Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!kuhub.cc.ukans.edu!sloane From: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: Yet another alternative. Message-ID: <14035.2530882d@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> Date: 9 Oct 89 16:59:41 GMT References: <6428@ficc.uu.net> <2921@splut.conmicro.com> <1989Oct7.161701.20181@NCoast.ORG> <6462@ficc.uu.net> Organization: University of Kansas Academic Computing Services Lines: 81 How about having votes run in the following format: news.group YES voter name
news.group NO voter name
where news.group could contain wild cards. For example: * YES means the voter wants the group creates no matter what the name. sci.* NO means the voter votes NO to all SCI names. group.name YES means the voter votes YES to the specific name group.name. Multiple non-duplicate votes would be allowed. For example I could send in: sci.* no rec.something yes rec.sub.something no Vote takers could translate votes to this format if the vote was unambiguous, for example, if I received: I vote YES for a group about lithuanian sheepdogs. It would be translated to: * YES While: I vote yes for rec.sheepdogs would be translated to: rec.sheepdogs yes The votes could be counted as follows: Collect all the votes into a file. It would look something like: sci.something yes Bob Sloane sci.sub.something NO Bob Sloane rec.* YES someone rec.something YES voter
* YES voter1
... Convert the file to lower case, and sort it on newsgroup name, eliminating any duplicates. Then count all the possible results, ie make a table of all the specific group names mentioned and 2 columns labeled YES and NO. Go through the votes and count the YES and NO votes for each possibility. A "* YES" vote would count as a YES vote for every possibility, a "sci.* NO" vote would count as a NO vote for any type of sci group, etc. For example, the above multiline vote would count as a yes vote in the rec.something line, and a no vote in the sci.something and sci.s.some lines. It shouldn't be too hard to write a program to count votes. The resulting table might look like: YES NO sci.something 23 120 rec.sub.something 118 13 rec.something 124 12 total voters: 150 If no group got 100 more YES than NO votes, then the group would fail. We could decide on some way of picking a winner, for example, the group the smallest NO vote, that has at least 100 more yes than no votes, or group with the higest percent of YES votes. Please note that this is just a proposal. I am suggesting it as a way of running multiple votes at one time. It does have the disadvantage of being more complicated, both for the voters and the vote counters. I think the advantages of the system, ie allowing multiple votes to run concurrently outweigh the disadvantages. -- USmail: Bob Sloane, University of Kansas Computer Center, Lawrence, KS, 66045 E-mail: sloane@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu, sloane@ukanvax.bitnet, AT&T: (913)864-0444 "The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage." -- Mark Russell