Re: Upcoming Changes to News Server ...

Patrick B Kelly <pbk@patrickbkelly.org> wrote:
>
[snip]
>
> Marc appears to be the only one NOT making this situation worse.

Appearances can be deceiving--particularly when you're unfamiliar with
the territory.

>                                                                  Let's
> review. Since Mike Cox's unsolicited attempt to "fix" a problems that
> he perceived, what has happened? The list has been deluged with
> countless angry process oriented messages filled with vitriol and
> devoid of any content regarding the purpose of this forum, we have been
> bombarded with profanity,

This is Mike's fault, is it?  This is the fault of somebody stepping up
and *trying* to DTRT?  What a... fascinating POV.

>                           and the lists have been dropped from google.

And other news servers.  Do you know *why* that happened?  Perhaps if
you followed the RFD thread in news.groups, you would.

Yes, it is likely that the RFD has brought to the attention of those
webmasters who weren't aware that comp.databases.postgresql.* were
bogus, and so they dropped them.  Any one person could have
single-handedly accomplished the same thing by raising hell in the
proper venues.

Do you know that some major Usenet news systems never carried
comp.databases.postgresql.*, in the first place, because the hierarchy
was bogus?

Here's another factoid for you.  When a new big-8 newsgroup is
approved, an "official" newsgroup creation control message is sent.
Well, somebody *forged* just such a control message for one-or-more
comp.databases.postgresql.* newsgroups.

> This seems like it was a fool's errand from the beginning and Marc has
> done nothing but try to cooperate to the extent reasonable.

Hate to say it, but from where I sit it looks you have every single
point you made above wrong.  But I'm not going to beat up Marc about
it.  I'm going to assume it's unfamiliarity with the way Usenet works.

>                                                             That does
> not include jumping through every hoop that anyone holds up for him.

I hope your attitude does not reflect that of the general pgsql
community, much-less that of the core development team.  It sounds very
un-pgsql-like to me.

>
[snip]

>
> I will not speak for Marc but say that as a member of the mailing list,
> I think he does an excellent job of advocating the best interests of
> the postgres community and I support his decisions. You can make any
> accusations you like but we know what a good job Marc does and
> appreciate Marc's efforts on our behalf.

PostgreSQL is not an island unto itself.  Just as the project is bound
to abide by committee decisions wrt the SQL language, *if* it wants to
be (relatively?) "standard," it's obliged to do the same in being part
of the greater Usenet community.  That is: *If* the pgsql community
wishes to be part of the larger Usenet community.

(Those of you who've been on Usenet for a while can stop laughing about
the "Usenet community" thing, too ;).)

Jim