From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: A.D CHANGE: Upcoming Changes to alt.discuss Voting Procedures
Date: 21 Nov 1999 15:25:02 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
This is the first of a series of articles describing changes to
the alt.discuss newsgroup creation/deletion mechanisms.
Some of the changes are definitely going to happen. Such changes
will be labelled "MANDATORY CHANGE" in these articles. Most of the
changes are tentative and still subject to modification. These changes
will be labelled "PROPOSED CHANGE". Discussion of the proposed
changes in news:alt.discuss.config will determine whether or not
the proposed changes are implemented and what the details of the
changes are. Each area in which changes are proposed (newsgroup
proposal, voting, newsgroup deletion, etc.) will be described in
a separate article to encourage discussion in separate threads.
Look for subject lines beginning with "A.D CHANGE" in alt.discuss and
alt.discuss.config.
MANDATORY CHANGE:
The biggest change will be the elimination of the email-based
voting system. It will be replaced with a web site featuring
a collection of CGI-based pages for newsgroup creation proposal,
voting, and newsgroup deletion proposal. This web site will be
the ONLY way to propose or vote for a new newsgroup. No more
voting buttons. (Well, you can still make voting buttons that
link to the voting site, but they won't cast votes directly.)
This change should eliminate voting fraud. Also, it will provide
immediate feedback about your proposal or vote. You will not have to
wonder whether or not a 'bot got your email - you will see the results
instantly. The voting statistics will be up-to-the-minute.
The new voting site, but perhaps not all of the features, will be
operational before the beginning of December. Some details of the
rules may change after the site has been launched - it's unlikely
that such changes will have any impact on ongoing votes.
The new voting site will be opened for beta testing in the next
few days. During the beta test period, it will accept newsgroup
proposals and votes for those proposals, but THESE PROPOSALS WILL
HAVE NO EFFECT. To actually propose a new alt.discuss group, you
will still need to use the email-based system. When the new voting
site goes live, an article announcing that fact will be posted to
alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config. Shortly afterwards, email to
advotes@vote.munitions.com will start bouncing.
The transition from the e-mail based system to the web site system
may involve a period of several hours during which no votes can be
cast or new newgroups proposed.
Vote status information, newsgroup proposals, and other informative
posts will still be posted to alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config.
These posts will contain links to the voting site.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: A.D CHANGE: semi-moderated, members-only newsgroups
Date: 21 Nov 1999 19:15:31 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
A mechanism will be installed to allow the creation of alt.discuss
newsgroups which have a restricted membership. We will refer to
such newsgroups as "clubs", in the sense of a members-only nightclub.
While these groups will be technically moderated, the moderator will
be a 'bot which will allow all articles from club members to be posted,
and articles from non-members will not be posted. Note that *everyone*
can read the articles in the "club". All "club" newsgroups will be
created in the alt.discuss.club hierarchy, and all groups in that
hierarchy will be club newsgroups
Each club will have an owner, after whom the club will be named
(alt.discuss.club.account-name, i.e., in my case
alt.discuss.club.nobody). The owner of the club decides
who the members are. The owner may add members and remove members.
The owner CANNOT prevent articles from members from being posted,
nor can the owner cancel articles from members which have already
been posted. The ONLY POWER an owner has is the ability to add and
remove members from the club roster.
Obviously, the idea here is to create newsgroups where trolling and
flames can be prevented. Equally obviously, this mechanism can be
abused. In particular, the members of a club can defame a non-member
and that non-member will be unable to present a defense or rebuttal
in the same forum. NOTE that the TOS agreement applies to club newsgroups
to the same extent that it does to all other alt.discuss newsgroups.
You should not expect either more or less TOS enforcement in the
club newsgroups. Need I say more?
Initially, no vote will be required to create a club newsgroup. If
you want one, you would request it through a to-be-created page on
the munitions voting site and instructions on the procedures involved
would be sent to you. These procedures will involve sending email
to an address at munitions, since it is necessary to get a verified
username for use as the club name. If people begin creating nicknames,
using them to create clubs, and cancelling the nicknames repeatedly,
a mechanism may be added to limit the number of clubs that can originate
from any particular box.
I expect that many users will decide that they want their own club,
and that many of these clubs will end up unused after a short time.
Therefore, club newsgroups can be deleted under certain circumstances:
1. If the club owner cancels the account for which the group is named
(or if the account is cancelled by WNI), the club will be deleted
within two weeks (the grace period is intended to give the club members time
to decide what to do about the impending loss of their club.)
2. If no one but the club owner posts any articles in the club newsgroup
for fourteen consecutive days, the group will be deleted. There will
be a 30 day grace period immediately after the club is created to give
the owner time to build up his membership roster.
3. If a user manages to acquire a username which is "patently offensive"
and creates a club under that name, the club will be deleted without
notice. Whether or not a name is "patently offensive" will be
determined by "Nobody@munitions", whose decisions on the matter will
be final.
4. If the club concept is abused too often, a mechanism may be created
to allow a vote-based deletion of clubs. Alternatively, the system
may be changed to require that some sort of vote be held to allow
creation of a club.
If a club is deleted for any reason, no club with that name will be
allowed to exist for the 180 days following the deletion. (If the
club is deleted because the name is "patently offensive", it will
never be created again.)
This change to the alt.discuss structure still has some technical hurdles
to overcome. Unless the consensus opinion is that this would be a good
idea, there is no point in expending the time and energy needed to make
this work. If enough people like this idea, we will try to have it
operational early next year. It is possible, although very unlikely,
that some technical snag may show up which makes this concept unworkable.
MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS:
Some alt.discuss participants who have heard this proposal have
suggested that only the members should be able to read the club
articles. There is no good way to restrict the readership of a
newsgroup. People who want to hold private discussions should
create mailing lists for that purpose.
What happens to articles from non-members when they attempt to post
to a club? The owner should be able to specify whether articles from
non-members should be emailed to the owner for inspection or discarded.
The default would probably be to discard them, since having them emailed
to the owner might deluge the owner's mailbox.
Why not just create moderated groups? As it stands now, it doesn't
work very well to have WebTV subscribers moderate newsgroups. If the
group is really successful, the moderator's mailbox will fill up
quickly and articles will be lost due to "full mailbox" bounces.
If it's not successful, what's the point in having it?
Also, setting up the moderation email aliases and scripts is quite
time-consuming. However, we will continue to investigate ways in
which having moderated alt.discuss groups might be made feasible.
If this club idea is implemented, the necessary pages will be added to
the munitions voting site to provide readers with the information they
need to start a club.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: A.D CHANGE: Proposed Newsgroup Deletion
Date: 21 Nov 1999 19:15:43 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
It will be possible to propose the deletion of an existing alt.discuss
newsgroup. Only one newsgroup deletion proposal will be accepted from
any one WebTV unit during a 365 day period. A newsgroup deletion proposal,
once made, cannot be cancelled by its proposer. The proposer must provide
a reason for proposing deletion of the group, which will be published
with the deletion vote announcement.
An alt.discuss group must have been in existence for 30 days before its
deletion can be proposed. Certain groups (alt.discuss and
alt.discuss.config, and moderated/club groups) cannot be proposed for
deletion.
The proposed newsgroup deletion will be announced in alt.discuss,
alt.discuss.config and in the group targetted for deletion. An
article containing the current vote statistics for the deletion
will be posted each day in those three newsgroups.
The vote for deletion of an existing group will go on for 30 days. Any
alt.discuss reader can vote IN FAVOR of deleting the newsgroup (still
one vote per box). It will be possible to cancel a vote after it has
been cast.
A vote AGAINST deletion of the group must come from a box which also
posted an article to the group in question in the 30-day period BEFORE
deletion of the group was proposed. (A list of posters to the group
proposed for deletion will be built when the deletion proposal is
created and before announcement of the deletion proposal is sent
out.)
If 10 (TEN) legitimate votes (i.e., votes from boxes that posted
articles to the newsgroup in question in the 30 days before the
deletion of the group was proposed) are cast AGAINST deletion,
the vote is cancelled immediately and deletion of this group
cannot be proposed again by anyone for the next 180 days following
the vote cancellation.
If, at the end of the 30-day voting period, there are 150 or more votes
favoring deletion and less than 10 legitimate votes against
deletion, the newsgroup will be deleted.
If, at the end of the 30-day voting period, there are less than
150 votes favoring deletion, the newsgroup will not be deleted,
and no one can propose deletion of that newsgroup again for 180
days following the date of the end of the voting period.
More simply, if 10 users (on separate boxes) who actually use a
group like it enough to vote against deletion, the group can't be
deleted. If a group isn't being used by 10 people, 150 alt.discuss
readers can get together and get rid of it.
NOTE: because of the complexity of some aspects of this proposed
change, it would probably not become operational until early in
Jan. 2000.
Why allow the deletion of a newsgroup this way? To give the
readership of the alt.discuss newsgroups as much control as
possible over the hierarchy. Until now, it has been possible
for a.d readers to create newsgroups through a democratic
process, but removal of a newsgroup has been effectively
impossible (a single user can prevent the removal of any
alt.discuss group via the automated removal mechanism.) I
believe that the system proposed here is fair to small groups
of readers with narrow interests, but will still permit the
removal of groups which are basically dead.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: A.D CHANGE: Automatic newsgroup deletion
Date: 21 Nov 1999 19:15:57 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
Currently, a newsgroup which has been *empty* for 30 consecutive
days is automatically deleted. Since articles in alt.discuss don't
expire for 30 days, this means that 60 days have to go by without
any new articles being posted to a newsgroup before automatic
deletion kicks in. This mechanism has proven nearly useless in
removing dead groups, thanks to "dime-droppers". The new system
will automatically delete any group which has had no *new* articles
posted to it in the previous 14 days.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: A.D CHANGE: Cancelling a Proposal
Followup-To: alt.discuss.config
Date: 21 Nov 1999 19:16:11 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
Lines: 20
Approved: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Message-ID: <81achr$ivo$1@newssorter-101.private.bryant.webtv.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: newssorter-101.bryant.webtv.net
PROPOSED CHANGE:
When the proposer cancels the vote for a proposed newsgroup,
no one (including the original proposer) can propose a group
with that name for the next 180 days.
Currently, when a newsgroup is proposed and the vote for it
fails, no one can re-propose that same group for 180 days
after the vote fails. Under the current system, a proposer
on the verge of having his proposal lose could cancel the
vote in order to drum up support and then re-propose it.
This change would prevent that.
MANDATORY CHANGE:
Currently, proposal cancellation has to come from the same account (user)
that proposed it. Under the new system, any account on the same box
will be able to cancel a proposal.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
When a newsgroup proposal is cancelled, notification of the
cancellation will be posted in alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: A.D CHANGE: Voting
Date: 21 Nov 1999 19:16:05 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
The voting period for a newsgroup creation proposal will be reduced
to 30 days. With very few exceptions, groups that don't pass in the
first 30 days after their proposal don't pass at all.
MANDATORY CHANGE:
Under the current system, each box has one vote for and one vote
against a proposal. Casting a vote each way has the same effect as
not voting at all. Under the new system, it will still be one vote
per box, but any account on a box will be able to cancel the previous
vote from that same box, then (if desired) cast a new vote. In other
words, you can now actually change your mind about which way to vote.
You can cancel and re-vote at any time until the vote passes or fails.
(The new voting page on munitions will present you with voting
buttons for proposals you haven't yet voted on, but it will present you with
a "Cancel Vote?" button for the proposals you already have voted on.)
PROPOSED CHANGE:
As currently implemented, the new system does not limit the number
of times a box can cancel its vote for a proposal. It is possible
to impose a limit on the number of times a vote can be cancelled
by each box. This limit has not been implemented.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: A.D CHANGE - Proposing a new newsgroup
Date: 21 Nov 1999 19:16:30 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
Proposals for new alt.discuss newsgroups must be made through
the new web site.
The current newsgroup naming rules will not change.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
A proposal that calls for the creation of a new alt.discuss
top-level name (i.e., alt.discuss.topic or alt.discuss.topic.subtopic,
where no newsgroup containing alt.discuss.topic in its name already
exists) will require 100 more votes for than against. Note that this
doesn't mean that a newsgroup named alt.discuss.topic has to exist
exists in order to create a newsgroup named alt.discuss.topic.subtopic.
When you propose a new newsgroup, the voting system will tell you if
you are trying to create a new top-level name and how many more for
votes will be required to pass it.
This change in the voting rules creates a weird possibility. If there
are votes going on for two (or more) newsgroups at once, all of which
fall under the same new top-level name, passage of one (and thus creation
of the new top-level name) could result in automatic passage of the
other. For example, If votes are going on simultaneously for
alt.discuss.happy.birthday and alt.discuss.happy.camper, and
a.d.happy.birthday passes with the 100 excess for votes, while
a.d.happy.camper has 50 more for than against votes, both groups
would pass.
New newsgroups which don't create a new top-level name will continue
to require 50 more votes for than against.
MANDATORY CHANGE:
A newsgroup proposal *must* be accompanied by a charter. The newsgroup
proposal form on the new web site will provide space for entry of a charter
and a "tagline" (a one-line description of the newsgroup which will
be included in the newsgroup listings.) Failure to fill in the charter
space will result in the proposal being rejected (until you do fill
in the charter, that is.)
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: Modified A.D CHANGE: Proposed Newsgroup Deletion (Modified Nov. 24 1999)
Followup-To: alt.discuss.config
Date: 24 Nov 1999 15:19:12 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
Modification to proposed change: The number of NO votes required to
prevent a group from being deleted has been dropped from 10 to 5.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
It will be possible to propose the deletion of an existing alt.discuss
newsgroup. Only one newsgroup deletion proposal will be accepted from
any one WebTV unit during a 365 day period. A newsgroup deletion proposal,
once made, cannot be cancelled by its proposer. The proposer must provide
a reason for proposing deletion of the group, which will be published
with the deletion vote announcement.
An alt.discuss group must have been in existence for 30 days before its
deletion can be proposed. Certain groups (alt.discuss and
alt.discuss.config, and moderated/club groups) cannot be proposed for
deletion.
The proposed newsgroup deletion will be announced in alt.discuss,
alt.discuss.config and in the group targetted for deletion. An
article containing the current vote statistics for the deletion
will be posted each day in those three newsgroups.
The vote for deletion of an existing group will go on for 30 days. Any
alt.discuss reader can vote IN FAVOR of deleting the newsgroup (still
one vote per box). It will be possible to cancel a vote after it has
been cast.
A vote AGAINST deletion of the group must come from a box which also
posted an article to the group in question in the 30-day period BEFORE
deletion of the group was proposed. (A list of posters to the group
proposed for deletion will be built when the deletion proposal is
created and before announcement of the deletion proposal is sent
out.)
If 5 (FIVE) legitimate votes (i.e., votes from boxes that posted
articles to the newsgroup in question in the 30 days before the
deletion of the group was proposed) are cast AGAINST deletion,
the vote is cancelled immediately and deletion of this group
cannot be proposed again by anyone for the next 180 days following
the vote cancellation.
If, at the end of the 30-day voting period, there are 150 or more votes
favoring deletion and less than 5 legitimate votes against
deletion, the newsgroup will be deleted.
If, at the end of the 30-day voting period, there are less than
150 votes favoring deletion, the newsgroup will not be deleted,
and no one can propose deletion of that newsgroup again for 180
days following the date of the end of the voting period.
More simply, if 5 users (on separate boxes) who actually use a
group like it enough to vote against deletion, the group can't be
deleted. If a group isn't being used by 5 people, 150 alt.discuss
readers can get together and get rid of it.
NOTE: because of the complexity of some aspects of this proposed
change, it would probably not become operational until early in
Jan. 2000.
Why allow the deletion of a newsgroup this way? To give the
readership of the alt.discuss newsgroups as much control as
possible over the hierarchy. Until now, it has been possible
for a.d readers to create newsgroups through a democratic
process, but removal of a newsgroup has been effectively
impossible (a single user can prevent the removal of any
alt.discuss group via the automated removal mechanism.) I
believe that the system proposed here is fair to small groups
of readers with narrow interests, but will still permit the
removal of groups which are basically dead.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: WITHDRAWN A.D CHANGE: Proposed Newsgroup Deletion
Followup-To: alt.discuss.config
Date: 7 Dec 1999 10:56:18 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
THIS PROPOSAL HAS BEEN WITHDRAWN
It appears that the addition of a proposal-based newsgroup deletion
mechanism would be highly disruptive and perhaps ineffective.
I may propose this or some other vote-based deletion mechanism
in the future if it appears that this capability is needed.
========================================================================
Modification to proposed change: The number of NO votes required to
prevent a group from being deleted has been dropped from 10 to 5.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
It will be possible to propose the deletion of an existing alt.discuss
newsgroup. Only one newsgroup deletion proposal will be accepted from
any one WebTV unit during a 365 day period. A newsgroup deletion proposal,
once made, cannot be cancelled by its proposer. The proposer must provide
a reason for proposing deletion of the group, which will be published
with the deletion vote announcement.
An alt.discuss group must have been in existence for 30 days before its
deletion can be proposed. Certain groups (alt.discuss and
alt.discuss.config, and moderated/club groups) cannot be proposed for
deletion.
The proposed newsgroup deletion will be announced in alt.discuss,
alt.discuss.config and in the group targetted for deletion. An
article containing the current vote statistics for the deletion
will be posted each day in those three newsgroups.
The vote for deletion of an existing group will go on for 30 days. Any
alt.discuss reader can vote IN FAVOR of deleting the newsgroup (still
one vote per box). It will be possible to cancel a vote after it has
been cast.
A vote AGAINST deletion of the group must come from a box which also
posted an article to the group in question in the 30-day period BEFORE
deletion of the group was proposed. (A list of posters to the group
proposed for deletion will be built when the deletion proposal is
created and before announcement of the deletion proposal is sent
out.)
If 5 (FIVE) legitimate votes (i.e., votes from boxes that posted
articles to the newsgroup in question in the 30 days before the
deletion of the group was proposed) are cast AGAINST deletion,
the vote is cancelled immediately and deletion of this group
cannot be proposed again by anyone for the next 180 days following
the vote cancellation.
If, at the end of the 30-day voting period, there are 150 or more votes
favoring deletion and less than 5 legitimate votes against
deletion, the newsgroup will be deleted.
If, at the end of the 30-day voting period, there are less than
150 votes favoring deletion, the newsgroup will not be deleted,
and no one can propose deletion of that newsgroup again for 180
days following the date of the end of the voting period.
More simply, if 5 users (on separate boxes) who actually use a
group like it enough to vote against deletion, the group can't be
deleted. If a group isn't being used by 5 people, 150 alt.discuss
readers can get together and get rid of it.
NOTE: because of the complexity of some aspects of this proposed
change, it would probably not become operational until early in
Jan. 2000.
Why allow the deletion of a newsgroup this way? To give the
readership of the alt.discuss newsgroups as much control as
possible over the hierarchy. Until now, it has been possible
for a.d readers to create newsgroups through a democratic
process, but removal of a newsgroup has been effectively
impossible (a single user can prevent the removal of any
alt.discuss group via the automated removal mechanism.) I
believe that the system proposed here is fair to small groups
of readers with narrow interests, but will still permit the
removal of groups which are basically dead.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: A.D CHANGE - Mandatory Newsgroup Preproposal
Followup-To: alt.discuss.config
Date: 12 Jan 2000 17:56:50 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
When a group is proposed at the the new voting site, it will go
through a mandatory 7-day preproposal period.
When the proposal is created, the proposal (including charter)
will be posted to alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config for discussion.
The Subject line will begin with "Preproposal:".
During these 7 days, the proposal can be cancelled without
penalty (there will be no ban on a future newsgroup proposal of
the same name and the user will not be barred from proposing another
group after cancellation.)
During the preproposal period, the charter can be revised up to 3 times.
Each charter revision will be posted to alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config.
The proposal cannot be voted on during the preproposal period.
No WebTV unit can have more than one proposal in the system at a
time, whether it's a preproposal or an actual proposal.
At the end of the 7-day preproposal period, any newsgroup proposal that
has not been cancelled will be automatically elevated to a real
proposal. Once this happens, the proposal can be voted on, but it
cannot be cancelled and the charter cannot be revised. The current
voting rules will apply to the proposal. The proposal containing the
final form of the charter will be posted to alt.discuss and
alt.discuss.config. These events will most likely occur as part
of the routine 1 AM PST vote tally run.
Once a preproposal becomes a proposal, no new proposal will be accepted
from the proposer's WebTV unit (or the same account if moved to another
unit) for the following 30 days.
If the vote on the proposed newsgroup fails, no one will be allowed to
to propose a newsgroup with that name during the following 180 days.
Using the voting system as a toy will result in the abuser being
permanently banned from use of the voting system. This includes
frivolously creating proposals as a means of anonymously attacking
other alt.discuss readers.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: Modified A.D CHANGE: club newsgroups
Followup-To: alt.discuss.config
Date: 12 Jan 2000 19:40:20 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
Proposed Modifications:
1. Club names: clubs will still be named after the user who "owns"
the club, but the alt.discuss membership will be able to propose
and vote on the hierarchy structure beneath "alt.discuss.club".
For example, if someone proposes that the hierarchy contain
"alt.discuss.club.singles" and a sufficient number of alt.discuss
users vote in favor of it, an alt.discuss user named "userdude1"
could request a club named "alt.discuss.club.singles.userdude1".
Please note that the voting process does not control the creation
of clubs, only of the names clubs can have. The detailed voting
rules have not yet been determined. One possibility would be to
allow the club owner to propose any name for the club location (the
club would still end in the user's username), and requiring a vote
to create it if the location doesn't exist. Sort of like voting on
a zoning ordinance change. The alternative would be to have a separate
proposal mechanism of the same kind we have now for alt.discuss
newsgroups - someone would have to propose a club hierarchy name
and it would have to pass a vote before a user could request a
club with that location. Suggestions regarding the details of the
voting rules are welcome.
2. Each club, when created, will have both a charter and a "tagline".
The tagline will be a one-line description of what the club is about.
The tagline will be displayed beneath the name of the club in the
"path" display of WebTV discussion groups. This seems necessary
since users will not always be able to get a username that reflects
what they want to use the club for. The tagline provides each club
owner with a one-line advertisement for his club. A list of all the
clubs and their charters will be available on munitions.com.
3. When a user creates a club, they will be able to choose whether
the club will be "open" or "closed". A "closed" club has a membership
roster and only the members on the roster are allowed to post to
the group. The owner can add and remove users from the roster. An
"open" club allows everyone in unless they are on the owner's ban list.
The owner can ban either a single username or all users on the box
associated with a username. The owner can also remove a ban from the
list. The owner will be able to change which type of access control
the club has twice (open-to-closed-to-open or closed-to-open-to-closed).
4. A mechanism *may* be added to allow a club owner to rename his
club. This basically means that the "location" would change -
the club name would still end in the owner's username. The number of
times a club could be renamed would probably be limited.
5. Depending on the burden that the club newsgroups impose on the
servers involved, there may be a limit imposed on the number of clubs
that can exist. If this becomes necessary, some sort of club request
list would be created so people who want a club can get in line for
one. When an existing club is deleted, the first person in line would be
given the opportunity to create a club.
A revised version of the change proposal below will be created once
I have absorbed any discussion resulting from these proposed changes.
Depending on the feedback I receive on this, I would expect the
club idea to be ready for beta testing by March, 2000.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
A mechanism will be installed to allow the creation of alt.discuss
newsgroups which have a restricted membership. We will refer to
such newsgroups as "clubs", in the sense of a members-only nightclub.
While these groups will be technically moderated, the moderator will
be a 'bot which will allow all articles from club members to be posted,
and articles from non-members will not be posted. Note that *everyone*
can read the articles in the "club". All "club" newsgroups will be
created in the alt.discuss.club hierarchy, and all groups in that
hierarchy will be club newsgroups
Each club will have an owner, after whom the club will be named
(alt.discuss.club.account-name, i.e., in my case
alt.discuss.club.nobody). The owner of the club decides
who the members are. The owner may add members and remove members.
The owner CANNOT prevent articles from members from being posted,
nor can the owner cancel articles from members which have already
been posted. The ONLY POWER an owner has is the ability to add and
remove members from the club roster.
Obviously, the idea here is to create newsgroups where trolling and
flames can be prevented. Equally obviously, this mechanism can be
abused. In particular, the members of a club can defame a non-member
and that non-member will be unable to present a defense or rebuttal
in the same forum. NOTE that the TOS agreement applies to club newsgroups
to the same extent that it does to all other alt.discuss newsgroups.
You should not expect either more or less TOS enforcement in the
club newsgroups. Need I say more?
Initially, no vote will be required to create a club newsgroup. If
you want one, you would request it through a to-be-created page on
the munitions voting site and instructions on the procedures involved
would be sent to you. These procedures will involve sending email
to an address at munitions, since it is necessary to get a verified
username for use as the club name. If people begin creating nicknames,
using them to create clubs, and cancelling the nicknames repeatedly,
a mechanism may be added to limit the number of clubs that can originate
from any particular box.
I expect that many users will decide that they want their own club,
and that many of these clubs will end up unused after a short time.
Therefore, club newsgroups can be deleted under certain circumstances:
1. If the club owner cancels the account for which the group is named
(or if the account is cancelled by WNI), the club will be deleted
within two weeks (the grace period is intended to give the club members time
to decide what to do about the impending loss of their club.)
2. If no one but the club owner posts any articles in the club newsgroup
for fourteen consecutive days, the group will be deleted. There will
be a 30 day grace period immediately after the club is created to give
the owner time to build up his membership roster.
3. If a user manages to acquire a username which is "patently offensive"
and creates a club under that name, the club will be deleted without
notice. Whether or not a name is "patently offensive" will be
determined by "Nobody@munitions", whose decisions on the matter will
be final.
4. If the club concept is abused too often, a mechanism may be created
to allow a vote-based deletion of clubs. Alternatively, the system
may be changed to require that some sort of vote be held to allow
creation of a club.
If a club is deleted for any reason, no club with that name will be
allowed to exist for the 180 days following the deletion. (If the
club is deleted because the name is "patently offensive", it will
never be created again.)
This change to the alt.discuss structure still has some technical hurdles
to overcome. Unless the consensus opinion is that this would be a good
idea, there is no point in expending the time and energy needed to make
this work. If enough people like this idea, we will try to have it
operational early next year. It is possible, although very unlikely,
that some technical snag may show up which makes this concept unworkable.
MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS:
Some alt.discuss participants who have heard this proposal have
suggested that only the members should be able to read the club
articles. There is no good way to restrict the readership of a
newsgroup. People who want to hold private discussions should
create mailing lists for that purpose.
What happens to articles from non-members when they attempt to post
to a club? The owner should be able to specify whether articles from
non-members should be emailed to the owner for inspection or discarded.
The default would probably be to discard them, since having them emailed
to the owner might deluge the owner's mailbox.
Why not just create moderated groups? As it stands now, it doesn't
work very well to have WebTV subscribers moderate newsgroups. If the
group is really successful, the moderator's mailbox will fill up
quickly and articles will be lost due to "full mailbox" bounces.
If it's not successful, what's the point in having it?
Also, setting up the moderation email aliases and scripts is quite
time-consuming. However, we will continue to investigate ways in
which having moderated alt.discuss groups might be made feasible.
If this club idea is implemented, the necessary pages will be added to
the munitions voting site to provide readers with the information they
need to start a club.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: Modified A.D CHANGE - Automatic Newsgroup Preproposal (modified 14
Jan 2000)
Followup-To: alt.discuss.config
Date: 15 Jan 2000 00:23:10 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
Proposed Modifications:
1. The proposal can be cancelled at any time during preproposal OR
during the vote. As before, the charter can only be modified during
the preproposal period and only 3 times.
REASON: the advice given during preproposal may be ignored until the
proposer sees "no" votes flowing in, or the advice given during preproposal
may not be an accurate reflection of the will of the voters.
2. When a user cancels a proposal, no account on that user's WebTV unit
will be able to propose a newsgroup with THAT NAME again for the next
180 days.
REASON: to prevent users from cancelling an ongoing vote and then
reproposing the same group to "erase the no votes".
3. The 180-day ban on re-proposal of a newsgroup name will be dropped.
Anyone who has not proposed a group in the previous 180-days could
propose it. For example, if someone proposed and then cancelled
alt.discuss.state.hawaii, anyone but the accounts on that proposer's
system would be able to propose alt.discuss.state.hawaii.
REASON: to prevent users from maliciously using the proposal cancellation
mechanism to deprive sincere proposers of a newsgroup name.
4. The 180-day lockout on a newsgroup name after a failed vote will be
dropped in favor of a rule preventing THE SAME USER who proposed the
failed group from proposing THE SAME GROUP again for 180 days. Anyone
else would be able to propose it immediately.
REASON: Same as #3 - currently a user can propose a newsgroup with
a reasonable name and an insane charter, and let it fail its vote because
of the charter, thus locking up the name for the voting period plus the
lockout period.
5. Changed "mandatory" to "automatic" to reflect the fact that the
preproposal part of the modified process will happen, uh, automatically,
and that no additional action is required on the part of the proposer.
PROPOSED CHANGE (modified 14 Jan 2000):
When a group is proposed at the new voting site, it will go
through an automatic 7-day preproposal period. This would add
7 days to the voting period, meaning that it would take a minimum
of 14 days to create a new alt.discuss newsgroup, and the vote
could go on for a total of 37 days.
When the proposal is created, the proposal (including charter)
will be posted to alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config for discussion.
The Subject line will begin with "Preproposal:".
The proposal can be cancelled during either the preproposal
period or at any time during the voting period. Once a vote is
cancelled, a group with the exact same name cannot be proposed by
the previous proposer (any account on that WebTV unit) for the following
180 days.
During the preproposal period, the charter can be revised up to 3 times.
Each charter revision will be posted to alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config.
The proposal cannot be voted on during the preproposal period.
No WebTV unit can have more than one proposal in the system at a
time.
At the end of the 7-day preproposal period, any newsgroup proposal that
has not been cancelled will be automatically elevated to a real
proposal. Once this happens, the proposal can be voted on and can still
be cancelled, but the charter cannot be revised. The current voting
rules will apply to the proposal. The proposal containing the final
form of the charter will be posted to alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config.
These events will most likely occur as part of the routine 1 AM PST vote
tally run.
If the vote on the proposed newsgroup fails, the proposer (or any account
on that WebTV unit) will not be allowed to propose a newsgroup with that
same name during the following 180 days.
Using the voting system as a toy will result in the abuser being
permanently banned from use of the voting system. This includes
frivolously creating proposals as a means of anonymously attacking
other alt.discuss readers.
From: nobody@vote.munitions.com
Newsgroups: alt.discuss,alt.discuss.config
Subject: Modified A.D CHANGE: club newsgroups (modified 18 Jan 2000)
Followup-To: alt.discuss.config
Date: 19 Jan 2000 12:43:07 -0800
Organization: WebTV Networks, Inc.
Addendum (18 Jan 2000)
1. The consensus of opinion in alt.discuss.config appears to be that
another voting procedure in alt.discuss would be a bad thing.
Therefore, I will drop that proposed modification and instead
simply provide a list of topics which people can select for
their club. Since the demands of my job are making it difficult
for me to keep track of the discussion in a.d.config, I have asked
some of the beta testers who helped debug the new voting site to
get this process rolling and to gather the elements for this
topic list based on the discussion in a.d.config.
2. It has been pointed out that having a mixture of topical
hierarchy names and actual clubs at the top level of the club
hierarchy will be confusing and make it difficult to find the
topical clubs. Therefore, there will have to be a "misc" topic
for clubs that aren't placed under any other topic. ("misc" is
open to debate. Please suggest a better name if one occurs to you.)
3. I believe that we need to segregate the open clubs from the
closed clubs; otherwise users will attempt to post to a club and
have no way of knowing whether or not their article will show up.
Therefore, I suggest modifying the hierarchy to be
alt.discuss.clubs.open.topic.username
alt.discuss.clubs.closed.topic.username
I realize that this significantly lengthens the newsgroup name,
but I think it's important for the name to indicate whether the
club is open or closed.
Given this structure, I think making the top level "clubs" instead
of "club" makes sense.
4. We are still on track to begin beta testing the club system
by March.
The earlier modification proposals are included here for reference
and have NOT been modified to reflect the changes specified above.
Once these issues have been discussed and final decisions made, I
will post a final version of the proposed modifications.
Previous version:
Proposed Modifications:
1. Club names: clubs will still be named after the user who "owns"
the club, but the alt.discuss membership will be able to propose
and vote on the hierarchy structure beneath "alt.discuss.club".
For example, if someone proposes that the hierarchy contain
"alt.discuss.club.singles" and a sufficient number of alt.discuss
users vote in favor of it, an alt.discuss user named "userdude1"
could request a club named "alt.discuss.club.singles.userdude1".
Please note that the voting process does not control the creation
of clubs, only of the names clubs can have. The detailed voting
rules have not yet been determined. One possibility would be to
allow the club owner to propose any name for the club location (the
club would still end in the user's username), and requiring a vote
to create it if the location doesn't exist. Sort of like voting on
a zoning ordinance change. The alternative would be to have a separate
proposal mechanism of the same kind we have now for alt.discuss
newsgroups - someone would have to propose a club hierarchy name
and it would have to pass a vote before a user could request a
club with that location. Suggestions regarding the details of the
voting rules are welcome.
2. Each club, when created, will have both a charter and a "tagline".
The tagline will be a one-line description of what the club is about.
The tagline will be displayed beneath the name of the club in the
"path" display of WebTV discussion groups. This seems necessary
since users will not always be able to get a username that reflects
what they want to use the club for. The tagline provides each club
owner with a one-line advertisement for his club. A list of all the
clubs and their charters will be available on munitions.com.
3. When a user creates a club, they will be able to choose whether
the club will be "open" or "closed". A "closed" club has a membership
roster and only the members on the roster are allowed to post to
the group. The owner can add and remove users from the roster. An
"open" club allows everyone in unless they are on the owner's ban list.
The owner can ban either a single username or all users on the box
associated with a username. The owner can also remove a ban from the
list. The owner will be able to change which type of access control
the club has twice (open-to-closed-to-open or closed-to-open-to-closed).
4. A mechanism *may* be added to allow a club owner to rename his
club. This basically means that the "location" would change -
the club name would still end in the owner's username. The number of
times a club could be renamed would probably be limited.
5. Depending on the burden that the club newsgroups impose on the
servers involved, there may be a limit imposed on the number of clubs
that can exist. If this becomes necessary, some sort of club request
list would be created so people who want a club can get in line for
one. When an existing club is deleted, the first person in line would be
given the opportunity to create a club.
A revised version of the change proposal below will be created once
I have absorbed any discussion resulting from these proposed changes.
Depending on the feedback I receive on this, I would expect the
club idea to be ready for beta testing by March, 2000.
PROPOSED CHANGE:
A mechanism will be installed to allow the creation of alt.discuss
newsgroups which have a restricted membership. We will refer to
such newsgroups as "clubs", in the sense of a members-only nightclub.
While these groups will be technically moderated, the moderator will
be a 'bot which will allow all articles from club members to be posted,
and articles from non-members will not be posted. Note that *everyone*
can read the articles in the "club". All "club" newsgroups will be
created in the alt.discuss.club hierarchy, and all groups in that
hierarchy will be club newsgroups
Each club will have an owner, after whom the club will be named
(alt.discuss.club.account-name, i.e., in my case
alt.discuss.club.nobody). The owner of the club decides
who the members are. The owner may add members and remove members.
The owner CANNOT prevent articles from members from being posted,
nor can the owner cancel articles from members which have already
been posted. The ONLY POWER an owner has is the ability to add and
remove members from the club roster.
Obviously, the idea here is to create newsgroups where trolling and
flames can be prevented. Equally obviously, this mechanism can be
abused. In particular, the members of a club can defame a non-member
and that non-member will be unable to present a defense or rebuttal
in the same forum. NOTE that the TOS agreement applies to club newsgroups
to the same extent that it does to all other alt.discuss newsgroups.
You should not expect either more or less TOS enforcement in the
club newsgroups. Need I say more?
Initially, no vote will be required to create a club newsgroup. If
you want one, you would request it through a to-be-created page on
the munitions voting site and instructions on the procedures involved
would be sent to you. These procedures will involve sending email
to an address at munitions, since it is necessary to get a verified
username for use as the club name. If people begin creating nicknames,
using them to create clubs, and cancelling the nicknames repeatedly,
a mechanism may be added to limit the number of clubs that can originate
from any particular box.
I expect that many users will decide that they want their own club,
and that many of these clubs will end up unused after a short time.
Therefore, club newsgroups can be deleted under certain circumstances:
1. If the club owner cancels the account for which the group is named
(or if the account is cancelled by WNI), the club will be deleted
within two weeks (the grace period is intended to give the club members time
to decide what to do about the impending loss of their club.)
2. If no one but the club owner posts any articles in the club newsgroup
for fourteen consecutive days, the group will be deleted. There will
be a 30 day grace period immediately after the club is created to give
the owner time to build up his membership roster.
3. If a user manages to acquire a username which is "patently offensive"
and creates a club under that name, the club will be deleted without
notice. Whether or not a name is "patently offensive" will be
determined by "Nobody@munitions", whose decisions on the matter will
be final.
4. If the club concept is abused too often, a mechanism may be created
to allow a vote-based deletion of clubs. Alternatively, the system
may be changed to require that some sort of vote be held to allow
creation of a club.
If a club is deleted for any reason, no club with that name will be
allowed to exist for the 180 days following the deletion. (If the
club is deleted because the name is "patently offensive", it will
never be created again.)
This change to the alt.discuss structure still has some technical hurdles
to overcome. Unless the consensus opinion is that this would be a good
idea, there is no point in expending the time and energy needed to make
this work. If enough people like this idea, we will try to have it
operational early next year. It is possible, although very unlikely,
that some technical snag may show up which makes this concept unworkable.
MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS:
Some alt.discuss participants who have heard this proposal have
suggested that only the members should be able to read the club
articles. There is no good way to restrict the readership of a
newsgroup. People who want to hold private discussions should
create mailing lists for that purpose.
What happens to articles from non-members when they attempt to post
to a club? The owner should be able to specify whether articles from
non-members should be emailed to the owner for inspection or discarded.
The default would probably be to discard them, since having them emailed
to the owner might deluge the owner's mailbox.
Why not just create moderated groups? As it stands now, it doesn't
work very well to have WebTV subscribers moderate newsgroups. If the
group is really successful, the moderator's mailbox will fill up
quickly and articles will be lost due to "full mailbox" bounces.
If it's not successful, what's the point in having it?
Also, setting up the moderation email aliases and scripts is quite
time-consuming. However, we will continue to investigate ways in
which having moderated alt.discuss groups might be made feasible.
If this club idea is implemented, the necessary pages will be added to
the munitions voting site to provide readers with the information they
need to start a club.
From: nobody-munition@webtv.net (Nobody @Munitions)
Newsgroups: alt.discuss.config
Subject: Re: Modified A.D CHANGE - Automatic Newsgroup Preproposal (modified...
Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000 18:07:53 -0800 (PST)
Organization: WebTV Subscriber
Since these proposed modifications appear to be acceptable to the
alt.discuss readership, they will be implemented as described in the
next week. An article will be posted to alt.discuss and
alt.discuss.config when the modifications become effective. The
newsgroup proposal page on munitions will also be modified to reflect
the changes.
Proposed Modifications:
1. The proposal can be cancelled at any time during preproposal OR
during the vote. As before, the charter can only be modified during the
preproposal period and only 3 times.
REASON: the advice given during preproposal may be ignored until the
proposer sees "no" votes flowing in, or the advice given during
preproposal may not be an accurate reflection of the will of the voters.
2. When a user cancels a proposal, no account on that user's WebTV unit
will be able to propose a newsgroup with THAT NAME again for the next
180 days.
REASON: to prevent users from cancelling an ongoing vote and then
reproposing the same group to "erase the no votes".
3. The 180-day ban on re-proposal of a newsgroup name will be dropped.
Anyone who has not proposed a group in the previous 180-days could
propose it. For example, if someone proposed and then cancelled
alt.discuss.state.hawaii, anyone but the accounts on that proposer's
system would be able to propose alt.discuss.state.hawaii.
REASON: to prevent users from maliciously using the proposal
cancellation
mechanism to deprive sincere proposers of a newsgroup name.
4. The 180-day lockout on a newsgroup name after a failed vote will be
dropped in favor of a rule preventing THE SAME USER who proposed the
failed group from proposing THE SAME GROUP again for 180 days. Anyone
else would be able to propose it immediately.
REASON: Same as #3 - currently a user can propose a newsgroup with
a reasonable name and an insane charter, and let it fail its vote
because of the charter, thus locking up the name for the voting period
plus the lockout period.
5. Changed "mandatory" to "automatic" to reflect the fact that the
preproposal part of the modified process will happen, uh, automatically,
and that no additional action is required on the part of the proposer.
PROPOSED CHANGE (modified 14 Jan 2000):
When a group is proposed at the new voting site, it will go through an
automatic 7-day preproposal period. This would add 7 days to the voting
period, meaning that it would take a minimum of 14 days to create a new
alt.discuss newsgroup, and the vote could go on for a total of 37 days.
When the proposal is created, the proposal (including charter) will be
posted to alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config for discussion. The Subject
line will begin with "Preproposal:".
The proposal can be cancelled during either the preproposal period or at
any time during the voting period. Once a vote is cancelled, a group
with the exact same name cannot be proposed by the previous proposer
(any account on that WebTV unit) for the following 180 days.
During the preproposal period, the charter can be revised up to 3 times.
Each charter revision will be posted to alt.discuss and
alt.discuss.config. The proposal cannot be voted on during the
preproposal period.
No WebTV unit can have more than one proposal in the system at a time.
At the end of the 7-day preproposal period, any newsgroup proposal that
has not been cancelled will be automatically elevated to a real
proposal. Once this happens, the proposal can be voted on and can still
be cancelled, but the charter cannot be revised. The current voting
rules will apply to the proposal. The proposal containing the final form
of the charter will be posted to alt.discuss and alt.discuss.config.
These events will most likely occur as part of the routine 1 AM PST vote
tally run.
If the vote on the proposed newsgroup fails, the proposer (or any
account on that WebTV unit) will not be allowed to propose a newsgroup
with that same name during the following 180 days.
Using the voting system as a toy will result in the abuser being
permanently banned from use of the voting system. This includes
frivolously creating proposals as a means of anonymously attacking other
alt.discuss readers.
nobody@vote.munitions.com
email to nobody-munition will be read
but seldom replied to. See article in
news:alt.discuss for verification of this
nicname.
OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE MY OWN
AND DO NOT NECESSARILY REFLECT
THE VIEWS OR POLICIES OF WEBTV
NETWORKS INC.
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