From: ksdavis@silver.ucs.indiana.edu (Karleenus Schwartz Davis)
Subject: Re: *BAD* music group reorg will not be honored
Organization: Indiana University
Date: Sat, 7 Nov 1992 02:06:39 GMT

>>riley@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Daniel S. Riley) writes:
>>>As a not-entirely-bogus analogy, suppose for a second that your local
>>>election board sent out registration verification cards, but only
>>>listed the polling locations on cards sent to republicans, not
>>>democrats, independents, or anything else.  
>>
>stanley@ruby.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:
>>Are you claiming that the CFV was not posted in r.m.s? Or are you
>>claiming that the CFV posted to r.m.s did not contain instructions on
>>how to vote (i.e. "the polling locations")?
>
riley@theory.TC.Cornell.EDU (Daniel S. Riley) writes:
>Neither.  As the rest of my post was supposed to explain, I'm claiming
>that the way the vote was conducted skewed the composition of the
>voting population, by making it more likely that readers of
>rec.music.makers would vote than would readers of rec.music.synth.

At the risk of helping out the other side of the discussion, let me
offer an addition to the analogy that might make it more relevant:

The local election board sent out registration verification cards to
republicans in clearly marked envelopes, stating in big red letters on
the outside "IMPORTANT VOTING DOCUMENTS ENCLOSED.  OPEN IMMEDIATELY,"
but to the democrats and everyone else, they sent them in envelopes
marked "IMPRESSIVE ZUCCHINI RECIPIES NEEDED.  REPLY IMMEDIATELY!"

But this is a little extreme.  I will admit that clearer subject lines
would be preferable, but as far as I can tell, there is no way to
*crosspost* an article with a different subject line in every group it
appears in, and crossposting is what is required to make the RFDs and
CFVs appear at the same time.  In this case, however, there was a
reference to all affected groups in the Keywords: line of the headers.
Doesn't fix it, but it helps a little.

> [. . .stuff deleted. . .]    What I am calling for is a modification of
>the rules that ensures that the scope of votes is more clearly indicated
>on the subject line of CFVs, so this doesn't happen *next* time.

I agree with this.  But also realize that whoever moderates the one
moderated group to which RFDs and CFVs must be crossposted must find a
way to change the subject line so it is appropriate and unequivocably
clear for each group to which it gets posted.  If this isn't possible,
the single subject line would have to state the expected effect on
each group, which would make the subject line *miles* long.  And a
name like that would be cut off by most newsreaders (ok, at least my
threaded newsreader, where my decision on subjects is made only
knowing the first 30 characters or so of the subject), so it would not
achieve its purpose.

Perhaps the subject line should be as clear as possible, but that the
real change in the guidelines would be to make mandatory a summary of
thrust of the RFD/CFV in the first few lines?  Then people who read
the first page of the post will see why it was posted to their group.

By the way, those calling for a revote:  In 6 months, have at it.

-sz
Newsgroups: news.groups