Ansc.114
net.news
utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!nsc!bill
Tue Dec 29 17:33:23 1981
USENET solutions by committee
Dream on!
Committee's don't solve problems, the best that can be said for them
is that they may propose and/or organize possible solutions.
The most difficult problems with USENET I believe are political --
and the world has struggled with them long before the advent of
computers. What was it Heinlein said , "easier to teach sex to a virgin"?
People solve problems, and they do it in various ways:
1) Accept someone else's decision (bandwagonism?)
2) Make thier own solution (sometimes bullheaded..)
3) Ignore the problem and hope it goes away.
Having lost much of my idealism along with other things at an earlier time,
I find myself accepting #3 frequently. Many pol. problems don't seem
easily solvable, like tayloring network content before the Ultimate Censor
(the reader) reads it. Or questions of distribution for that matter.
Votes, for that matter, don't guarentee fair treatment as the consistancy
of the netnews audiance changes too rapidly for any significance to be
maintained.
Finally, efforts to overcome broad and possibly pointless problems might
be better spent on the techinical problems we do have a chance to deal with.
Let's flush the content-oreinted discussion for the moment, and leave that
as it has been, as it probably will stay, as an individual<->individual
thing, and quit trying to decide on a policeman.
Bill Jolitz. (ucbvax!william)
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