Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!ncar!woods
From: woods@ncar.ucar.edu (Greg Woods)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Where have No votes gotten us?
Message-ID: <3328@ncar.ucar.edu>
Date: 1 Jun 89 19:51:42 GMT
References: <371@odi.ODI.COM> <3400@looking.on.ca> <372@odi.ODI.COM> <3315@ncar.ucar.edu> <3411@looking.on.ca>
Reply-To: woods@handies.UCAR.EDU (Greg Woods)
Organization: Scientific Computing Division/NCAR, Boulder CO
Lines: 18

In article <3411@looking.on.ca> brad@looking.UUCP (Brad Templeton) writes:
>But after all this heat and smoke, just how significant has the whole
>No vote process been?

   First of all, just because there hasn't been any significant impact of NO
votes thus far doesn't mean there won't ever be. And if that IS the case,
why worry about them if they are so insignificant?
  One thing they do demonstrate (such as in the comp.women case) is when there
is really a netwide controversy vs. when there are just 4 or 5 vocal people
opposed to a group. In most cases, as has been pointed out several times, 
people who don't care about the topic under consideration aren't going to
bother to vote NO. Even those who feel a group is not really needed won't
in general bother to vote against it. The only times we have seen lots of
NO votes is when there is some controversy over the name of the group.
To me, what this shows is that naming issues ARE important and should not
be trivialized.

--Greg