admit it. Given those false premises, it is not >surprising that all kinds of false conclusions follow. There's no >point in rebutting them individually when their basis is so wrong. Well, I agree that there is no point addressing my other conclusions, without first reaching agreement on premises we still disagree about. However I am NOT saying that nobody will admit the lists are official. I am saying that wide propagation of USENET groups relies on people accepting them as official, that both the lists themselves and the guidelines describe them as official and that these statements are not mistaken. YOU on the other hand will not admit it :-) -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3263 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Thu, 30 May 91 06:55:22 GMT In article <28428E7D.446E@tct.com> chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes: >According to cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer): >>It is plain silly to speak of an informal coop that has almost >>continuous decision making votes with hundreds of people taking >>part and decisions announced in "official" lists as not being an >>organization. > >Q: Why the quotes around "official" in the quote above? >A: Even Albert Langer recognizes that Spaf's lists aren't really > official. Actually I am so utterly blind as not to recognize this. Please do not give me more credit for sharing your views than I deserve. I put quote marks around "official" to emphasize that I DO regard them as being "official". I base that not only on their inherent characteristics as described above and elsewhere, but also on the fact that simultaneous regular postings of "Regional" and "Alternative" news group hierarchies describe themselves as "unofficial" while no such disclaimer is made for the "Usenet" list and also on the fact that the "Guidelines" describe them as "standard". >Besides, newsgroup votes are most definitely *not* "decision making >votes." They are opinion surveys, nothing more. That is the issue. All we need now is the proof. >As proof, consider "comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac", which passed a vote >run by the letter of the guidelines. Nevertheless, it is neither >widely carried nor included in Spaf's newsgroup list. If Usenet were >a democracy, and if newsgroup votes carried any weight of authority, >such a flouting of the "democratic process" could not have happened. I presume from the name ending in "eniac" that this group was passed as a joke. I presume from your attempt to pass it off as a counterexample to newsgroup votes carrying any weight or authority that you are unable to think of a SINGLE example of a REAL "flouting of the democratic process". You are proving my case, not yours. >>the various phone companies and the organizations that unite and >>regulate them have no important say in what anybody uses their >>telephones FOR but are VERY far from being an "anarchy". > >I disagree. They are an an anarchy at the highest levels. Can the >U.S. government force the Canadian phone system, or the Mexican phone >system, or any of the European PTTs, to do anything? Of course not. >But they cooperate for the common profit. Er, the common good. :-/ I have heard it said that some Americans believe that any situation in which the U.S. government cannot force institutions of other countries to do what it wants is "anarchy". However you are the first American that I have ever seen explicitly state that belief in writing. FYI the voluntary cooperation between PTTs is not anarchy and neither is that between USENET sites. >>there IS a CCITT and there IS a Universal Postal Union and without >>them neither the phone calls nor the mail would flow as freely >>between countries, many of which are not on speaking terms. > >So where is Usenet Inc.? Where is the CCIU? Where is the Universal >Usenet Union? They don't exist. Thus the analogy falls apart. Checkout news.groups and news.announce.newgroups. They do exist, thus your bizarre denial of the obvious falls apart. -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3278 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Thu, 30 May 91 20:59:30 GMT In article <14819@ector.cs.purdue.edu> spaf@cs.purdue.EDU (Gene Spafford) writes: >If I see a new group created that looks like the majority of >sites might be likely to carry it (e.g., not patently silly or >illegal), I include it in my list. An alternative description of what you do as regards the "standard" USENET hierarchies is that when the moderator of news.announce.newgroups approves an announcement there that a new group has passed, you list it, and when there is no such announcement, you don't. Both descriptions could be equally accurate. After all, the "Guidelines" say: "Any group creation request which follows these guidelines to a successful result should be honoured, and any request which fails to follow the procedures or to obtain a successful result from doing so should be dropped, except under extraordinary circumstances..." You regularly repost the guidelines with an "Approved" header line from you, so you probably agree with them yourself and hope and expect that they will also be taken seriously by others. It seems reasonable to assume that when you see a new group created that has followed the procedures to a successful result, it looks to you like the majority of sites might be likely to carry it, since that is indeed the case. Likewise, labouring the obvious only because it remains unadmitted, when you see a new group created which fails to follow the procedures or to obtain a successful result from doing so, it looks to you like the majority of sites might not be likely to carry it, since that too is indeed the case. If both descriptions are NOT equally accurate, could you or anybody else please point to an instance where one description applies but the other does not? (Leaving out "patently silly" examples like comp.protocols.tcp-ip.eniac). If there are no such examples then any distinction between these two descriptions is fictitious. Such fictions are not uncommon in English speaking countries, though I am surprised to see one defended so resolutely by citizens of a republic like the United States rather than by citizens (or rather "subjects" :-) of a constitutional monarchy like Canada, Australia or the U.K. In Australia we have a system of Government where laws are "proclaimed" by a "Governor-General" as personal representative of the "Queen of Australia" after being "submitted" by a "Speaker of the House". Due to some astounding coincidence, the laws proclaimed coincide with those that have been approved by Parliaments resulting from democratic voting. We call that system of Government "democracy". I see no reason to describe a private informal voluntary association in which decisions are also determined by a system of democratic voting as an "anarchy" or as having "no organization". BTW, that leaves open of course such things as "extraordinary circumstances" which, as the "Guidelines" point out, cannot be specified in advance. We did in fact have a "Constitutional Crisis" in Australia a few years ago, in which normal relations between the Parliament, the Government and the Governor-General broke down. Since our system of Government is "democracy" the crisis was naturally resolved by calling a special general election. >Let me stress again that I consider these things as advisory. I treat >the "votes" that occur for new groups as advisory as well, as it seems >to be a good clue about whether a group will be widely carried. Yes your Majesty, a very good clue indeed your Majesty. Most wise and perspicacious of you your Majesty. A far sounder policy than that which led your unfortunate predecessor Charles Stuart to lose his head your Majesty. >I never complain about any site that carries more or less than what I >have in my lists. I do not threaten, coerce, plead, or lecture others >about the contents of the postings. Spoken like a TRUE net.god your Majesty :-) Seriously, it is only those who do NOT have authority that need to threaten, coerce, plead or lecture others. You are an authority on what is and is not a "standard" USENET newsgroup (as well as some other matters), because you perform your task conscientiously as you describe, so your lists ACCURATELY reflect reality. Nobody is accusing you of usurpring that authority (well, at any rate, I am not, perhaps your comments are directed more at Ed). Likewise, Chip Salzenberg is, with your approval, to some extent an authority on "What is Usenet", having provided a useful explanation of many aspects of the uncodified Constitution of Usenet for the benefit of all netlanders. But just as Bagehot was describing rather than prescribing the uncodified Constitution of Britain which continued to evolve, so is Chip only describing and unfortunately part of his description is patently wrong. Bagehot undoubtedly made many mistakes, however at least he understood that Parliament had achieved sovereignty and the Laws were no longer determined by what might be acceptable to various Barons, but by the Commons assembled. A similar (r)evolution has manifestly occurred in netland. While once it was only possible to survey different parts of the country to ascertain whose writ runs where, in these modern times of steam engines and electric telegraphs and internet and uunet, the old local barriers to propagation enforced by various Dukes and Barons are long gone. One writ runs throughout the land. The Commons no longer petition their natural superiors for grace and favour, nor even express themselves through "opinion polls". For some time now, they have been meeting openly in Parliament and DECIDING the laws by votes. Those votes are being taken continuously on numerous subjects with results announced regularly and the results announced carry far more weight and authority than the writ of any cabal of net.gods ever did in olden times. All this is to the great good of netland since it enables the speedy growth of transport and communications without unnecessary local obstructions. No return to the old ways is either possible or desirable. >In general, I suspect that as the net evolves, and especially as the >lack of simple consideration becomes more prevalent on net postings, >reminders on etiquette and proper places to post will become >anachronisms (if they haven't already). One day simple consideration will be so ingrained that reminders on etiquette and proper places to post will indeed become anachronisms. But during these turbulent times in which lack of simple consideration is still prevalent and even growing, surely there is all the more need for such reminders. Perhaps though there is something anachronistic about them appearing as the mere personal opinions of people whose opinions are respected. Would they not carry more weight, and perhaps be improved in content, if like news group charters, they too were subject to the democratic process of debate and formal approval by vote? It worked with the Barons, why not with the nerds? >4) Usenet is as much an organization as is the group of people who >visit the park on a Sunday afternoon. The composition changes from >day to day, no one takes formal attendance, and everyone is doing >pretty much what they fancy; luckily, most of the people are staying >on the paths and not pissing on the flowers. With the very UTMOST respect (to use the customary form of address when flatly contradicting one with more experience :-) a great deal more has been achieved than that - and through major efforts by yourself and your colleagues. Hundreds of thousands of people are able to enjoy strolls in the parks of Usenet with a minimum of fuss and bother. (Some put the numbers close to 1.5 million but that seems an overestimate inherent in collecting statistics from any place that has a statistics collector since such places are generally more populated than others that don't). That was not achieved without organization to unite the 37,000 or so places from which the park strollers came (a more accurate statistic). Decisions had to be made to build paths here and install fishponds but not aquaria there, to establish park benches and lovers lanes, quiet spots for reading and embankments for shouting. Those decisions are taken through a highly organized formal process set out in the guidelines, by which a "charter" and sometimes a "moderator" for each place in the park is established, defining it's function, as well as a name through which it can be located in maps of the park. No organization? Your majesty is FAR too modest :-) -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3279 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Thu, 30 May 91 21:18:47 GMT In article <1991May27.004127.22320@micrognosis.co.uk> nreadwin@micrognosis.co.uk (Neil Readwin) writes: >In article <1991May26.162157.5631@newshost.anu.edu.au> cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) writes: >>In order for an alternative list to disrupt and confuse Usenet, there has to >>be a "proper" list of what constitutes Usenet. > >Your analogy is bogus. The Hungarian language continues to exist even if there >are no phrasebooks at all and I don't see that writing a phrasebook constitutes >organization (regardless of how it translates 'Please fondle my buttocks'). I did not mean that it was the making of the list that organizes Usenet any more than writing a phrasebook organizes a language. I meant that there IS a "standard" set of Usenet news groups, which COULD be listed. It isn't just a matter of anybody's opinion about what are the Usenet groups and who are their moderators. A fiction is being maintained that there is no Usenet organization and the regularly posted lists are just somebody's opinion, when the reality is that there is an organization and those lists reflect it's decisions. My analogy was meant to clarify that by showing that if one published some other list it would not be a "proper" list so it isn't just a matter of anybody's opinion any more than the Hungarian language is. Certainly languages are not defined by organizations (the French national academy notwithstanding). Usenet has a definate decision making procedure which is even written in a set of "Guidelines" and any "proper" list of Usenet newsgroups has to conform with the results of that decision making procedure or it would be regarded as bogus. -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3280 of news.admin: From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: Re: Reform Trial.* (was: Trial flawed) Date: 30 May 91 21:17:59 GMT Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI trial.* has already been reformed. Its function has been taken over by (surprise!) alt.*, in particular newsgroups like alt.comp.compression alt.sci.astro.fits alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk These groups were created in alt with names which exactly reflect their eventual names in ``mainstream usenet''. Traffic flows, people get an idea of what the eventual group charter will be once there's enough interest gathered together to go through the rigor of a full vote, and incompletely specified ideas get lost in the morass of alt. (no great loss there). If the name loses, the group never gets put to vote. The voting rules are still useful -- given the incomplete distribution of alt.*, the measurement of when it's reasonable to migrate to ``mainstream usenet'' is a show of hands, and using a vote as a show of hands is as good as any. Many of the yes voters will be people who don't have access to alt.* because of resource constraints at their site. This analysis, like all analyses of alt.* behavior, is strictly my own opinions; there is no monthly What is the Altnet monthly posting with hoary interpretations of the lore and collected wisdom of alt. Just as well. It does suggest that people newgrouping alt groups should take care to pick a good name if they eventually want a ``mainstream usenet'' group. So picking a name alt.fax is not as good as what could have been done in retrospect as alt.comp.dcom.fax since the eventual vote would have been trivial to run. There are alt groups which belong in alt forever -- alt.sex, alt.drugs, alt.security come to mind -- which have an alternative manner about them. I don't expect these groups to be renamed with dumb stupid five-part disjointed names to satisfy organization freaks. -- Edward Vielmetti, MSEN Inc. moderator, comp.archives emv@msen.com "often those with the power to appoint will be on one side of a controversial issue and find it convenient to use their opponent's momentary stridency as a pretext to squelch them" From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3281 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Thu, 30 May 91 22:08:19 GMT In article <122@ledgepc.uucp> wayne@ledgepc.uucp (Wayne Brown) writes: >The question is, do the upstart serfs have any power to force the barons >to listen to their wishes? The extreme case would be one in which a sysadmin >decided to block his users from sending in votes at all. A more common >prcatice is to allow the voting, but ignore the results. In some places, >the serfs would howl loudly enough that higher management would force the >baron to listen (or replace him). In other places (where the baron _is_ >the higher management), the serfs would be out of luck. Ah, now there I'm afraid you are confusing the question of serfs and Barons with that of employers and employees. The (r)evolution I am describing only abolished the status of serf and Lord, it did not abolish private property and the situation that some have property even in such obviously social means of production as large scale computer installations, while others have no property. (That will come in a future revolution but I am describing, not prescribing :-) I suspect a great deal of the desire to preserve the fiction that there is no democracy in Usenet arises from fear that if there was democracy the proletarians might use it to infringe property rights. Certainly that was a major concern of John Stewart Mill when writing "On Representative Government". Nevertheless the English, French and even the more modern American democratic revolutions were all conducted under slogans which raised "property" to the same level as "liberty", "equality", and "fraternity". Former serfs are no longer tied to their Lords and can certainly vote freely without their permission. More importantly they can freely move elsewhere to seek whatever destiny they will, leaving excessively cruel property owners without the labor needed to cultivate their estates. But the laws of democratic netland still cannot compel any particular property owner to use their property for the common good any more than the laws of feudal netland could. All they provide is an environment that removes barriers so that people can easily seek out whatever situation suits them best and nobody can bar them from doing so. There are of course rumours of conspiracies among the proles. Some say it is possible to receive any newsgroup whatever through email, whether one's "sysadmin" approves or not, and that one can post to any newsgroup through mail gateways established for that purpose such as {newsgroup-name}@ucbvax.berkely.edu Like the consequences of the steam engine and electric telegraphs, the consequences of such developments are too frightening for some to contemplate. Let's just get them used to the idea of democracy for now, huh? -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3282 of news.admin: From: emv@msen.com (Ed Vielmetti) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 30 May 91 22:12:51 GMT <1991May24.200549.16629@newshost.anu.edu.au> <14819@ector.cs.purdue.edu> <1991May30.205930.28381@newshost.anu.edu.au> Organization: MSEN, Inc. Ann Arbor MI In article <1991May30.205930.28381@newshost.anu.edu.au> cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) writes: Those decisions are taken through a highly organized formal process set out in the guidelines, by which a "charter" and sometimes a "moderator" for each place in the park is established, defining it's function, as well as a name through which it can be located in maps of the park. No organization? Your majesty is FAR too modest :-) Not every newsgroup has a clearly understood charter, and there's no obvious place and well-organized place to look for them all. As such the map of usenet is much more of an uncharted waters than the map of all of the mailing lists in the world ("private parks" in your analogy) which each have some amount of text describing their ownership and function collected regularly. See for instance the "List of Lists" (ftp.nisc.sri.com:/netinfo/interest-groups). One of the reasons that the ``official list of newsgroups'' is archaic and obsolete is the thinness of information in the various 50 byte blurbs which describe each of the groups. These blurbs, written in many cases by spaf himself, provide only the thinnest amount of information to go on when deciding which group to post to and what the predicted contents of the group will be to decide whether to pick it up or not. The moderator of news.announce.newsgroups is responsible for collecting charters, but no one so far as I can tell is archiving them or making them generally available in any sort of systematic way. -- Edward Vielmetti, vice president, MSEN Inc. emv@msen.com "often those with the power to appoint will be on one side of a controversial issue and find it convenient to use their opponent's momentary stridency as a pretext to squelch them" From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3283 of news.admin: From: cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Organization: Computer Services Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. Date: Thu, 30 May 91 22:49:58 GMT In article <2842943B.4B56@tct.com> chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes: >Gene is experienced, and his opinion is widely respected. That's all >the "power" he has. Period. Agreed, and I have never claimed otherwise. >It is true, of course, that Usenet displays some order. But that is >no surprise when we consider how Usenet grows. > >Usenet is the result of thousands of sites cooperating. Such >cooperation occurs, not by imposition, but by imitation. Each new >site gets its feed volunarily. It gets its software, its newsgroup >list and its policies from its feed and/or any other resources it can >find (such as the Nutshell handbook). I agree that cooperation in Usenet is not the result of imposition, and I have never said otherwise. Indeed I have been trying to get across the point that voluntary cooperation in organizations does not necessarily require coercion and it is you that has been insisting an absence of coercion implies an absence of organization. Nor do I agree that "imitation" is what substitutes for coercion in establishing "some order". >Thus the fact that many sites run with similar newsgroup lists and >similar policies is no surprise. It's not organization, it's inertia. You are "sadly deluded". If it was "inertia" then the way that Usenet is "ordered" (since you don't like the term "organized") would not change with time. In fact some BIG changes have occurred so that until you catch up with and understand those changes and fit back into the modern world as it really is, your "experience" will be devalued and you will appear more and more as someone pining for old times rather than as someone capable of passing on a heritage to the future. Try to put aside your preconceptions about how the net used to be "in the good old days". Pretend you are a newcomer, (say one of the last million or so to have joined :-) First take a look carefully through all the postings in news.announce.newusers, and try to forget that you happen to know all or most of the authors personally. Then go over to news.groups and news.announce.newgroups and see how newsgroups actually ARE created. Don't post anything telling the people there how they are just serfs or conducting opinion polls "nothing more", just sit back for a while, saying NOTHING, like a newbie would or should and see what is ACTUALLY happening. I believe that if you manage to take that advice, you will notice that Usenet is NOT just ordered by inertia, that there is a functioning and quite complex more or less democratic organization at work, which is continually deciding on newsgroups and that the decisions taken are routinely being implemented widely (check the arbitron statistics for that). If once you have understood the changes that have ALREADY OCCURRED, you still disapprove of all this new fangled nonsense, by all means post your protests as widely and as regularly as you see fit. But PLEASE entitle them "What Usenet Was" or "Where Usenet has Gone Wrong" or something more accurate than "What is Usenet". >Usenet is already disrupted and confused in certain areas. How many >sites carry comp.unix.{wizards,internals}? How about sci.aquaria? If >Gene's list were authoritative, then everyone would follow it, and >that would be that. But it isn't, and they don't, so it isn't. :-) (sigh) I think I have explained often enough that like you I do not believe Usenet has any power to compel any site to accept or reject any newsgroup. It merely defines a set of "standard" or "official" newsgroups and it is up to each site what it does with that. I don't know how to express this any more clearly and I am not going to keep repeating myself. >A rival list's expanding confusion into new areas would not change >Usenet's basic nature. True, and neither would publication of a "What is Usenet" regular posting that expands confusion into new areas change Usenet's basic nature. The net is quite resilient. >Yup. And most of us, by your own admission, do *NOT* believe that >Gene's list is authoritative. Therefore, it isn't. QED. My "admission" is that the fiction of Usenet having no central authority is probably a consensus view and is not something that is being arbitrarily imposed on the net by Gene approving your essay. It still remains a fiction. The votes roll on, the results of voting continue to coincide with Gene's lists and continue to be widely adopted. If that system for creating newsgroups broke down, another even more democratic would replace it. THE VOTES ARE NOT JUST OPINION POLLS. -- Opinions disclaimed (Authoritative answer from opinion server) Header reply address wrong. Use cmf851@csc2.anu.edu.au From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3287 of news.admin: From: sef@kithrup.COM (Sean Eric Fagan) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 30 May 91 23:40:45 GMT Organization: Kithrup Enterprises, Ltd. According to webster: anarchy \'an-er-keE, -,aHr-\ n [ML anarchia, fr. Gk, fr. anarchos having no ruler, fr. an- + archos ruler -- more at ARCH-] (1539) 1a: absence of government b: a state of lawlessness or political disorder due to the absence of governmental authority c: a utopian society of individuals who enjoy complete freedom without government 2: absence of order: DISORDER 3: ANARCHISM government \'gev-er(n)-ment, -e-ment; 'geb-em-ent, 'gev-\ n, often attrib [ME governement, fr. MF, fr. governer] (14c) 6: the body of persons that constitutes the governing authority of a political unit or organization: as a: the officials comprising the governing body of a political unit and constituting the organization as an active agency b cap: the executive branch of the U.S. federal government c cap: a small group of persons holding simultaneously the principal political executive offices of a nation or other political unit and being responsible for the direction and supervision of public affairs: (1): such a group in a parlamentary system constituted by the cabinet or by the ministry democracy \di-'maHk-re-seE\ pl -cies [MF democratie, fr. LL democratia, fr. Gk deEmokratia, fr. deEmos + -kratia -cracy] (1576) 1a: government by the people; esp: rule of the majority b: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usu. involving periodically held free elections Ok. Now, if you read definition 1a of democracy, you see "rule of the majority." For those who have a hard time with English, this means that what the majority decides should be rules or laws are enforced. Whereas anarchy is "abscence of government," where "government" is defined, in part as "a small group of persons holding simultaneously the principal political executive offices of a nation or other political unit and being responsible for the direction and supervision of public affairs." Now, if you want to maintain that UseNet is a democracy, you have to show that its rules are enforced, and also who the "small group of persons ... responsible for the direction" are (and *where* they are, incidently). UseNet does have rules (although I'd be more likely to call them customs, but that's quibbling). When the rules are broken, sometimes people (random people, mind you) attempt to "punish" or "enforce" them. For example, consider John Palmer, who broke the "rule" that one must not post to a moderated group. Many, many people then flooded him with email, telling him he was a joyk and woyz. Lots of people debated on the net. Some predicted the imminent death of the net, but some people are always doing that. So, the net has rules. I'll grant you that. Note, though, that if enough people want to change the rules, they don't need to be a majority. All they need to do is carry a "new" net, such as alt (which has different "rules" for group creation than the "normal" net), biz (which discusses and promotes businesses and commercial interests, which are supposedly "illegal" on the "real" net), and clarinet (which is nothing but a commercial system which distributes its data in a manner similar to usenet). However: who is in control for the net? *Nobody*. Or *everybody*. Take your pick; both are valid. Each site is a world unto itself, and (generally) cooperates with its neighbors because it is easier on itself to do so, and it finds the articles it receives to be useful somehow. "Cooperation" does not imply "central organization." And "organized" (an adjective) does not imply "Organization" (a noun). -- Sean Eric Fagan | "I made the universe, but please don't blame me for it; sef@kithrup.COM | I had a bellyache at the time." -----------------+ -- The Turtle (Stephen King, _It_) Any opinions expressed are my own, and generally unpopular with others. From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3288 of news.admin: From: elg@elgamy.RAIDERNET.COM (Eric Lee Green) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 29 May 91 20:19:17 GMT Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home In article <122@ledgepc.uucp>, by wayne@ledgepc.uucp (Wayne Brown): > The question is, do the upstart serfs have any power to force the barons > to listen to their wishes? The extreme case would be one in which a sysadmin > decided to block his users from sending in votes at all. A more common > prcatice is to allow the voting, but ignore the results. In some places, That's when you set up your own USENET node. (See my "Organization:" line). You can even invent your own serfs then, if you really want the vote to go through :-). Personal computers are a very democratic development, don't you think? And now that you can get a 200mb hard drive for under $1K, it's not as if the technology isn't there... (You can do quite a USENET feed on 200mb!). -- Eric Lee Green elg@elgamy.RAIDERNET.COM uunet!mjbtn!raider!elgamy!elg "One problem with Bruce Springsteen is that you can't construct .signatures from his lyrics, unless you want a novel." From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3289 of news.admin: From: elg@elgamy.RAIDERNET.COM (Eric Lee Green) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 29 May 91 21:07:48 GMT Organization: Eric's Amiga 2000 @ Home In article <2842943B.4B56@tct.com>, by chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg): > Gene Spafford is neither authoritarian nor authoritative. Claims to > the contrary come entirely from people who imagine that Usenet has > some authority, and who desperately want *someone* on whom to pin it. Authority (n) 4. a. An accepted source of expert information or advice. (American Heritage Dictionary, 2nd College Edition). In that sense, Gene is certainly an authority. After all, doesn't everybody use his checkgroups message and list of newsgroups? Though he's definitely not an authority in the sense of definition 1b, "a person invested with the power to command, enforce laws, exact obedience, detirmine, or judge." (And yes, Gene, I had noticed that they hadn't appeared recently... I just assumed that somehow I'd missed them, given that my newsfeed isn't always reliable). Of course there ARE still sites that use the checkgroups message automagically... i.e., if Gene said that something is no longer a valid USENET newsgroup, they automatically yank it out of their active file and spool directory. That's about the limit of Usenet power... inertia. Most people really don't have much stake in it, and are willing to follow the advice of someone who's been around longer than them. > Usenet is the result of thousands of sites cooperating. Such > cooperation occurs, not by imposition, but by imitation. Each new > site gets its feed volunarily. It gets its software, its newsgroup > list and its policies from its feed and/or any other resources it can > find (such as the Nutshell handbook). And people also use Gene's newslist. For example, I just expanded my newsfeed to get some new groups (I doubled the size of my netnews partition). I used Gene's list as part of deciding which groups I wanted. Now, I won't get some of those groups, because my feed doesn't get a full feed himself, but still... that's power, of a sort. Though not in the sense of Authority! (Because there's definitely other sources that I use, such as the UUNET traffic flow summaries, which I used to make sure that I don't get some group that'll swamp me and my news partition clean out to sea). -- Eric Lee Green (318) 984-1820 P.O. Box 92191 Lafayette, LA 70509 elg@elgamy.RAIDERNET.COM uunet!mjbtn!raider!elgamy!elg Looking for a job... Unix/C... tips, leads appreciated. From whatis.usenet Spring 1991 Article 3295 of news.admin: From: chip@tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) Subject: Re: What is Usenet? Date: 30 May 91 15:39:36 GMT Organization: Teltronics/TCT, Sarasota, FL According to cmf851@anu.oz.au (Albert Langer): >My impression is that the "official" or "standard" USENET lists >are "merely advisory" to the administrators of each independent site. Agreed. (With the reservation that I consider the words "official" and "standard" inaccurate.) >All kinds of things are "merely advisory" without anybody being under >the illusion that the organizations producing them are anarchistic. Usenet is an anarchy because *everything* is only advisory. Newsgroup votes are only the most visible example of this fundamental truth. >My concern is that there is another possible interpretation of "merely >advisory" and that the "What is Usenet" essay obscures rather than >clarifies the issue. In my opinion, the "What