🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan04.213001.63448@watson.ibm.com> strom@Watson.Ibm.Com (Rob Strom) writes:
>Given that Usenet is often described as an anarchy,
>it's not clear to me exactly what procedure I should
>follow to change the current guidelines, or whom
>exactly I ought to be trying to persuade.  

This group is as good as any...I was merely suggesting that you just ignore
John; any good points he makes will undoubtedly be raised by others, and you
can avoid the unpleasantness of arguing with someone who's never wrong.

>What I wrote above was a narrower argument --- namely that
>multiple votes can be passed "all at once" (that is, at the same time)
>even though they are on multiple ballots.  I wasn't
>addressing your objections.

OK, I'll buy that.

>I don't think multiple ballots are any more difficult for the
>vote taker.  Many vote takers count ballots by automated software,
>and therefore in that case the vote taker's work is O(1).

It's still multiplied by the number of separate ballots required, as the
software must be written to process each ballot.

>In my experience as a voter, smaller ballots are simpler.
>Often I could just ignore entire ballots rather than
>reading all of a long ballot and then abstaining on
>the unnecessary questions.

Balance that, though, against the confusion factor of "I voted on that
already, didn't I?"

>While occasionally it could work the other way, I think
>the benefits of (1) guaranteeing subject lines which are
>both clear and short and (2) avoiding situations like
>the rms vote outweigh any deficiencies. 

If you do actually achieve 1, then it's a Good Thing. Avoiding 2 is nearly
impossible, though; there will always be a sore loser, and even occasionally a
sore winner (Hi, Joel).

>Do we have logs of past votes?  Can we determine what
>fraction of the last, say, 100 renaming ballots would
>have had to be split under my proposed rules?

The data is available from ftp.uu.net, I think, in something like
usenet/news.announce.newgroups.
-- 
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.
      "Science is all in the public domain, and allows few secrets."
              -- Tom Clancy, _The Sum of all Fears_