John McHarry <jmcharry@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:telecom25.91.19@telecom-digest.org:
> I don't, however, think the moderation of a mailing list is property
> that can be sold.
Control, absent legislation to the contrary, equals posession, and all
the rights and privileges associated with it.
If PT is the only one who can decide who is moderator, then that is
something that he can decide to sell, should he so choose. Who can
prevent him?
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, some of you newcomers who
started reading this Digest since 1993 do not recall -- maybe never
even heard of -- the great battle that year over comp.dcom.telecom.
There were some people then -- they are still around today -- who do
not care for my moderation of c.d.t, thus they began c.d.t.t. as a
work around. They were going to have an election for a new moderator
and vote for someone else. But one or more of the 'Usenet authorities'
(at least at that time it was David Lawrence ['tale'] and Gene
Spafford told them they could not do it; the technical reason is
because c.d.t. is not actually a Usenet newsgroup. Its origin was as
an ARPA (Advanced Research Projects) newsgroup which had been split
off from HumanNets and was merely _ported_ into Usenet each
day. Therefore the rules which apply to Usenet did not apply to c.d.t.
which was not Usenet to start with. And even today, I merely send the
Digest over to Usenet as part of the distribution scheme; Usenet is
_not_ the reason for my existence. It may sound like splitting hairs,
but TELECOM Digest is an independent thing on its own, having been
birthed by Bitnet in 1981 and originally just a humble, quite small,
text-only mailing list. Usenet people said 'let us look at it'; I
started sending it there, and still do, but they do not _own_ it. And
that is what makes the difference, and to a large extent makes TELECOM
Digest unique on the net. Usenet has looked at it now for so long,
they perhaps feel they own it, but they do not. People who read the
Usenet-version of this Digest (yes, there are minor differences) will
note they are only sent the 'messages' (that is, the dozen or so
individual items each day between the top group of eighty dashes and
the bottom group of same; never the top header file nor the boilerplate
message at the end. They do not get the colorful 'TELECOM Digest' logo
nor my picture, nor the links to previous issues, etc which appear on
the top and bottom of the 'web version'.
I received TELECOM Digest when Jon Solomon _gave it to me_ in the
middle 1980's. Prior to him _giving it to me_ I wrote articles here
like most of you. I took/still take Jon Solomon's trust in me and my
work quite seriously. The person _I_ select (after due diligence and
[I would hope] some other consideration) will be at the very least as
knoledgeable and concerned about telecom as I have been over the
years. Yes, I could be an asshole, highest spam-bidder with the
fattest wallet and most consideration takes all ... but no, I won't
be, and I hope you all take my word on that. I know some of you
consider me an asshole anyway, which is your right, but I hope to
whatever extent you consider me to be an asshole, it will _not_ be
because I sold the newsgroup down the river. I hope that whomever
takes it over from me will consider me worthy to occassionally write
articles for it, just as before. PAT]
jtaylor (jtaylor@deletethis.hfx.andara.com)