From: jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu (Jay Maynard)
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: Give up, Dave, you've lost!
Date: 19 Nov 1992 18:40:45 GMT
Organization: UT Health Science Center Houston

In article <1992Nov18.203120.19555@watson.ibm.com> strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom) writes:
>Exactly!  That's why I said in an earlier posting that
>it is circular reasoning to argue that votes are legitimately
>bundled onto a single ballot because they're "related".

No, that wasn't my point. There's no objective way to determine in advance
what's related and what isn't, true - but that simply means that we must leave
it up to the proposer to decide. Bad proposals will get shot down during the
discussion phases, as happens now; those few that don't will get voted down.

>That's why I advocated a *syntactic* criterion for determining
>whether votes may be bundled.

Your syntactic criterion multiplies work unnecessarily, and itself is subject
to confusion, as I will point out below.

>I disagree that voters will assume they've already voted, since
>each ballot will have a different Subject line.

"Oh, another rec.ham-radio vote. Why do they keep bombarding me with these?
Isn't once enough?"

>I disagree that this multiplies the work to be done, because
>there are exactly the same number of yea's and nay's --- they're
>just distributed onto different ballots, instead of different
>columns of a single ballot.

The increase in the number of ballots is significant, not the number of
individual questions contained on those ballots. It takes me three times as
much work to process three ballots as it does one ballot, even if the number
of questions remains the same.

>Even if this did make it more difficult for the vote taker,
>my concern is more for the voters and maximizing fairness
>of all, rather than minimizing work for the vote taker.

If you increase work for the vote taker, he will take different actions that
will minimize his work. Those actions may lead to suboptimal results. It is
possible to increase participation in the system while not significantly
increasing work for anyone (with the possible exception of the moderator of
news.announce.newgroups).

>|> Here's what the reorg accomplished:
>|> rec.ham-radio ==> rec.radio.amateur.misc
>|> rec.ham-radio.packet ==> rec.radio.amateur.packet
>|> rec.ham-radio.swap ==> rec.radio.swap
>|> create rec.radio.amateur.policy as a split from rec.ham-radio
>|> create rec.radio.cb as a split from rec.ham-radio, more or less

>|> As I understand your proposal, you would have required the first two proposals
>|> to be on one ballot, the third to be on another, and the last two to be on yet
>|> another. This would have made the task of collecting and tallying votes three
>|> times more work for me, and would have led to more confusion.
>Actually, assuming that ==> means renaming (i.e. that there
                                           Yes, it does.
>was no previous group called rec.radio.amateur.misc), the
>1st, 4th, and 5th votes could be bundled onto one ballot,
>and the 2nd and 3rd votes would be on different ballots.

This is what I mean by your rules being confusing: as I interpreted them, the
first two groups go on one ballot because they rename a hierarchy of groups
the same way; the third proposal would require a different ballot because it's
a different renaming from the first two, and the last two would have to be on
yet another ballot because they're group creations.

>Presumably all the ballots could be sent to the same location,
>and your automated parser/tallyer could have done exactly
>what it did before.  The parsing algorithm would be different, that's all.

No, it couldn't have; it would have had to have three different parsers to
handle the three different ballot formats, and would have had to maintain
three separate databases for the three different sets of ballots (or would
have had to consolidate the three ballots properly), and would have had to
report on the three sets of ballots separately,... In short, you've tripled my
work.

>People who read only the newsgroup rec.ham-radio.swap, never
>having heard of the newsgroup rec.ham-radio (this is probably
>less likely than the recent case, where I read rec.music.synth
>but not any of the rec.music.makers.* groups) would
>have gotten a CFV whose subject line mentioned *their*
>group, rather than possibly receiving a CFV whose subject
>line mentioned a group they never read.

I guess that you're saying that "rec.ham-radio.* reorg" wouldn't interest
someone in rec.radio.swap? I certainly don't see it that way. Besides, what
have you gained that posting separate pointer articles in each group to the
central, consolidated discussion wouldn't accomplish?

>My position is based upon generalizing the published subject line
>guidelines for general postings:  subject lines should
>be the gating factor in deciding whether to read a posting;
>you should not expect a posting with a seemingly irrelevant
>subject line to be read, even if it is posted in
>the correct group.  I agree with these guidelines as
>applied to general postings; I think they should be
>equally applicable to CFVs.

The simple fact is that Subject: lines are a notoriously poor way to determine
whether or not a posting is to be of interest. The guidelines you refer to are
the ideal, but topic drift is endemic to the net (you need look no farther
than the top of this message for an example!) and filtering by Subject: line
is merely a good way to miss articles that you would have liked to have read.

Even if Subject: lines were perfect, though, you still haven't gained anything
over pointer articles added to the current system.

>|> What about the work of collecting and tallying the votes, and hat about the
>|> confusion factor for the voters?
>The work of collecting and tallying the votes was done by
>computer, so I claim there was no impact.

The votes had to be fed to the tabulation programs, and the tabulation
programs had to be written.

>And the voters would not be confused at all.  Voters
>interested in rec.ham-radio could vote on their issues;
>voters interested in rec.ham-radio.packet could vote
>on their issue, etc.

You're assuming that this is the norm.
The vast majority of the voters, at least in the rec.ham-radio.* reorg, voted
on all five issues.

>Voters with multiple interests
>could vote on multiple issues.  Voters not having
>multiple interests or not knowing or not caring
>about certain issues wouldn't have to wade
>through questions they don't care about and
>wouldn't have to abstain about questions they
>don't care about.  Simple.

The majority of the voters would have had to vote on multiple ballots to
express the same opinions that they did during this vote. There was very
little confusion exhibited by the voters, and the vote succeeded quietly. The
rec.music.makers.* reorg would have done so had Dave Hayes not gone nonlinear
for no reason at all. You still haven't shown how your separate ballot
proposal gains anything over pointer articles.
-- 
Jay Maynard, EMT-P, K5ZC, PP-ASEL | Never ascribe to malice that which can
jmaynard@oac.hsc.uth.tmc.edu      | adequately be explained by stupidity.
           "Cat: Four legs and an attitude." -- Jim Reese