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Every administrator controls his own site. No one has any real
control over any site but his own.
The administrator gets her power from the owner of the system she
administers. As long as her job performance pleases the owner, she
can do whatever she pleases, up to and including cutting off Usenet
entirely. Them's the breaks.
Sites are not entirely without influence on their neighbors, however.
There is a vague notion of "upstream" and "downstream" related to the
direction of high-volume news flow. To the extent that "upstream"
sites decide what traffic they will carry for their "downstream"
neighbors, those "upstream" sites have some influence on their
neighbors' participation in Usenet. But such influence is usually
easy to circumvent; and heavy-handed manipulation typically results in
a backlash of resentment.
PERIODIC POSTINGS
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To help hold Usenet together, various articles (including this one)
are periodically posted in newsgroups in the "news" hierarchy. These
articles are provided as a public service by various volunteers.
They are few but valuable. Learn them well.
Among the periodic postings are lists of active newsgroups, both "standard"
(for lack of a better term) and "alternative." These lists are maintained
by David Lawrence and periodically posted to the news.lists.misc newsgroup.
They reflect his personal view of Usenet, and as such are not "official" in
any sense of the word. However, if you're looking for a description of
subjects discussed on Usenet, or if you're starting up a new Usenet site,
David's lists are an eminently re
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