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ObDoNotTauntTheAMcKeePolitburo
\_ Say it with me:  I will respect the politburo's authoritay!
        \_ Was there a politburo meeting?  Any news to report?
           \_ The meeting was long and well-attended.  amckee resigned, but by
           \_ Yes. Ruling Soda With An Iron Fist!
           \_ The official minutes are at http://csua.org/u/drj  Quick summary:
              the meeting was long and well-attended.  amckee resigned, but by
              the end of the meeting pretty much everyone agreed to reinstate
              him (without root).  Politburo decided not to log the motd, at
              least for the time being, and will actually try to make the motd
              more anonymous.  There's now an explicit policy that root should
              ask politburo before sorrying someone, except for account
              breakins and similar emergency stuff.  The official minutes
              are in /csua/pub/minutes/F2005/20051017.politburo.  --mconst
              least for the time being, and will actually try to make it more
              anonymous.  There's now an explicit policy that root should ask
              politburo before sorrying someone, except for account breakins
              and similar emergency stuff.  --mconst
              \_ The minutes are particularly weak on explaining the discussion
                 about the motd.  Basically it was decided that logging it or
                 moving it to somewhere else would decrease the possible use-
                 fulness to new students.  We proposed instead to try and
                 do something which would improve the overall quality of the
                 motd and return it more to its original purpose, an anonymous
                 discussion.  It was proposed we would create a program, much
                 like /csua/bin/motdedit that would allow a user near total
                 anonimity (or in the words of Vadim "we can make it really
                 hard to figure out who posted") when editing motd.  In theory,
                 this will reduce the amount of personal attacks and trolling
                 in general.  I hope this clears up the current course we are
                 taking in regards to the motd. -mrauser
                 \_ I don't think it's accurate to say that the motd's original
                    purpose was to be anonymous.  In the early days, pretty
                    much everyone signed their names.  It turned out to be
                    anonymous simply because it was a world-writable file,
                    so it attracted people who didn't want to be
                    identifiable.  -tom
                    \_ How long was it before, say, half the posts were
                       no longer signed?  (honestly, just curious)     -mice
                       \_ I don't really recall, but trolling didn't take
                          over until the mid to late 90s.  -tom
                    \_ How far back was 'original', anyway? -gm
                       \_ I believe /etc/motd was first made world-writable
                          on the original Apollo, which would mean 1988 or
                          so.  -tom