Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!clyde.concordia.ca!uunet!aplcen!samsung!cs.utexas.edu!rice!brazos.rice.edu!bbc From: bbc@rhea.rice.edu (Benjamin Chase) Newsgroups: news.groups Subject: Re: Various topics Message-ID: Date: 4 Mar 90 03:08:02 GMT References: <_DW17VCxds8@ficc.uu.net> <59198@ccicpg.UUCP> <::X1644xds8@ficc.uu.net> <59391@ccicpg.UUCP> <1990Mar3.052721.14102@lth.se> Sender: root@rice.edu Reply-To: Benjamin Chase Organization: Center for Research on Parallel Computations Lines: 72 In-reply-to: bengtl@maths.lth.se's message of 3 Mar 90 05:27:21 GMT Well, (Jeff D.,) if we're saying our "Amen"s, I'd like to cast mine for Bengt Larsson's reply to Peter Da Silva: Bengt writes: >We are slamming you because you misled people into thinking that you were >NOT gathering an official vote, but rather doing a poll just to see what >people thought about the subject. Yes, exactly. I think it's pretty clear that when someone asks for a show of hands regarding the creation of a newsgroup, the magic incantation to use is "call for _votes_", not "survey", "poll", etc. If you don't know that much, you should let someone else take the vote. And Bengt writes: >And of course it matters how things are done. How can you put so many >hours and so many messages into discussing different kinds of surveys >and then say that IT SIMPLY DOESN'T MATTER when it comes to yourself >taking a vote??? *Of course* you should have posted your vote the >formal (guidelines-) way if that's what you wanted to do. Isn't that >obvious? Yeah. I think Peter's inconsistency in this is kind of strange. And Bengt writes this too: >Why can't [Peter] just admit that [he] did something wrong and then be >done with it? Or apologize for being unclear? [Does he] even _know_ >how to apologize? That is one of the great unsolved mysteries of life. Peter writes: >>Actually, I was expecting a flood of votes from Richard Sexton and friends >>putting my VOTE(*) firmly on the sci side as well. >>--- >>(*) As Brad Templeton frequently points out, the words "poll", "vote", and >>"survey" as used on Usenet are effectively equivalent. Peter, if you still wonder why the sci.aquaria fishheads didn't vote heavily for your "poll"*, perhaps you should devote a second or even a third neuron to the problem. I can come up with several reasons: They didn't take your vote seriously. They didn't care anymore, since they had their group. They didn't think there would be any action taken based on the results from a poll, especially one that bore no resemblance to an official call for votes, and so figured the poll didn't need their opinion added to it. They conciously boycotted your poll. They had put you and ficc in their kill file long before you solicited opinions. Perhaps you mistake this post as an attack on rec.aquaria? No, I'm in favor of keeping it _and_ sci.aquaria, and improving their propagation, too. I just am tired of you trying to gloss over your role in this whole mess. Seriously, for you to dress up your poll as an official vote now is such pure bullshit. Why do you keep shoveling this to news.groups, with such lame excuses as "well, Brad says that polls are votes"? Please don't show us next what your mommy says polls are. We don't want to hear about it. (*) I'm quoting Peter with these quote marks. That _is_ the word he used at the time, in case any of you are in doubt after reading his paragraph that shouts "VOTE", as if that were what he'd said at the time. -- Ben Chase , Rice University, Houston, Texas