Xref: utzoo news.groups:7794 comp.windows.x:8515 Path: utzoo!utgpu!utstat!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!rochester!pt.cs.cmu.edu!andrew.cmu.edu!nsb+ From: nsb+@andrew.cmu.edu (Nathaniel Borenstein) Newsgroups: news.groups,comp.windows.x Subject: Re: comp.sys.andrew: NEW call for votes Message-ID: <0Y4iHny00Uk40pGdsZ@andrew.cmu.edu> Date: 6 Mar 89 20:07:15 GMT References: <4Y4dPXy00Uk4Qp6GQ9@andrew.cmu.edu>, Organization: Information Technology Center, Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA Lines: 31 In-Reply-To: > *Excerpts from mail: 6-Mar-89 Re: comp.sys.andrew: NEW ca.. Richard* > *Draves@cs.cmu.ed (541)* > I don't think the voting will be fair. Nathaniel cross-posted this to a > widely-read Andrew bboard (used for general announcements), giving readers the > option of automatically sending a yes vote. However, there wasn't a no vote > alternative. (The alternative was not sending a vote at all.) Just because > sending a no vote is much more painful for the hundreds/thousands of readers of > the Andrew bboard, the voting results will be tremendously biased. > I think Nathaniel should discard all votes from the andrew.cmu.edu mail domain. Sigh... Apparently nothing I can do is non-controversial. OK, when I publish the vote, I will make it clear how many come from which domain. Meanwhile, I am cross-posting this to all the same bboards, giving everyone the option of an automatic "no" vote just as easily as the "yes" vote. I do, incidentally, have to take exception to the notion that this would have been "tremendously biased." I really didn't intend to bias the results, merely to make it easy for people. The fact is, it is exceedingly unlikely that ANY Andrew users are going to vote "no" on this anyway -- not a single one did last time. I find it hard to imagine why any regular Andrew user would vote against having a newsgroup for discussions about Andrew. But to be fair, I am now giving them the same automatic option that they had for the "yes" vote -- this message carries with it an equally easy way to place a "no" vote, and I will make it clear how many votes came from andrew.cmu.edu when I post the vote summary. The reason, by the way, that I posted it on the announcement bboard was that some of our local users had complained that not everyone here was getting a chance to vote, because they don't happen to read things like comp.windows.x, news.groups, or info-andrew. So I cross-posted it on a local bulletin board; I really didn't think of myself as stuffing any ballot boxes, and I'll make it clear where all the votes come from.