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From: craig@dcl-cs.UUCP (Craig Wylie)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: voting methods
Message-ID: <764@dcl-cs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 7-Nov-85 06:14:05 EST
Article-I.D.: dcl-cs.764
Posted: Thu Nov  7 06:14:05 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Nov-85 03:59:59 EST
References: <656@neuro1.UUCP>
Reply-To: craig@dcl-cs.UUCP (Craig Wylie)
Organization: Department of Computing at Lancaster University.
Lines: 43

In article <656@neuro1.UUCP> sob@neuro1.UUCP (Stan Barber) writes:
>A few questions and thoughts on voting.
>
>I think that voting here is haphazard at best. I think it could be automated
>much as the other control messages are automated on usenet. If a vote need
>be taken, a control message (call it getvote) is issued on the network.
>When the news software encounters this message (when  user is reading the
>group), it asks the user to cast a vote (Yes, No, No Opinion) and perhaps
>asks for comments. The user casts a vote, and the software stores the vote
>for later tabulation.
>
>Now the questions:
>
>1. Is this a good idea, or am I just wasting bandwidth?

After the recent screaming and shouting about net.internat and net.flame
I would say its not a waste of bandwidth  --  a vital discussion.

>2. If it is a good idea, would requests for votes be posted to
>net.news.group for new groups or rmgroups or should it be posted to net.general
>or some place where more people would have a chance to vote?

Would it be necessary to post it to *any* particular group, or perhaps
linking it to any number of groups (including all/any). would be a 
solution. I feel it would be useful to know how many people are reading
any particular newsgroup  --  we have been discussing deleting groups
and a more accurate knoledge of their readership might prevent some of
the arguments ( ie:- No one ever reads this group, oh yes we do, since when
smart ****** ect.... ;-)). To this end perhaps a control message that 
reported on group readership over a set period from the time the message
was received and then reported back to the sender. Note that this is as well
as the voting request suggested by Stan Barber.

>3. What about sites that continue to run archaic netnews or notes? What
>if anything should be done for them?
>
Really shouldn't people be running a recentish version  -- even spaf
stated that he had little sympathy for people running old software when
new stuff was available.



			Craig.