Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version VT1.00C 11/1/84; site vortex.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!gamma!epsilon!zeta!sabre!petrus!bellcore!vortex!lauren From: lauren@vortex.UUCP (Lauren Weinstein) Newsgroups: net.news.group Subject: Vote Fraud and Newsgroups Message-ID: <755@vortex.UUCP> Date: Sat, 24-Aug-85 14:25:19 EDT Article-I.D.: vortex.755 Posted: Sat Aug 24 14:25:19 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 25-Aug-85 12:57:29 EDT Organization: Vortex Technology, Los Angeles Lines: 52 It occurs to me that there's a fundamental flaw in the way we handle newsgroup creation/deletion. The person who wants the group says, "I want this group. Send your votes to me." Then he or she sometime later (almost inevitably) says, "well, I got 20 yes votes (or 50, or whatever) for the group, so let's create it now." Outside of the issue of whether or not 20 or 50 or even 200 votes justifies a newsgroup going all over the world to many 10's of 1000's of people, there's another issue. How do we know that the person proposing the group is going to be completely honest about the responses they receive? I hate to make the suggestion that there might be some people on the network who would lie about such things--but perhaps they just conveniently ignore some of the no votes. After all, they want that group, and if there are people who vote against the idea it can make the original idea look bad, and can reflect badly on a person's self-esteem. After all, we're all only human. We tend to operate on the assumption that everyone is honest. Unfortunately, we're dealing with lots of people and lots of egos here, and some people may feel that since they KNOW a group is needed they'll do everyone a favor by only reporting the votes they want to report. And there's no way for anyone to prove that they might have distorted the truth (for whatever motives) in the process. The procedure of sending arguments against a group to the person proposing the group seems equally flawed. Such comments should go to the public forum, not to the person with a vested interest in the group's creation. While it won't solve all of the problems inherent in the situation, and there are certainly a variety of ways for fraud to occur, there's one thing we can do that will remove one variable from the equation right off the bat. All newsgroup voting should be conducted via a disinterested third party. The person who proposes a group should not be the one to count the votes and receive the arguments. A third party should be the one with this "honor," ideally someone who couldn't care less about the proposed group in question. With a small network and few groups (and low traffic) newsgroup creation wasn't such a big deal. But we now have a big network, lots of traffic, and lots of people--a new newsgroup can immediately impact disk space, costs, and various other factors for many, many people around the world. It seem only prudent to try assure some degree of impartiality in the process that contributes to the management of these groups. Just because we don't let the politicians count their own votes doesn't mean we think they are necessarily dishonest or would lie--but we still have separate organizations that handle the counting. --Lauren--