Editorial

This editorial follows the opinions of Frank, Stewart and Lesley-Dee, on who is responsiable....

By: Frank Vest
To: Stewart Honsberger
Re: simple things

On (22 Dec 00) Stewart Honsberger wrote to Frank Vest...

Hello Stewart,

LDD>> Darrell didn't directly intervene. Kari brought it to the attention of the "vocal" crowd in REG12, who immediately went into action to try...(missing end of sentence).

FV>> How did he bring it to the attention of the "vocal crowd"?

SH> He told us in a supreme gesture of bravado to fsck ourselves, he was outta there.

FV> Ok. I'll assume that you were in the Net that he was NC of?

LDD> to track down the nodes Kari was attempting to unilaterally excommunicate. We, the vocal crowd in REG12, instructed Darrell that Kari should not be allowed to excommunicate his nodes until such time as their presence or absence was verified by someone else. Did Kari say that he was excommunicating those Nodes?

SH> Quite plainly, IIRC.

I hope you recall correctly if you were in the affected Net. :-)

LDD> Submitting a nodelist seg that excommunicates nodes, or is otherwise unacceptably inaccurate, will always lead to the region demanding that the RC withhold the seg.

FV> True, if: The Nodes in the affected Net instruct the RC to withhold the segment. False if: The Nodes in the affected Net don't contact the RC.

SH> Completely false if: He cut their feed path, he cut their nodelist access; he arbitrarily excommunicated them and didn't give them the CHANCE of calling for help.

FV> They can/could still contact their RC via Crash Direct Netmail.

FV> From my perception of the way R12 and others that are arguing for freedom and democracy here feel, any intrusion by an RC into the workings (positive or negative) of a Net shouldn't happen.

SH> The belief in freedom does not force one to walk past a rape.

FV> In using the arguments that I see in here a lot by both sides... We were not talking about a rape.

SH> Personally, I'd protect the woman's right not to be sexually violated, much like we (primarily those who were most proactive in organizing feeds for the nodes) protected the rights of the sysops.

FV> Ah yes, but did the Sysops want that protection?

SH> In your above paragraph, you forget that the NC is just a clerk, and has no power to make arbitrary descisions. Had he come to us with a (missing ending).

FV> You forget that power can be perceived and arbitrary decisions made based on that perceived power.

SH> message saying that he'd received confirmation from each and every node in the net that they were shutting down simultaneously, we would likely confirm it for ourselves, try to convince them to stick around, and failing that, let it go. As for dissolving the net; after he submits an entry without himself listed as NC, he no longer has control of that net. He can't dissolve one of our nets without our consent.

True, but the segment he submitted should have been honored since he was the NC till that segment was processed... or the attempt to process made.

FV> Did the Sysops in the affected Net ask for intervention, or was it just the "vocal crowd"? If none in the Net cared enough to act, why did the RC intervene? Isn't that wrong? I'm trying to understand. Please forgive me, but Carl didn't state that anyone asked for intervention. You didn't state if the affected Sysops asked or wanted intervention. From my perception of the wishes of the sysops is the intervention without being asked wrong?

SH> Intervention without being asked is most certainly not 'wrong', atleast not in my eyes. The merger of R14+15 was stopped by the "vocal crowd" all across zone 1 telling Mouf in no uncertain terms that it wasn't going to happen.

FV> Ah... Now we get to it. If I remember right, R14 stepped in and asked for help once they were notified of/realized the problem. From the way this was sounding, the R12C intervened without being asked... IOW, uninvited.

SH> Intervention to save one from his oppressor is a benefeit, not a
SH> hinderance.

FV> Only if the one wants to be saved.

FV> Thank you for your insight and opinion.

Regards,

Frank

By: Carl Austin Bennett
To: Foxy Ferguson
Re: RE: simple things

CAB> I'd imagine that anyone who'd choose to follow P4 to the letter and avoid eeking a geographical exemption is stuck where they are due to P4 itself.

FF> Wrong. Geographical exemptions have been allowed since P4 first
FF> went into effect (9th June, 1989, fyi). They are quite acceptable

CAB> Then why was R12 threatened with PCs for having nodelisted Ruth's net?

FF> Ya'll's sysops "voted with their feet" and moved here, being (so I believe) dissatisfied with the practices of R12, specifically that of being dictated to as regards their mail links. All quite "legal" per P4.

CAB> Dictated to as regards their mail links? That's news to me. I was sure that some of us are feeding from out-of-region and bless my lucky southern stars, I have no idea why anyone would've thought that it wouldn't be allowed.

FF> your becoming the R12C is a telling measure of just how much ya'll really DO acknowledge the existence of the organizational structure delineated in P4. If ya'll were truly all that anti-P4, you would not even HAVE a Region Coordinator. Nor Net Coordinators.

FF> We just put all those lines in our nodelists so that we don't get mistaken for part of Region 11 by software which is following the FTSC-0005 specifications.

FF> Once the sysops are fed up with me they'll just put Ruth or someone else there.Even if that means a "sysop-level election" which isn't anywhere in your P4.

By: Lesley-Dee Dylan
To: Frank Vest
Re: simple things

LD> Darrell didn't directly intervene. Kari brought it to the attention of the "vocal" crowd in REG12, who immediately went into action to try

FV> How did he bring it to the attention of the "vocal crowd"?

LDD> Kari made an annoucement in REG12 that he was doing it.

FV> Did Kari say that he was excommunicating those Nodes?

LDD> If the node suddenly disappears from the net, it is unable to communicate - therefore it is excommunicated.

FV> True, if: The Nodes in the affected Net instruct the RC to
FV> withhold the segment.

LDD> Kari didn't leave the nodes time to do that. He was their feed - and he was constantly disrupting the feed of REG12 to and from his downlinks - we would see evidence of it when a message would suddenly appear with a 10-day-old time stamp. To give us time to contact the nodes and ask them (since we didn't trust Kari), we asked Darrell to delay processing that segment.

FV> From my perception of the way R12 and others that are arguing for
FV> freedom and democracy here feel, any intrusion by an RC into the
FV> workings (positive or negative) of a Net shouldn't happen.

LDD> No unilateral excommunication of nodes is tolerated in Region 12 by any NC or RC. The NC who wishes to be rid of a node (and it does happen), does not excommunicate the node - s/he tosses the node up to the RC to become a regional independent, or for the RC to find a new net for him/her to join. Like was done to Jim Rysyk. By Policy 4, there were more than enough grounds to excommunicate him (counterfeiting mail - both in FN_SYSOP and in Netmail, where he used Darren Whiteman's address to send hate-netmail to a non-existent user (with my name) on my NC's system). He had also crashed the NC's system repeatedly with defectively configured software, so the NC no longer felt he should be obligated to provide him with the mandatory nodediff and snooze. As a regional independent, no NC was obligated to provide him with a feed, but he could attain a feed from anyone willing to put up with him.