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From: sob@neuro1.UUCP (Stan Barber)
Newsgroups: net.news.group
Subject: Re: voting methods
Message-ID: <664@neuro1.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 11-Nov-85 06:00:13 EST
Article-I.D.: neuro1.664
Posted: Mon Nov 11 06:00:13 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 12-Nov-85 03:57:12 EST
References: <656@neuro1.UUCP> <505@brl-sem.ARPA>
Sender: sob@neuro1.UUCP
Reply-To: sob@neuro1.UUCP (Stan Barber)
Organization: Neurophysiology, Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Tx
Lines: 26

The reason I am bothering is to get more people to express their opinions and
thereby get a more accurate sampling of what people think. I hope that this
will help the net be more effective (i.e. responsive) and more efficient
(in getting old unused newsgroups removed and new ones created faster).

If everyone takes a "why bother" attitude, then the net will surely die.
I would not like this so I am trying to do something. Voting seems to be
a problem. I am trying to offer a possible mechanism to attempt to fix it.

Now, to answer your questions:
My proposal does not include apportionment of any kind. The local system
would just tabluate and forward the results. My thought would be to only
allow one vote per user, and if the vote-taker (the originator of the
"getvote" message) wants to apportion things in some way, s/he will have
the raw data from which to work. Of course, stuffing the box is still
possible, but I feel that there is less chance of that being effective
since everyone who reads the newsgroup that has received the getvote control
message will have to vote in some manner (Yes, No, or No opinion).

In answer to the second question about people who are uninterested having
to vote I would say that since the control message can be assigned to 
any newsgroup, that is it unlikely that a person will encounter a voting
situation that is totally unrelated. In any case if that were to occur,
then that person could vote "No Opinion" and move along.

Thanks for the note.