UVV's 100th Vote

[Ron Asbestos Dippold]

State of the UVV

news.groups Feb 14 (UNI) - The UVV (Usenet Volunteer Votetakers) was
thrown together last August as an experiment after the
s.r.i.a. debacle (which was a contributing factor, but not the only
one). As near as I can tell (I keep records, but not in any form that
would make it easy to count), the comp.binaries.newton vote, which
ended Saturday 11:59 PM, is the 100th official vote handled by the UVV
in that time.

We've had our small share of screwups, but nothing fatal - the worst,
I think, was using the wrong name for the newton.programming group in
the ballot (programmer) for an early UVV vote, and this was fixed
without affecting the vote. More importantly, ALL votes have been
free of votetaking scandal (unfortunately depriving news.groups of a
significant entertainment source), and all votes are handled in a
fairly uniform manner - 22 days standard, 2 CFVs, and most
importantly, fast mail acknowledgements. CFVs and results reporting
are much more standardized now, as we've spent considerable work
finding the best way to present information, and in choosing what and
what not to include. Interim mass acks no longer give away important
vote information. We now have the CANCEL vote concept (new for
multiple group votes).

And, since they're all doing this without any recompense and most of
them don't get much recognition for it, here's the "Knights Who Say
ACK" who have handled votes past and present, without who our success
so far wouldn't have been possible. If I've forgotten someone,
"D'oh!" and add your name.

Ed Bailey Dave Cornejo Ron Dippold
Jim Huggins Jan Isley Ian Jackson
Mark James Ian Kluft L. Todd Masco
Jay Maynard Wes Morgan Brenda Roder
Paul Schleck Andew Solovay

And, not exactly a votetaker, but a honorary member who certainly
works as hard:

Dave Lawrence

My big fear has been that having votetaking services available will
make people more likely to take something to a vote, which puts the
burden on you, the news.group regulars, to put group proposals through
the wringer. Luckily, most proposers never seem to have thought much
about the votetaking before the UVV (or didn't know how much work it
was), and many still seem surprised that we exist, so I don't think
we've seen anything too much more than normal Usenet growth would cause.

From the software engineering trivia side: this totally unexpected
turn of events all came about because of UseVote 1.0, written to
handle the votetaking for the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games split.

Goals for this year: improve the infoform and more tightly integrate
that with a few programs to lessen the turnaround time and drudgery.

--
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur (Anything in Latin sounds profound.)