Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!decwrl!decvax!cvman!gdelong
From: gdelong@cvman.prime.com (Gary Delong)
Newsgroups: news.admin
Subject: Re: Where have No votes gotten us?
Summary: rec.ham-radio.rules 115-26
Message-ID: <118@cvman.prime.com>
Date: 2 Jun 89 12:40:23 GMT
References: <3411@looking.on.ca>
Organization: Computervision, Manchester, NH
Lines: 40

In article <3411@looking.on.ca>, brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) writes:
> Some people have thought of abolishing No votes.  A good question
> to ask is, "what have No votes done?"
> 
> The most No votes I ever saw was for tcp.eniac, and it still got more
> than 100 more yes votes.
> 
> Has anybody kept records of surveys over the ages?  I can only recall perhaps
> one or two times that a vote lost by getting more than 100 yes votes, but
> enough no votes to cancel down below 100 again.
 [...deleted...]
> Brad Templeton

Well, the vote on rec.ham-radio.rules got more than 100 yes votes but failed
due to no-votes.  I don't have the exact vote still on hand, but it was
around 115 to 26.  I think the margin may have been less than that because
I remember that if I would have added 5 or 6 user id's from the few thousand
on our corporate net I could have faked it.  But I followed the existing
guidelines even though I was tempted. (pat self on back here)  8-)

From what I've seen, you get a lot of no votes when you try to split a
controversial topic out of a main stream group.

Even though I have been a victim of "no votes", I still feel the guidelines
work quite well.  If you can't get 100 more yes votes than no votes there
is normally something wrong with the proposal in the first place.  As to
what the problem might be, you can list all the reasons someone might object
enough to a new group to vote against it as I can.  I have even noted what
I feel "might" have been ballot box stuffing by network administrators.
(no, I'm not going to elaborate, but you can do a few domain sorts on some
posted vote results youself and compare voters against posters)

But, in the whole, the system seems to work pretty well most of the time.  Why
not just leave it alone?

-- 
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 /  \    /   Gary A. Delong, N1BIP   "I am the NRA."  gdelong@cvman.prime.com
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