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From: wmartin@brl-smoke.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.news,net.news.group
Subject: Re: more interim results from worldwide net readership poll
Message-ID: <2118@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 26-Mar-86 14:20:08 EST
Article-I.D.: brl-smok.2118
Posted: Wed Mar 26 14:20:08 1986
Date-Received: Sun, 20-Apr-86 06:59:59 EST
References: <5192@glacier.ARPA> <1994@hao.UUCP> <5249@glacier.ARPA>
Organization: USAMC ALMSA, St. Louis, MO
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One other query about the poll: What effect, if any, is there from hosts
that do not permit access to all newsgroups? I have no idea if this is a
very rare situation, or one relatively common and becoming commoner, or
somewhere in-between... For example, on this host, access is limited to
groups considered "work-related" or somehow justifiable on government-
owned equipment. However, to be a "good neighbor" and to act as a
full-fleged participant in the network community, all groups are allowed
in and passed on downstream -- it is just that protections are set so
that the local user community cannot get to the "restricted" groups.
While this situation is sad, that is the way life is, considering GAO
and Army Audit inspections and the regulations on computer usage.

Now, if the "arbitron" polling is a test of popularity, I would like it
know that I really like and would read certain of the groups that I
cannot get to. They are still in my .newsrc, but I've shifted them to
the end, and they show up in an "rn" "L" listing as so many postings
unread. I can't read them now, but I would if I could.

Does some similar situation exist at many other net sites? Or is this so
unusual that there is no point in paying attention to it, since it
would be an extreme anomaly? (As far as I know, "arbitron" has not been
run at this host, so it could not have affected the so-far published
results. But what would be the effect on the statistics if this was
common?)

One thing that makes me wonder this is the relatively low rating of
"net.consumers". I can't read that now, but it was the first group
in my .newsrc back when all groups were available. Since *everyone* 
buys consumer goods, I can't imagine *anyone* having access to this
group yet not reading it. But it seems that it is down below other
groups of much less interest. Could it be that there are some
artificial skewings of the data due to "work-related" groups being
accessible on more machines (or by a larger group of users on some
single machines) than these "personal-interest" kinds of groups like
net.consumers?

This is not necessarily a wrong or bad thing, now -- if people cannot
get to the groups, even if they would want to, it is probably more
realistic to rate the groups by the real number of people getting to
them, instead of the number of people who *want* to get to them (which
would include both those that could and those that could not).

Anyway, I haven't seen any mention of this factor, so I thought I'd
bring it up.

Regards, Will Martin