We are not "adher[ing] to rules... in all circumstances"; in fact,
what we are doing is refusing to make *more* rules, or to involve
ourselves, *as the moderators of *.answers*, in something that is not
directly our concern.
We recognize the concept of "ownership" of a FAQ, a concept which has
been discussed many times on this mailing list, usually in the context
of whether FAQs can be copyrighted (and what a copyright on a FAQ
accomplishes). Thus, even though Mark Moraes did not write most of
the material in the news.announce.newusers FAQs, we recognize that he
"owns" them, in the sense that if he days, "I'm maintaining them and
I'm the one posting them," we will accept that statement unless we
have *compelling* evidence that that is not the case.
The evidence in this case is convincing, but as of now, we do not
consider it compelling enough to warrant authorizing someone else to
post Mark Moraes' FAQs, over his objection. We have *never*, since
*.answers was created, allowed someone to post someone else's FAQ
without the approval of that someone else. That is not a bridge that
we wish to cross, now or in the future. We do not want to be put in
the position of judging people. That has nothing to do with being
"automatons" or "adhering to rules in all circumstances"; it has to do
with the fact that we believe that our function is intended to be
largely *administrative*, and we do not wish to relinquish the
impartiality which we have worked hard to maintain since the creation
of *.answers.
We do not have time to be the "champions" of the
news.announce.newusers FAQ. I.e., we do not have time to harass Mark
Moraes until he either starts posting them regularly or hands them
over to someone else. Furthermore, we do not wish to be that "someone
else," and we are unwilling to pressure him severely to post them when
we are unwilling to take over their maintenance ourselves. However,
if *you*, or anyone else, is willing to take over the FAQs and wishes
to discuss that with Mark Moraes, we certainly have no objection to
it, and if you and he work out an arrangement, temporary or permanent,
for you to post the FAQs with his OK, we'll certainly approve them for
*.answers. Furthermore, if you contact Mark Moraes repeately and
receive no response at all for an extended period of time (at least a
month, as I mentioned concerning our policy in my last message), we
will suspend Maraes' approval, and we would probably be willing to
approve letting you post the FAQs instead. Assuming, of course, that
you also get approval from the news.announce.newusers and news.lists
moderators (and any other moderators involved).
We agree that the information involved is of great importance to the
Usenet community. We agree that the fact that the FAQs are not being
posted is a Bad Thing. We even agree that Mark Moraes has been
significantly more lax in their posting then he reasonably should have
been. We are trying to get the articles posted by communicating with
Mark Moraes and resolving any problems he's having. Having seen no
evidence to the contrary, we believe that he is a reasonable person
who is as interested in the good of the Usenet as we are, and that the
fact that he has not posted the FAQs is simply because he has not been
able to do so, due to business in the Real World or to some other
reason over which he has no control. We believe that he has not yet
shown himself to be so unreasonable that we should go against his
explicit wishes and let someone else post the FAQs which he maintains
to *.answers. That is our judgment; if you do not agree with it, I'm
sorry, but you're just going to have to live with it.
To address some of your specific comments:
>Now, the very obvious to me answer is for someone, me, news-answers-request,
>anyone, I don't care one whit who, to repost this information to
>*.answers.
Reposting to *.answers isn't really the issue, because newbies are
encouraged to read news.announce.newusers, not *.answers. If you
really want to go on a crusade to make these articles available again,
you would be better off talking to the news.announce.newusers
moderator about getting the articles reposted there, since that's
where they'll do the most good, and leave *.answers out of it.
>This is not a case of "deciding who gets to post a FAQ" or "'reassign'
>a FAQ to a new maintainer". It's a case of just posting badly needed
>information as a stopgap until the issue of whether there should be a
>new moderator is settled.
It is a case of doing something explicitly against the wishes of a
contributor to the Usenet. Doing so could potentially offend that
contributor and make him unwilling to contribute to the Usenet in the
future, a result which would do no good to anyone.
>Excuse me? There's rather clear evidence that he has *not* been posting
>the FAQs. That's the whole problem. Am I reading this wrong, or are you
>actually stating that you'll go with email saying "I'm posting them"
>over seeing that they've not been posted?
What I am saying is that although we are aware that he is not posting
them, we are also aware that he is trying to get them posted and that
he says he is still actively maintaining them. We are willing to be
patient and give him a chance to get his act together, because (a)
we've seen a lot worse, (b) we do not wish to piss him off, (c) we
believe that he's doing the best he can, (d) we are not willing to be
the ones to take over the postings from him, and (e) he says he is
updating the postings and we do not wish out-of-date information to be
posted. Again, if you wish to correspond with him and work something
out, there is nothing stopping you from doing that.
>Have you considered applying for a job in Washington D.C.?
This is unnecessary. Please try to be civil.
>Sorry, but
>the attitude I'm seeing expressed here by news-answers-request folk is
>leaving a very bad taste in my mouth. I'd sum it up as "Rules don't let
>us solve this problem.
Rules are not what is stopping us from posting the FAQs ourselves or
from authorizing you to do it without Mark's OK. What is stopping us
is the five reasons I listed a couple paragraphs ago, and perhaps some
others I've forgotten to list. The point, Tom, is that we have
examined the situation and made a judgment call that it is
inappropriate, at this time, to post the FAQs without Mark's
authorization or to let someone else do it. Clearly, it is a judgment
with which you disagree. But for you to accuse us of blindly
following rules and not thinking of the greater good just because our
conclusion disagrees with yours is somewhat disingenuous.
>We don't have to tell you anything about the problem.
We did, in fact, tell you everything we know about the problem, when
it became clear that doing so would contribute to the discussion.
Ping's initial message was not meant to be a "*.answers moderator
position paper" about the news.announce.newusers FAQs. It was simply
meant to stop you from posting the FAQs without the proper approval.
Furthermore, as I mentioned previously, the whole topic was discussed
recently on the faq-maintainers mailing list, and Ping probably didn't
consider it necessary to repeat what had already been said.
>Despite it being a problem that affects the whole Usenet. And people making
>attempts to solve the problem are futile because of our rules."
We have not said that attempts to solve the problem are futile. We
encourage such attempts. What we have said is that we do not consider
your posting the FAQs, without submitting them properly to us first
and without getting Mark Moraes' authorization, to be an appropriate
solution to the problem. At some point in the future, we might decide
that Moraes is delinquent enough that the FAQs should reasonably be
handed over to someone else in spite of any objections from him.
Until now, however, we have not reached that conclusion.
>I sympathize
>and appreciate the work y'all do, but the total inflexability to deal with
>a recognized problem here is ridiculous.
It is inappropriate to conclude from the fact that we disagree with
you that we are inflexible. It is possible, you know, for a
disagreement to exist between open-minded people.
>Btw, note that the news-answers folk have been setting the reply-to line
>to news-answers-request, rather than faq-maintainers. If others have been
>responding to their messages, I and others on faq-maintainers haven't seen
>the response.
You are incorrect. The "Reply-To" line of a mail message is meant to
be used as a replacement for the address in the "To" line of the mail
message. It does not replace any carbon copies to addresses in the
"To" field of a message. If a MUA receives a message with "From:
jik@security.ov.com" and "To: faq-maintainers@mit.edu", then it will
either send responses to only jik@security.ov.com or to
jik@security.ov.com with a CC to faq-maintainers@mit.edu, depending on
how the software is written and configured. All the "Reply-To:
news-answers-request@mit.edu" line does is cause jik@security.ov.com
to be replaced with news-answers-request@mit.edu; the CC to
faq-maintainers@mit.edu would still occur if it would in the absence
of the Reply-To line. Any MUA which behaves otherwise is wrong. In
any case, there have not been any messages sent to us privately in
this thread that were meant to go to the list. In fact, there have
not been any messages sent to us privately in this thread at all.
In closing, I will add that the *.answers moderators are in complete
agreement about the decision that Ping and I have expressed publicly.
Or, at the very least, none of them have said anything to us publicly
to contradict our decision (if they wish to do so, privately or
publicly, they are certainly free to -- I do not enforce *.answers
policy without input from the other moderators, and we have on several
occasions had disagreements in which I eventually capitulated). The
*.answers moderators are quite heterogeneous in their attitudes about
rules and authority, and yet none of them believes that in this case,
we are allowing ourselves to be inappropriately bound by the rules.
That's six to one, Tom, and I've yet to see anyone else on the
faq-maintainers list who agrees with your accusations (if you're here,
speak up, don't be bashful!).
This is the last message which I will write in this thread. If
one of the other *.answers moderators wishes to add something, he/she
is certainly free to do so; however, I think that I've made our
position and the reasons for it pretty clear, and I doubt that there's
much to be added from our end.
Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@security.ov.com
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