From: strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom)
Subject: Re: RF(Informal)D: Standard RFD/CFV Format
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 92 16:38:20 GMT
Organization: IBM Research
Keywords: RFD CFV formats guidelines votes

In article <1ec6spINNn0q@talon.UCS.ORST.EDU>, stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:

|> This quote is a complete proof that nobody will EVER be able to solve
|> the problem of people not knowing the process, whether they are newbies
|> or old hands.
|> 
[my earlier quote:]
|> >I had implicitly assumed that the guidelines
|> >also required Subject lines to be more specific
|> >than the guidelines actually require of votes.
|> 
|> I.e, This experienced user who read the guidelines didn't notice that the
|> guidelines are silent about the Subject line of the CFV, but assumed
|> that the guidelines required them to be a certain way.
|> 
|> Folks, there will always be people who don't understand what they read
|> or what they are told. You can write flawless prose to describe the
|> voting process, and force people to read it, but there will still be
|> those who don't understand.

I can't accept your characterization of the guidelines as "flawless prose".
It is very unclear on the issue of what is required vs. what is
merely recommended.  Here are the guidelines with respect to Subject lines:

			   Use Descriptive Titles

  The subject line of an article is there to enable a person with a limited
  amount of time to decide whether or not to read your article.  Tell people
  what the article is about before they read it.  A title like "Car for
  Sale" to rec.autos does not help as much as "66 MG Midget for sale:
  Beaverton OR." Don't expect people to read your article to find out what
  it is about because many of them won't bother.  Some sites truncate the
  length of the subject line to 40 characters so keep your subjects short
  and to the point.

Since CFVs are "articles" for the purpose of this paragraph, it would
appear that the descriptive title requirement would apply to CFVs,
and that it was recognized that without descriptive titles, a reader
is not expected to read a CFV to find out what it's about.
That's what I thought.  (Remember this issue arose because
the CFV posted to rec.music.synth appeared in its subject line
to be a vote about reorganizing rec.music.makers, but actually
included a vote about renaming rec.music.synth.)

Now after reading the post-mortem of the rms vote, the net-consensus
seems to be that despite the above, the current process expects
that a CFV appearing in your newsgroup should be read regardless
of what the title says, as long as it says "CFV".  Furthermore
Mr. Stanley believes that this fact is well-documented.

OK.  I accept that I read things one way and the net seems
to have interpreted it another way.  

But I don't accept the implication that improving the documentation
is a fruitless endeavor because even something as flawless as
the current documentation will always be misunderstood by
some idiot.

|> 
|> If we allow the mere existance of those who don't understand the process
|> to keep us from having a process, we are fools. If we continually change
|> the process to make those who can't understand the current one happy, we
|> will wind up with NOBODY knowing what is going on.

Well now I do understand the process, at least better than I did.
I still think (1) it wasn't well documented, and (2) even if it
were perfectly documented, it's not as good a process as the
modified one which I proposed.

-- 
Rob Strom, strom@watson.ibm.com, (914) 784-7641
IBM Research, 30 Saw Mill River Road, P.O. Box 704, Yorktown Heights, NY  10598