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From: chuq@Apple.COM (Chuq Von Rospach)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: Votes with many NO votes (Re: Proposed OFFICIAL Newsgroup Creation/Deletion Guidelines)
Message-ID: <27812@apple.Apple.COM>
Date: 24 Mar 89 22:29:14 GMT
References: <1634@ncar.ucar.edu> <11326@s.ms.uky.edu> <3549@ficc.uu.net>
Organization: Life is just a Fantasy novel played for keeps
Lines: 37

>How about using the rule of 100: any vote with over 100 NO votes, regardless
>of the number of YES votes, obviously has a lot of opposition and should not
>be created.

No, because it's too easy to build up power blocks to beat any arbitrary
number. The idea is not to see if someone can build up a special interest
group of a given size, but whether there is enough interest to warrant the
group (and not enough anti-interest to consider it a bad idea).

In another (long) message, I proposed an alternative message. For those that
don't want to wade through that one, I'll summarize:

o Any vote that has fewer than 150 valid votes fails for lack of interest.
o A vote requires 67% of all valid votes for the creation or deletion of
  a group (i.e., a two-thirds majority must agree to create the group or a 
  2/3 majority must agree to delete it. In either case, the bias is towards
  the standard quo).
o If the number of 'spoiled' or provably missing votes is > 1% of the total
  voting *or* can be shown to change the final verdict, the vote must retaken
  and administered by an agreed upon neutral third party.

The rationalization is this: numbers don't mean anything, especially
considering the growth of the net. So we go by majority rule. I've chosen
67% instead of 50%+1 because group creation/deletion should have a strong
backing from the readers, not just a basic majority. And, yes, I'm
suggesting that group deletion take the same structure as creation -- except
that those *for* deletion have to show the 2/3 majority. 

The idea is to stabilize on the way things are unless there's a good reason
to change it.

Also, if thre's a controversy on the voting -- incorrectly tallied, too many
thrown out or spoiled, too many that simply didn't get to the voting
administrator, the vote should go to a neutral party -- arbitration, sort
of. This person would take the vote again, and validate the results, which
will be binding. This should reduce some of the "you threw out all the votes
you didn't agree with" garbage.