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From: rusty@cadnetix.COM (Rusty)
Newsgroups: news.groups,news.admin
Subject: Re: Proposed OFFICIAL Newsgroup Creation/Deletion Guidelines
Message-ID: <7250@cadnetix.COM>
Date: 28 Mar 89 19:39:57 GMT
References: <1634@ncar.ucar.edu> <37740@bbn.COM> <27806@apple.Apple.COM> <8281@csli.STANFORD.EDU>
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Reply-To: rusty@cadnetix.COM (Rusty)
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In article <8281@csli.STANFORD.EDU> cphoenix@csli.stanford.edu (Chris Phoenix) writes:
<<Sorry, I lost the attribution of the next quote.  My apologies>>
>>o In both cases, if the number of spoiled or proven missing ballots exceeds
>>  2% of the total vote, or if enough spoiled/missing votes are found that
>>  would have changed the result of the vote, the vote must be re-taken
>>  by an agreed-upon neutral third party.
>
>Given the vagaries of e-mail, this seems a bit harsh.  Far more than 2%
>of my off-system letters get bounced.  I'd be very surprised if many 
>votes would pass this test.
>
>...
>Chris Phoenix
>cphoenix@csli.stanford.edu

An example.  the vote for rec.ham-radio.rules failed by 5 votes.
The vote was about 126 to 31 (or some such numbers, I'm going from memory).

If 10% of the votes did not make it, and if the votes that did not
make it were of the same ratio as the actual vote, then rec.ham-radio.rules
did not get created *because* email failed to get the vote through.

(And since the connectivity of the vote-taker was EXTREMELY poor, I can believe
that the number of failed votes was much worse than 10%.  I even seem to remember
seeing at least 5 postings of votes (invalid, of course) FOR creation of the
group... posted because they could not get through to any of the 3 paths
suggested for voting.)

Now I agree that email tends to be less than perfect.  However, 
just because something normally works a certain way, does that mean 
that we should ignore its effect?  Just because mail can be highly 
unreliable at times, does that mean that we penalize the proposed 
group just because the proposer happened to be poorly-connected?  
Had I realized how poorly connected the r.h-r.rules vote-taker 
was, *I* would have volunteered to be the vote-taker, as I seem
to be pretty well-connected.  (To all but gary delong, the 
r.h-r.rules vote-taker!)   However, I did not know that there 
was going to be such a problem.

And now, r.h-r.rules is not going to be created, and the volume in
r.h-r will continue.  (Sure, it has slowed down a bit at the moment,
but just wait 'till the proposal which will get sent to the FCC gets
announced!).


Since the vote failed, I will NOT call for another vote (even though
I bet it would pass!).  However, it seems that, in the future, the
vote guidlines should take into account the fact that mail is
not nearly as reliable as we would like.

I would suggest that the guideline go like this:

If enough spoiled/missing votes are found that would have changed the result
of the vote, then those votes should be counted and the result changed.

(Uh-oh, here come the flames!)

---------- #include "quote.cute"
Rusty Carruth  UUCP:{uunet,boulder}!cadnetix!rusty  DOMAIN: rusty@cadnetix.com
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