Newsgroups: news.groups
Distribution: usa

I will say this upfront so that everyone knows how I feel:

        o However procedurally correct the renaming of rec.music.synth
          may have been, I do not believe it correctly involved the
          people who would be most affected by it.

        o I do not believe there is any malicious or underhand tactics
          at work here, I just think there has been a rather sad
          series of misunderstandings and bad assumptions.

That said, I would like to register my discontent with the vote, and
would echo the call for a second vote, now that the implications of
this issue have been raised with the people who will be affected by it.

Not wishing to pick on anyone in particular, Pete Hartman does
succintly put forward some of the points that I disagree with:

Thus,

>>>>> "Pete" == pwh@bradley.bradley.edu (Pete Hartman) writes:

> People claiming that they're using USENET without being aware of its
> procedures and then claiming that that ignorance is excuse to try
> overturning a vote POST FACTO are nearly as laughable.

I have been connected to the Internet for nearly four years now, and I
have never come across anything telling me what the USENET guidelines
are.  I choose groups to read based on the time I have available
and what my interests are.

Not having an interest in anything to do with the 'news' software, I
have never even glanced at the groups 'news.*'.  Nowhere, in any of
the groups I read, in four years, have I seen anything telling me to
'read news.groups', or recognise that a CFV posted to one of the
groups I read, with the header 'CFV: rec.music.makers.*' or somesuch,
would actually contain a vote related to the group I am reading.

> The guidelines are set to try to be as fair as possible to as many
> people involved as possible.

Here is the basic point, I think.  In the interests of *fairness*, as
it is now obvious that a large number of people who will be directly
affected by the renaming *did not see the CFV*, as it was somewhat
ambigously posted, in the name of common sense and *fairness*, a
second vote seems the only reasonable thing to do.

To say everything is procedurally correct and hence "that's that" seems
to ignore the idea of fairness.

To scream for the vote to be overturned *without a revote* seems to
ignore the idea of fairness.

To simply have another vote, with the added carrot of getting a
larger, and hence more representative population voting seems only
sensible.

> If the readers of the group are too ignorant of
> the way things work and of the fact that they SHOULD read CFVs because
> after all they wouldn't be posted to their group if they weren't relevant,
> then they should either wake up or live with their apathy.

Ahem.  I have a demanding and rewarding job that takes a lot of my
time.  I do not have the luxury of free time spent following every
turn and twist of USENET guideline.  To label people as apathetic
because they don't have the time to read posts that seem not to relate
to them is a little unfair, surely.

If the title of the offending CFV had mentioned 'rec.music.synth', I
would have read it.  And I would have voted.  It seems that a large
number of other r.m.s readers would have done the same.

However, it did not.  And I have never been made aware of the
*absolute rule* that a CFV posted to a group will directly affect that
group.

Now I understand this.  But it was a rather nasty way to find out.

So, is life so difficult that the people who put forward the proposal
and conducted the vote can't say "Hey, maybe we assumed too much of
the rec.music.synth readership.  There seems to be a problem, so let's
have a revote to make sure everything is fair" ????

Is this such a bitter pill to swallow ??

If anyone has any followups directly to this, please e-mail.  I do not
subscribe to news.groups.  I have only posted, as an 'apathetic'
rec.music.synth reader, to register my discontent. 

Cheers,

Mike

mjp@hplb.hpl.hp.com
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