🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <EMCGUIRE.92Nov20144504@fuller.intellection.com> emcguire@intellection.com (Ed McGuire) writes:
>In article <1ec4flINNmqk@talon.UCS.ORST.EDU> stanley@skyking.OCE.ORST.EDU (John Stanley) writes:
>   A straw poll will be meaningless, because it will suffer from
>   exactly the same self-selection mechanism that the original vote
>   did. Those who care will reply to the straw poll, those who don't,
>   won't.

>By that argument, all votes are meaningless, because all votes "suffer
>from" a "self-selection mechanism."

The complaint about the r.m.s vote was that r.m.s readers didn't get to
participate. Well, they did, but they chose not to, by choosing not to
read the CFV. Anyway, because of this, the vote was skewed.

Well, if the r.m.s vote was skewed because the participant list was
self-selected, then this straw poll was skewed. Why should anyone give
more weight to a straw poll than a formally conducted vote, considering
that both are self-selected surveys?

>The respondents to the poll were the people of the *.synth readership
>who wanted to provide input into the process, 

The vote was no different.

>and the dispute brought
>more people into the process than the vote did.  

Really? You didn't include a number indicating total response in your
extremely long analysis, but adding up those who selected a, b, c, d, or
'dot' gives slightly less than 100. The vote had, as I recall, slightly
more than 270 voters. Even if not, the result would have had to had 100
MORE yes than no votes (and thus more than 100 votes total) to pass.

I think more people participated in the vote than in your straw poll.

If you DID include totals somewhere, it apparently was not in the first
26 lines, and thus those results are meaninless.

>Given the
>circumstances, it's a good bet that those who did not respond don't
>care about the outcome.

Just like during the vote.

>We should try to honor the preference of the *.synth readership, and
>the straw poll gave us a pretty good idea of what they prefer.

The vote had more participants than your straw poll. The vote was open
for at least 21 days, and your straw poll was open for only about a
week. You, by your own admission, gave those who read news.admin.* only
4 days to respond. You delayed notification of those whose admins had
implemented the name change. Yet, despite all these differences (and
all of them limitations in allowing people to participate in your straw
poll) your straw poll is a better indication of what people want. 

Sorry. It isn't.