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From: olorin@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Dave Weinstein)
Newsgroups: news.groups,talk.religion.newage
Subject: Re: Updated Call for Votes: talk.religion.pagan
Message-ID: <23234@ut-emx.UUCP>
Date: 16 Jan 90 16:18:55 GMT
References: <23146@ut-emx.UUCP> <9692@hoptoad.uucp>
Sender: news@ut-emx.UUCP
Reply-To: olorin@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Dave Weinstein)
Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas
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In article <9692@hoptoad.uucp> tim@hoptoad.UUCP (Tim Maroney) writes:
>In article <23146@ut-emx.UUCP> walt.cc.utexas.edu!olorin@cs.utexas.edu
>(Dave Weinstein) writes:
>>Due to the upgrade of the Operating System of the network from which
>>the vote was being conducted, votes sent between (approximately) January
>>2nd and Janary 10th (the deadline) could not get through. Therefore,
>>in all fairness to those who attempted to vote during that period, the
>>vote has been extended for a comparable amount of time to January 20th, 
>>1990. 
>
>When days went by after the end of the voting period for
>talk.religion.pagan and nothing was heard from the vote collector, I
>became suspicious, particularly since a friend of the collector
>continued to solicit votes after the end of the voting period.  Now we
>have a unilateral declaration of an extension of the voting period,
>obviously because the collector hopes to get more yes votes.  It is
>obvious that if there were enough votes at present, then the collector
>would not have called for an extension.  It is equally obvious that if
>there had been a real problem with vote delivery starting two weeks
>ago, as claimed, we would have heard about it before now.
>

  To begin with, there was in fact an announcement in the second call for 
votes to the effect that mail delivery would be somewhat flaky due to an
upgrade. At the time, I was under the impression that it would only be an
intermittent problem. As it turns out, the /etc/passwd with the user accounts
was removed for the duration, so any mail sent to olorin would bounce with a
"No such user" message, and in fact one voter (a "no" voter) reported *just*
such an occurence to news.groups during that period. 
  Secondly, I resent the implication that I would deliberately prolong the
vote because we were losing, but not if we were winning the vote. I'm sorry
Tim, but you *do not* know me, and in all fairness have no way of making
any such assertion honestly.
  Finally, how would you expect me to announce a problem with vote delivery
when the machine and network I would be using was unavailable? If you
still doubt the existence of the machine downtime, please send mail to
the system administrators here.

>The voting period is over.  Post the tally.  You do not have the right
>to redefine the rules to your convenience.  If this vote didn't go to
>your liking, then you do have the right to start a new call for
>discussion after a waiting period, and if consensus is reached during
>the discussion period (a condition that was not met in this case), then
>you have the right to issue a new call for votes.

  The voting period cannot be fairly said to be over when a significant
body of votes could not be received. I do believe that this extension is in
the spirit of the guidelines, and quite frankly I am not surprised that you
are the only person ranting about it. Throughout this entire process you
have consistantly been attacking the idea of talk.religion.pagan, and the
fact that you have seized on this particular issue does not surprise me in
the slightest.

--Dave

--- 
Dave Weinstein              GEnie: OLORIN
olorin@walt.cc.utexas.edu   olorin@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu
Disclaimer: My employer has nothing to do with my opinions.