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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--