🚀 go-pugleaf

In us.config, joshua geller <dclxvi@best.com> writes:
> Jim Kingdon  <kingdon@panix7.panix.com> wrote:

>> Well, there seems to be a fair amount of turnover in "big netnews
>> persons", so if you are expecting Gene Spafford, well, many people have
>> changed since then (and usenet is getting administratively bigger, with
>> uk.*, us.*, can.*, and any number of other hierarchies which have been
>> growing).

> Spaf is still around, you know.

I think spaf has decided that he has better things to do with his time
than argue about Usenet government models, though.  And more power to him.
He put up with enough for any one lifetime.

> So is Richard Sexton.

Yes, but there isn't any us.aquaria, so it's safe to assume that he's not
around here at the moment.  :)

> She makes a lot of rules for other people. She seems to be the type of
> person who enjoys doing such things.  In other words, she is absolutely
> not a person who should be responsible for shaping the structure of
> hierarchical netnews.

Except that she was willing to try in a situation where everyone else
threw up their hands and said "oh well" or "I don't have enough time."
She therefore has the only qualification that's *ever* really mattered in
deciding who shapes hierarchical namespace, the same qualification that
spaf had when he started, namely the willingness to invest time and effort
in making consistent recommendations to other people.

The growing tendency towards rules rather than guidelines and assumptions
that people will be rational and use common sense is a systematic disease,
I'm afraid, not specific to any particular section of Usenet.

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)         <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>