> "People who don't like the rules  are free not to participate."
>
> They are also free to discuss the rationales behind the rules, Eric.
 
I think it's mostly an administrative thing; if the list owner can't
exercise some authority over who gates what where, then multiple
gates to the same global newsgroup are fair game.  Note that "local
distributions" are Not Necessarily As Critical.  The global
bit.listserv.* groups are set up explicitly for gating of the
directly-mapped LISTSERV lists, at the owner's option.
 
Also, there's the "list community quality" issue:  The owner is the
person most able to apply nudges to keep the list on track and the
SNR down.  If the convention of the owner deciding who gates what
isn't followed, then he could suddenly and involuntarily find himself
trying to ride herd not on 120 people who he knows, but on several
hundred more who are wandering in and out of the gated newsgroup.
Needless to say, the list volume would also be a monumental problem
for many of the subscribers if that situation were to arise.
 
Case in point and to the point:  Originally I had intended to set up
soc.religion.unitarian and gate UUs-L to it, but now that the list is
running, I'm sort of loathe to trash such a close-knit community.
I'm pondering just using the voting bloc of UUs-L to set up
soc.religion.unitarian and then relying on multiply subscribed people
to cross-fertilize the juicy parts to both groups.
 
Steve
 
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