Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!spdcc!xylogics!cloud9!jjmhome!cpoint!alien
From: alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Some observations on this whole mess.
Message-ID: <2811@cpoint.UUCP>
Date: 9 Nov 89 18:14:20 GMT
References: <11171@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2752@cpoint.UUCP> <6803@ficc.uu.net> <1989Nov4.170406.11407@alembic.acs.com> <6819@ficc.uu.net> <1989Nov7.010805.12319@alembic.acs.com> <17197@kuhub.cc.ukans.edu> <1989Nov8.000550.21341@alembic.acs.com>
Reply-To: alien@cpoint.UUCP (Alien Wells)
Organization: Clearpoint Research Corp., Hopkinton Mass.
Lines: 32

In article <1989Nov8.000550.21341@alembic.acs.com> csu@alembic.acs.com (Dave Mack) writes:
>Precisely. And under the existing procedure, and even more so in the
>procedure Peter is pushing, the minority who are concerned about the
>name can block the creation of the newsgroup altogether. This gives
>them too much power.

Agreed.  100 NO vote vetoes is fundamentally flawed.

>There is an easy (but ugly) fix for this problem. Hold separate votes
>for the group charter and the group name. Then the people who want to
>have the group but don't care about the name can vote on the charter.
>If that vote passes, those who care about the name can pick one in the
>second vote, with the caveat that *some* group must be created as a
>result of the name vote. If it turns out to be sci.aquaria, so be it.
>If it turns out to be rec.aquaria, so be it. At least you know that
>the people who voted in the second vote are concerned about what the
>newsgroup's name is, not just whether or not it will be created.

Actually, this method is flawed as well.  It can be 'rigged' by the 
appropriate selection of groups to vote on.  For instance, sci.aquaria
might be run against rec.aquaria, rec.aquarium, and rec.pets.aquaria.
In this case (even with your assumptions about peoples preferences)
sci.aquaria might easily win due to the dilution of the opposition between
different possibilities.

Check out my recent proposal (the MAUVE scheme) and I think you will see
that it would solve all of these problems without even going to a second
vote, and without the pathological problems of STV that you alluded to.
-- 
--------|	Fall not in love, therefore.  It will stick to your face.
Alien   |   					- Deteriorata
--------|     decvax!frog!cpoint!alien      bu-cs!mirror!frog!cpoint!alien