From: strat@matt.ksu.ksu.edu (Steve Davis)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.elections
Subject: Re: #Debate -- The Internet Relay Chat Channel
Date: 12 Oct 1992 00:12:38 -0500
Organization: Kansas State University
NNTP-Posting-Host: matt.ksu.ksu.edu
Keywords: debate irc politics

I participated in this Sunday night and was very impressed with the
results.  I believe we should try to get as many people as possible
involved in this during the Veep debates Tuesday and the next
Presidential debate Thursday.  I'm even writing a letter to my college
newspaper!

guru-a0@access.digex.com (Guru Aleph-Null) writes:

>Tonight, during the US Presidential Debate, a lot of people blew-off
>some steam and did real-time commentary ala Comedy Channel-- but it
>was a lot more serious and not all in jest. 

In all, the discussion was pretty balanced until about an hour after
the debates were over when a bunch of Rush fanatics discovered the
channel and the conversation degenerated into a philosophical
argument.

>The sad thing was, we barely broke 22 people in the conference! We
>need more people! 

Agreed!  However, even with only 20 people (there were 19 people on
the channel every time I did a /list #debate) the text was going by
pretty quick.  Also two or three people complained that their sites
were lagged enough to make the conversation difficult to follow.

>I would suggest to show up about a half-hour before the debates for a
>warm-up (we wouldn't want you to sprain anything.. although doing this
>will increase your risk of carpal-tunnel syndrome) and get involved
>for the duration of the discussion and stick around for the post
>debate analsys. While participating, have the appropriate media nearby
>(television, radio, messenger pigeon) and watch/listen the debate
>while chatting.

One of the interesting parts of this is that there were people
watching all the major networks and CNN simultaneously commenting on
what they saw and heard.  In the post debate analysis we were able to
compare via IRC what the various networks were carrying.  It was a
minor dissapointment that CNN didn't show their real time polling data
until AFTER the debate.  I would have been very interested to watch
the tracking results thorugh the entire debate.  Another interesting
note is that we all agreed right at the end of the debate that Clinton
won hands down (except for a Bushfan or 2. :) with Perot as a distant
second.  But not far into post debate discussion on TV we began seeing
the news stations reporting a bump in Perot's popularity and people on
IRC actually changed their minds about the debate.  This surprised me.
Even the people on IRC were getting their opinions from the TV instead
of from themselves and each other.

>So don't be shy! Ask your System Administrator or local Guru (please
>not me) about how to use Internet Relay Chat if you have never used it
>before and participate!

The best thing to do is to get someone with a TV and a computer to
connect to the IRC while watching the tube.  Have a Presidential
Debate Party and elect one person to communicate the opinons of
everyone in your room to the IRC.  This way we can get input from more
people without as much increased bandwidth and chatter!

>Those of you who know how the IRC system works, great! Be sure to show
>up! We'll all be happy to have you there!

If you're familiar with IRC, try to get more people in your school or
organization interested in attending this conference!

>The next debate is the Vice-Presidential debate, this Tuesday. Check
>your local listings/news services for details.

See you there!

Stratocaster
a.k.a. StratMan on IRC !

Stratocaster

-- 
	   Steve Davis (I'm a student, not a spokesperson!)
      strat@cis.ksu.edu - Kansas State University - Manhattan KS
				   
	    "I've got it!  Let's do 'The Wiz' ... white!"