Newsgroups: rec.arts.comics.misc

From: [t--g] at [netcom.com] (Tom Galloway)

Subject: tyg treatise #1: rac-rfd

Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)

Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 04:43:57 GMT



This is #1 of 4 final posts (well, actually 6; #3 was too big for a single

post). #4 will explain the reason for my doing so. Unless some factual error 

is pointed out in these, I won't be responding to followups on these. And I 

may not even read followups at all.



In my opinion, the recent brouhaha over the rac-rfd committee was one of the

flat out stupidest things to occur on rec.arts.comics. Now that the dust has

cleared and I'm no longer 1) busy handing off the FAQ 2) dealing with the

straw poll 3) dealing with defending rac.moderated.tyg 4) dealing with brush

fire flames about the process 5) on the rac-rfd committee, here's a 

comprehensive take on the reasons and rationale behind the rac-rfd process.



First off, let's look at the advantages to it.

   Advantage: Limits split talk to a once in a while occurance.

   Advantage: Split threads consolidated with keyword(s).

   Advantage: Allows anyone to propose a new r.a.c. group without their

              having to become a news.groups expert (and note that the

              process continues to get messier as time goes on).

   Advantage: Divides up workload on RFD/CFV process.

   Advantage: Allows for significant r.a.c. input on policy issues

              (name of group, charter, interaction with other r.a.c.

              groups) *before* RFD. 

   Advantage: Reality/Sanity check by running things through several

              people rather than just one.

   Advantage: Still unclear just when Tale's "three months after reorg"

              rule kicks in; by coordinating new group proposals, we

              shouldn't run into this problem.

   Advantage: news.groups has turned into a sewer. The more things 

              that can be handled pre-RFD, the better.



Let's take a look at each of these in turn.



1) Limits split talk. Relative newbies may not be aware of how bad the

situation was before the first straw poll approach. Every week or so,

someone new would post wanting to create rec.arts.comics.marvel/dc/sandman

etc. Or, as Moriarty once wrote: 

"These days, it seems like everybody with Internet access and a shiny new

lightbulb icon over their head wants a new newsgroup.  No offense."



With the current approach, people can be told to wait until the next

round of polls, or that they're welcome to propose rac.moderated.tyg

themselves, but since it got 15% in the poll two months ago, odds are rather

slim it'll pass. A disadvantage is that for a few weeks there's a lot of

split talk, but really no more than there used to be. It's just a bit

more concentrated...and due to keywords and common Subject: lines, easier

to killfile.



2) Consolidated split threads. Using the system of emailing a split

proposal to a single person, all discussion for, say, rac.dc.batman will

take place under one thread, rather than the three which might have 

happened this time (three different people proposed this group at about

the same time). With a common overall keyword (SPLIT:) and a common Subject:

for each group, it's easy for people not interested in this to killfile

either the general or the specific.



3) Allows novices to propose r.a.c. groups. Chary hates this. Personally,

I find it darkly amusing that the rac-rfd schema has at times caused me

to be accused of power mongering even though it opens up the group creation

process considerably. Personally, given the mess that news.groups is in, and

the increasing complexity of newsgroup creation rules, I think it's a good

thing that people don't have to be news.groups experts to suggest group

topics. One can think of this and the rac-rfd committee as localized versions

of group-mentors and group-advice.  Besides, they have to get through both a

straw poll and the formal CFV, two points that should defeat any poor group

proposal (for a number of different definitions of poor, including poorly

thought out, problems fitting with established groups, lack of popularity,

etc.)



4) Divides up workload. Not a bad thing at all. One person doesn't have to

do everything, and it allows for sanity/reality checks by others at all

steps of the process.



5) Significant r.a.c. input on policy issues before RFD. This I think is

*the* major advantage to this process. Not only are policy and charter

issues debated before the RFD, the straw poll allows for general r.a.c.

input on them, rather than just who "yells" the loudest or by fiat of

the proponent. The charter thus becomes more representative of what the body

of r.a.c. wants. It also stresses fitting in group proposals with existing

r.a.c. structure. See the current flamefest going on in news.groups over the

anime reorg as to why this is a good thing.



6) Reality/Sanity checks: No, they don't catch everything (see lack of

abstention option on letter questions, what turned out to be very different

assumptions about whether Vertigo was part of the DC Universe). But they

do catch things that one person may have a blind spot about and lead to 

better polls and charters.



7) The "three month rule". The last reorg almost got hit by this. While

it's not in the new group creation guidelines (unless they've been edited

in the last month or so since I last looked at them), there is a rule which

is enforced prohibiting new RFD/CFVs for a hierarchy that's been "reorganized'

within the last three months. Since it's not written down, it've unclear

what consitutes "reorganization"; one group? two? three? Until this is

straightened out, it makes a lot more sense to consolidate new group 

proposals rather than have them occur at random and possibly be cut down

due to the three month rule.



8) Looked at news.groups lately? I don't recommend eating first. Despite the

efforts of a lot of good people and volunteers to try to keep things working,

the looney tune contingent is out in full force there. The more things that

can be settled and handled pre-RFD the better. And the more people you have

acting as shepherd/proponents once it hits RFD/CFV stage, the better.



There's also the factor, as shown both by some of the flamage going on about

the anime reorg, and that in the only actual poll done of voters on the

subject, that a substantial percentage of people do *not* go to news.groups to

read RFD discussion about groups they vote on (or don't vote on, and later

complain not to have been aware discussion was going on in news.groups).



Now, a lot of the controversy over this rac-rfd approach seemed to boil down

to two things and one lack of understanding. 



One thing should be the simplest to discard; a claim that this is a 

power-mongering attempt by yours truly to control the group creation process.

To be blunt, anyone who believes this is being an idiot. Consider the

following facts:

1) The rac-rfd mailing list/committee is open to anyone who wants to join and

work on developing RFDs, polls, charters, and serving as proponents for the

formal RFD/CFV process. Matters are decided by vote or general consensus (i.e.

if something's proposed and no one objects, it's not worth doing a vote over)

I deliberately set it up that way. Boy, that really insured I'd keep control

over anything.



2) As it happens, for the first two times this approach was used, I served as

point man for the poll in that I accepted proposals, put them into a common

form, posted them, and collected and counted votes in the poll. 



This is in no way has anything to do with "power". It has to do with ending

up taking the lion's share of the crap aimed at the process and doing a fair

amount of work counting ballots, particularly since it seems to be an article

of faith that in any r.a.c. vote, about 1/4th of the voters will ignore clear

instructions and freeform the ballots in some manner.



But "power"? The point man doesn't get extra votes. The point man doesn't

get any special advantages in proposing a newsgroup. I defy anyone to name

any advantage that a point man in this set up has, assuming that they are

an honorable person (i.e. I suppose they could pre-count votes in the poll

and then get sneaky in soliciting votes for things they wanted. But even

that doesn't make any sense, as we'll see in a moment).



3) For this last time, I explicitly asked on the rac-rfd list for 

volunteers to be point man this last time. There were none. I didn't

even want to have been the point man last time.



The lack of understanding has to do with mistaking the straw poll for 

an actual group creation vote. The whole point of the poll is to gather

information to do an RFD/CFV right. It's like a presidential candidate

commissioning a poll to see if s/he has enough support to justify 

continuing to run. I suppose one could cheat and record rac.suicide-squid

as getting a 90% favorable vote to justify it going to a RFD/CFV...where

it'd then get stomped on with a 10% vote for actually creating it.

The whole points of the poll are 1) seeing what proposals seem to have

enough support to justify going through the arduous task of a RFD/CFV

and 2) getting r.a.c. input on policy and charter issues. That's it.

It's important, but it's not what actually creates the group.



The second thing is that it's somehow wrong not to also explain in 

excrutiating detail the whole RFD/CFV process and how one can bypass

the rac-rfd process whenever the rac-rfd process comes up. Frankly,

this is downright silly for a couple of reasons.



1) It's not of any particular relevance to doing the rac-rfd process

that it's possible to bypass it. And frankly, at this point given the

state of news.groups, I don't think it's a good idea to do so.



2, and more important) If someone doesn't know this already, they

shouldn't even be thinking of doing it. They're not knowing it means

that they have effectively zero or less than zero knowledge of how

to create a new Big 8 newsgroup. Which means a minimum recommendation

of several *months* of reading news.groups (which in some countries

may now be outlawed by the Geneva Convention). By which point, a

group could be completely run through the rac-rfd/RFD/CFV process

already.



While I think the rac-rfd process is so clearly better (to the point

where I'd not even think of going outside of it to do a new rac

group), I don't have any illusions that it forbids the standard

method. However, neither do I see it having any obligation to inform

people who have no clue about the standard method about the latter, 

particularly as such people are ones whose group proposals *really*

should go through rac-rfd due to their lack of knowledge.



As far as I can tell, the rac-rfd method has a number of major 

advantages, and at worst only a few minor disadvantages. The 

complaints about it this past time seemed to almost be complaining

just for the sake of complaining.



tyg   [t--g] at [netcom.com]





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