A committee to administer the scot.* net news (often called Usenet) hierarchy.
News server administrators need to know which control messages to act on for the scot.* hierarchy; if they don't, they typically won't act on any, and the hierarchy won't be effectively propagated. Consequently, the users of the hierarchy require a means to choose somebody to issue control messages that news administrators can trust. That's what the committee is for.
In September 1998 I posted a Request for Discussion to scot.announce and scot.general inviting discussion about whether a committee was needed. After considerable discussion, I called a vote, and there was unanimous agreement that a committee would be a good thing. An election for members of the committee was then called, and the committee was elected.
Fundamentally, only the open process described above. Furthermore, the committee only continues to have legitimacy if it continues to be open, and to act in the interests of users of the hierarchy.
The current membership of the committee is Simon Brooke, Craig Cockburn, Duncan Dewar, Neil Fernandez, David Marsh, Sandy Morton and Bob Scott.