Fun_People Archive
26 Oct
Curry's Revolution

Date: Wed, 26 Oct 94 16:09:27 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Curry's Revolution

[An article of interest (only) to netnews activists and other masochists... -psl]

Forwarded-by: bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Keith Bostic)
Forwarded-by: Wendell Craig Baker <wbaker@splat.baker.com>
Forward of article <050311Z24101994@anon.penet.fi> () by an144588@anon.penet.fi:
Newsgroups: news.admin.policy
From: pacman@expert.cc.purdue.edu (Alan Curry)

Hello. I recently have seen evidence that you are interested in creating an
alt group. (Forgive the vagueness, but this may be going out to a lot of
people.) You might be interested in joining my organization, RHCA (request
help creating acronym) which will attempt to counteract the current
problems which make alt.newgrouping more difficult than its founders
intended.

If you are reading this, you probably did one of the following:

Posted a newgroup message without the proper headers (don't know what
  you're doing!)
Posted a valid newgroup message that was then rmgrouped.
Proposed a group in alt.config with some indication that you are not a
  moron (I don't want morons involved in my project.)
Indicated through a followup to an alt.tyrant's post that you hate them as
  much as I do.

In any case, I have targeted you as someone who might want to help my
cause. First a description of the alt problem as I see it (skip this if you
already have a good idea of the situation):

Alt was created to be a less formal place than the big 7 hierarchies. It is
supposed to be a home for groups that don't pass any formal creation
procedure. The pattern of frivolous groups started with the first alt group
ever made, alt.swedish.chef.bork.bork.bork

Alt was once a cool place, with an entire alt.bonehead hierarchy, the
famous die.die.die groups, and other such fun stuff.

Now those things have been destroyed. (At least at my site, there is one
bonehead and no die.die.die's.) I want them back.

There are too many assholes on the net. It's that simple. A small group of
people have appointed themselves alt.dictators, and have taken a set of group
creation guidelines, and turned them into Commandments which they enforce
with swift and blinding rmgrouping.

The current leader of the alt.tyrants is David Guntner (davidg@netcom.com).
You've probably seen his work, whether it was the great "No need. No
demand" posts to control, or his equally intelligent followups to every
proposal anyone makes in alt.config. At times he reminds me of Tim Pierce,
who turned automated rmgrouping into an art form, so that no alt group
could be created without his prior approval.

"What can I do?" you ask. Well, for starters, you can send me mail telling
me you want to help. After I get a few responses I'll start to coordinate
things. Here are some of the visions I have of our organization:

1. Write a petition, put everyone's name and email address on it, and send
  it off to the alt.tyrant, and, possibly, root@hismachine. This is not
  being done yet, so don't be afraid to reply--I won't use your name
  without showing you the petition first.

2. newgroup alt.bonehead.david-guntner. Take turns re-newgrouping when he
  rmgroups it.

3. (my favorite) Circumvent the alt.tyrants through limited distribution of
  the newgroup messages. If David Guntner hasn't approved a group, but WE
  have, every one of us issues a newgroup for it, in the largest available
  distribution that does not include netcom.com. If there are enough of
  us, we could get good overall propagation without him even seeing a
  newgroup. That will make it harder for him to find the groups and remove
  them.

So, do you want to be a member of <no acronym available at this time>? If
so, send me some mail, and after I get a few responses I'll get things
started. Here what I'd like to know about you and your system:

1. How do you access news? Do you have to pay for it?

2. Same question for email.

3. What OS does your machine run?

4. Do you know enough about your system to write some simple programs of
  the shell-script type? (I'm hoping this group is going to get large
  enough to require some automation of our operations.)

5. How much time to you have to dedicate to our cause?

6. How much do you hate the alt.tyrants? Do you have the same obsession I
  have with bringing them down?

7. What ideas do you have for bring the chaos back to alt?

8. Does anybody know what happened to Tim Pierce? I don't see him around
  any more. (Not that I'm complaining.) And has anyone adapted the net.song
  "Tim Pierce is the Antichrist" to David Guntner?

BTW, if you have any friends who may want to be in on this, bounce this
message on, so that I will have a complete list. Sometime soon I'll decide
whether or not I can handle being the Grand Poobah of this thing, but until
then the only place we can all contact each other is in my mailbox. I will
put together a list of those who have "subscribed" within a couple of
weeks, and we'll elect a leader, preferably someone who knows how to
operate a mailing list. (I'm willing to learn, but only if I have to.)

Well, you've made it to the bottom, thanks for reading this far. If you're
going to flame me, make sure you put the following magic word in the
subject line so I know you read the whole thing. Otherwise the flame is
unjustified and will be deleted immediately. Not only that but I will laugh
at your stupidity and make up riddles about the size of your genitalia. :)
The magic word is plugh.

© 1994 Peter Langston