From: tale@uunet.uu.net (David C Lawrence)
Newsgroups: news.announce.newgroups,news.groups,soc.religion.islam,soc.culture.pakistan,soc.culture.indian,soc.culture.bangladesh
Subject: Cancelled CFV: soc.religion.islam.ahmadiyya moderated
Date: 20 Nov 1992 01:50:18 -0500
Supersedes: <BxnGIJ.FFq@uunet.uu.net>
Supersedes: <Bxo4rF.2tx@uunet.uu.net>
Supersedes: <1e1e7uINNomc@life.ai.mit.edu>
Summary: wait a couple of days and try again

The current Call for Votes (CFV) for an Ahmadiyya newsgroup is being
cancelled.  A new call for votes will be issued within a few weeks,
possibly with a new impartial vote taker.  Discussion on the proposal
is still open until the new vote is called.

A chronology of the events is listed here.  It is fairly long, so if
you don't care then there is not anything else important to read here.
A lot of unfair allegations have been leveled against several people,
and I would like to show that no one was intentionally trying to do
harm to anyone else involved in this affair.

On Monday of last week, Mr Nabeel Ahmad Rana submitted the call for
votes for soc.religion.islam.ahmadiyya to news.announce.newgroups, and
subsequently posted it to news.groups.  When I saw it in news.groups I
informed him that it was invalid as it had not appeared in
news.announce.newgroups, and that I was going to delay the call for
votes for a little while until I could send a separate message which
suggested how the actual vote should be conducted.

Mr Rana replied to my message promptly, indicating that he had
cancelled the CFV in news.groups.  We agreed that the votes he had
received in response to it were invalid and would have to be
resubmitted when the real CFV was posted.

On Wednesday I sent a message to Mr Rana, Dr Tahir Ijaz (the proposed
co-moderator), religion-islam-request@ncar.ucar.edu (D. Salman Azhar,
Hanan Lutfiyya, Asim Mughal, and Basalat Ali Raja; the four moderators
of soc.religion.islam) and group-advice@uunet.uu.net (Mark Moraes,
Gene Spafford, Matthias Urlichs, David Wright and me).  It was an
attempt to head off possible future problems with the vote by
describing some things that would and would not be considered
appropriate behaviour during the course of the vote.  It was not an
accusation that people would do any of the negative things I
described, but only advice of things of which to be wary, as it has
seemed to me that this was a very volatile topic and many of the
people who were involved had not been very experienced in the group
creation process.  (I apparently offended one of the moderators of
soc.religion.islam with my message, and I apologise for an implication
which was certainly not intended.)

During the course of Thursday, I received replies from Mr Rana, Dr
Ijaz, and Mr Raja saying that they had read my message and I could go
on with the posting of the CFV.  Mr Raja approved the article for
posting in soc.religion.islam and gave some useful input on which
other groups the CFV would be appropriate in.  Mr Rana also asked for
it to be cross-posted in soc.religion.christian, but Charles Hedrick,
its moderator, did not think it appropriate.

On the wee hours of Friday morning, as I continued a non-stop work day
which had begun on Thursday morning, I processed the queue for
news.announce.newgroups.  Mr Mansoor A Jafri had posted a call for
votes which arrived at UUNET seconds later at just before midnight
eastern time.  I checked it against the copy from Mr Rana and saw that
it was nearly identical to the one Mr Rana had submitted, except for
the change in vote taker from Mr Rana to Mr Jafri and a day's shift in
the vote period.  I mistakenly assumed that this was a change which Mr
Rana had decided, and posted the article which listed Mr Jafri as the
vote taker.

At 11:37am (eastern) I got an urgent message from Mr Rana wanting to
know what had happened.  In particular, he wanted to know, "how come a
person who is against the creation of this newsgroup [is] taking
votes?"

I replied to his message at noon, saying that I would cancel the call
for votes immediately.  I did so, and by 2pm I had reposted the CFV
with Mr Rana as the vote taker and a leading comment:

    [[ NOTE:  An earlier Call for Votes was snuck in with nearly the exact
              same content as this article yet with a vote taker who is
              reported to be a strict opponent of the new group.  That
              article has been cancelled and should be considered completely
              invalid.  Please send votes as specified in this article.
                            -- tale ]]

At the point, I would like to apologise to Mr Jafri for the remark,
"with a vote taker who is reported to be a strict opponent of the
group."  Mr Jafri insists that he was merely trying to see this issue
resolved and is not taking sides.  He had apparently never posted on
the topic before and does not know why he was labeled an opponent of
the group.  I am sorry for my comment.

Mr Raja, upon seeing my cancel, reposted the original article from Mr
Jafri with this leading comment:

    [Moderator's Note: this situation is getting out of hand.
    Actually, it got out of hand long ago.  This is the last
    article that will be posted to soc.religion.islam on this
    topic -- Basalat Ali Raja]

He was very upset with me for cancelling the article which he approved
(though I saw him as approving the article which had Mr Rana as the
vote taker).  I am not sure whether we are still at odds with each
other over this, but I do hope we have moved past it.  I also hope
that the future call for votes will be posted in soc.religion.islam as
I believe it should be.

The cancel message apparently did not propagate fully because of an
old propagation bug which causes cancels not to be forwarded by B News
sites if they reach those sites ahead of the article which they are
cancelling.  This message supersedes all three CFV articles that I and
Mr Raja have posted on this topic.

During the afternoon I did get a couple of messages on the issue and
could tell we would have problems.  I had absolutely no time to deal
with them, however.  It was just incredibly bad timing for a newsgroup
creation crisis.

I went home at about 4:30 after a 31 hour work day and did not handle
any mail except for a message to Mr Rana and Mr Raja at 6pm in which I
briefly defended my actions and indicated that I was about to take a
well-deserved break from the world.  That is how the situation has
stayed until Monday, when I composed this message and sent it to
several of the people involved for their approval as a reasonable
accounting and resolution of the events.  It was sent to the followng
people on Monday afternoon:

  Nabeel Ahmad Rana <rana@rintintin.Colorado.EDU>
  Dr. Tahir Ijaz <ijaz@ccu.umanitoba.ca>
  majafri@cco.caltech.edu (Mansoor  A. Jafri)
  religion-islam-request@ncar.ucar.edu (D. Salman Azhar, Hanan Lutfiyya,
                                        Asim Mughal, Basalat Ali Raja)
  group-advice@uunet.uu.net (Mark Moraes, Gene Spafford, Matthias Urlichs,
                                David Wright, David Lawrence)
  jik@pit-manager.mit.edu (Jonathan Kamens)

I am sorry this is so long in coming; it wasn't until recently that
I was clear from the most involved people that this posting was
acceptable to them.

David Lawrence                          moderator, news.announce.newgroups
Xref: sparky news.announce.newgroups:1345 news.groups:22452 rec.games.mud.admin:746 rec.games.mud.announce:145 rec.games.mud.diku:878 rec.games.mud.lp:4208 rec.games.mud.misc:1239 rec.games.mud.tiny:842