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From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.admin,news.groups
Subject: These new voting schemes
Message-ID: <4771@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 20 Oct 89 15:34:09 GMT
Reply-To: woods@ncar.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 42


   Recently we have all seen a lot of new voting schemes suggested whose major
goal (and a laudable one) is to provide a way of resolving
controversial naming issues. Without exception, they all solve this
problem but without addressing one crucial issue that is paramount:
VERIFICATION. The only reason why the current voting scheme works (by
"works" I mean that most site admins on the net are willing to abide by
the results of it) is that it is easily VERIFIABLE.  When the votes are
posted, anyone on the net can make sure their vote was tallied
correctly (and in the case of an admin, even trouble themselves to see
that votes cast by their users were for real), and anyone who can run
"wc -l" can verify that the ballots posted do in fact lead to the
stated result. In other words, the tools required for verification are
supplied with at least many versions of UNIX, which means that they can
be checked by a LOT of people.  With these "multiple vote" schemes this
will no longer be the case. For one thing, the bandwidth required to
post the results will now increase by an order of magnitude, as will
the complexity of the process needed to verify the results. No longer
will a simple "wc -l" suffice; specialized software would be required.
Putting aside my personal views on voting and the namespace, and
putting on my "single site administrator" hat, I would be reluctant to
accept the results of votes that cannot easily be verified, or where
the only verification comes from someone with a vested interest in the
result (i.e. the vote-taker).
  For these reasons, I am convinced that multiple-vote schemes are
unworkable.  The name of the group simply must be resolved before the
creation vote is taken. I can see two ways to do this: 1) Have a
separate vote on the name first. This would work as long as there are
only two names in the running (with more than two names, we obviously
bump into the same multiple vote verification problem).  Since most
naming controversies usually revolve around which hierarchy to place
the group in, this might work, picking one name in each hierarchy to
vote on. The disadvantage is that it will lengthen the creation process
considerably for groups which suffer from controversy over the name
(which might not be a bad idea depending on your point of view).  2)
Have a name czar or small group of czars choose which name to vote on.
This obviously requires finding a group of people that the net admins will
trust.
   Unless we do one of these two things, there will not be a workable
solution to naming controversies.

--Greg