🚀 go-pugleaf

David Kristofferson <kristoff@net.bio.net> wrote >>>
Kent Landfield <kent@sparky.sterling.com> wrote >


>>> (1) this person has absolutely no administrative authority to be
>>>     making any statements about the bionet USENET hierarchy.

> The post I read did sound quite official. ...

Since when does a factual statement equal an official one?
Since when does anyone need permission from an authority
before making statements of fact about policies in use in
any Usenet hierarchy?

> ... All of a sudden people seem to feel that specific-purpose
> hierarchy policies must be approved by the net at large.

Not so.  The policy change was approved within the hierarchy.
David Kristofferson claims that I had no authority to reveal
the policy in this newsgroup.  Does he have the authority to
*conceal* the policy from this newsgroup, or to dictate what
I may or may not say?  I don't think so.


> I would guess that many USENET sites that propagate the hierarchy
> have no idea of the actual content or policies ...

Why discourage or prevent those administrators who *do* care
from finding out about a relevant policy change?


>When I drop a hierarchy that I have been carrying, I notify the
>sites that receive it and attempt to get them a feed from some
>other location.

Just so.  I mentioned that the bionet.prof-society.* newsgroups
all have mailing lists attached.  Dave Mack, the current Usenet
administrator on net.bio.net, has added that he is willing to
provide NNTP feeds to sites that are not able to get bionet.* 
as part of their primary feeds.  Greater awareness of these two
alternatives should more than compensate for any decrease in
propagation due to the new no-vote policy in this hierarchy.

Speaking for myself,

-- 
	Una Smith			smith-una@yale.edu

Department of Biology, Yale University, New Haven, CT  06520-8104  USA