From: demon@swinny.cix.co.uk Newsgroups: demon.local Subject: RESULTS - CFV for Proposed G1 limit for demon.local Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 23:47:29 GMT Message-ID: <365aae10.603303534@newstest.cix.co.uk> RESULT OF CALL FOR VOTES Summary: Proposed G1 limit for demon.local PROPOSAL - Maintain G1 limit for demon.local FAILS 45:29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Voting closed at 23:59:59 GMT, 31st October 1998. Proponent: newsmaster@demon.net (Proposer - Demon Internet). Votetaker: votequestion@swinny.cix.co.uk (Rob Felton). ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Distribution: demon.news, demon.local ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The Results: The results follow below, with the announcement of the experiment and results of the experiment beneath them for informational purposes. PROPOSAL - Maintain G1 limit for demon.local Number of Votes = 74 votes Quorum for 75% Majority = 55.50 votes YES = 45 = 60.81% NO = 29 = 39.19% YES beat NO by a majority of 16 votes, but this is not above the 75% majority needed for the limit to be maintained. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- The Particulars of the Vote PROPOSAL Desmond Forde Desmond8&Vdesf.demonuk??co Y leo leo8&Vlgab.demonuk??co Y Michael J. Dower michael8&Varkas.demonuk??co Y Andrew Gierth andrew8&Verlenstar.demonuk??co N Rodger pete8&Vglost.demonuk??co Y Andrew Wilkes awilkes8&Vbenevolent.demonuk??co Y David J.P. Graves davidgraves8&Vgrav.demonuk??co Y Tim Willets tim8&Vwillets.demonuk??co N Terrance Richard Boyes tez8&Vpierrotuk??co Y Donald Oddy donald8&Vgrove.demonuk??co N Christine Taylor ct8&Vctaylor.demonuk??co N William Tarr (Wm) newsmaster8&Vtarrcity.demonuk??co N John Vincent victor-vector8&Vdial.pipex.com N Ray Proven ray8&Vmines-a-pint.demonuk??co Y Alan Ford alan8&Vwhirlnet.demonuk??co N Paul L. Allen pla8&Vsktb.demonuk??co N Mike King Nosmo8&Vnosmo.demonuk??co Y Les Turner les8&Vwhickham.demonuk??co N Stuart Baldwin stuart8&Vboxatrix.demonuk??co N Nancy Boston nancyb8&Vbostons3.demonuk??co Y B.E.Newsam ben8&Vmicroser.demonuk??co Y Pete N Bramley pete8&Vlro-g.demonuk??co Y Chris Hill chris8&Vchris-h.demonuk??co Y Christopher Sharp chriss8&Vresharp.demonuk??co N Jesus jesus8&Vheavenuk??co N David Manley-Reeve DMR8&VAylesbury-Automationuk??co Y Neil Barker neil8&Vnemesis.nu N Peter Derek Quinton pdq8&Vdealworld.demonuk??co N Graham Green gg8&Vbeer-monster.demonuk??co N Tony Williams. tonyw8&Vledelec.demonuk??co Y ROGER CRATE postmaster8&Vr-m-c.demonuk??co Y mark horsman mark8&Vglobaltvuk??co Y Mike Fleming mike8&Vtauzero.demonuk??co Y Richard Anthony CARSONS richard8&Vraccon.demonuk??co Y Andy Nudd boris8&Vdaabath.demonuk??co N Dave Millard dave8&Vfocus3.demonuk??co Y Phil. phil8&Vphilscom.demonuk??co Y Vivianne Cheshire Vivianne8&Vvanillapod.demonuk??co Y Paul Hitchen paulh8&Vnevertime.demonuk??co Y Tom Bird tombird8&Vdbqa.demonuk??co Y John Bifield john.bifield8&Vdial.pipex.com N Tim Hawkins tim8&Vmaladjusted.demonuk??co Y Will Watkins will8&Vmankymole.demonuk??co N Barry Salter barrykas8&Vsalterg.demonuk??co Y obscurity obscurity8&Vobscure?gro Y Dominic Ramsey dom8&Vdynamo.demonuk??co N Neil Tungate neil8&Vskipper.demonuk??co N Stuart Millington phupp8&Vwormhole.demonuk??co Y Paul Womar Vote8&Vpwomar.demonuk??co Y Piers C Structures Piers8&Vbroke.demonuk??co N Georgina Allen Georgina8&Vakra.demonuk??co Y John Hall john8&Vjhall.demonuk??co Y Pat McConnell pat8&Vcrowwood.demonuk??co N Robert HULL Robert8&Vthehulls.demonuk??co N Rob Allen rob8&Vfclcom.demonuk??co Y Simon Robinson simon8&Vsgvaults.demonuk??co N John Kaye john8&Vjohnkaye.demonuk??co Y Duncan Munro duncan8&Vmuffy.demonuk??co Y Brian Jones bajones8&Vworcester.demonuk??co Y Ken Hughes ken8&Vreporters.demonuk??co Y Mark Booth markb8&Voxim.demonuk??co N Allison Gough allison8&Vstuffie.demonuk??co Y Elspeth M Parris elspeth8&Valian.demonuk??co Y Steve Rogers listbox8&Vthebeast.demonuk??co Y Anthony D. Wright adw8&Vsaska.demonuk??co N Richard Clayton richard8&Vhappyday.demonuk??co N Alec Cawley alec8&Vcawley.demonuk??co Y Mike Rogers mike8&Vclakor.demonuk??co Y Keith Stanbury keith8&Vilf0rd.demonuk??co Y Chris Benson chrisb8&Vjesmond.demonuk??co Y Gary Smith shadyron8&Vnetcomukuk??co Y Richard Ashton richard8&Vcorixia.demonuk??co N Anthony Naggs amn8&Vubik.demonuk??co N Rich Whitaker rich.whitaker8&Vazrael1.demonuk??co Y Invalid Votes No Name or Address on ballot paper (or both) Alan Edward Milton alan8&Vjabethnic.demonuk??co Firth Consulting mailer8&Vfirthcom.demonuk??co Invalid Email Address on ballot paper Jan Kern news8&Vdemonuk??co Vote disallowed - Account closed (Confirmed by Demon Internet) Don Caister don8&Vyakka.demonuk??co ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Votetakers Notes: Well we have reached the end of what has been quite a long road with quite a lot of controversy along the way, and in the end the YES vote got the result but not a high enough majority. Demon Internet started a what was quite an experimental path and courageous path of allowing their customers to have a say in what service the company gives. Unfortunately it seems that experiment has really come back to bit them with most people preferring to pick on the bad points of the vote, instead of appreciating Demon giving them the opportunity to have a say in their business. In my opinion I think the decision by Demon to only allow one vote per dial-up account was a wrong decision (but this was not something I could say during the vote period), and I suspect that the decision did not really have any effect to stop voting fraud, and in the end just damaged Demon. To help balance the issue I made a ruling to only allow one vote per any dial-up account for any ISP - but this did not seem to satisfy even the hardest critics. Unfortunately most discussion seemed to concentrate around attempts of voting fraud and whether UKVoting, or in particular myself, could detect voting fraud. I found it highly upsetting that the reputation of UKVoting was being damaged by this vote and the wild accusations thrown at UKVoting which I believe have no basis. And the worst thing was that these opinions started appearing within UNNC & UNNM which was a most undesirable situation. In the end UKVoting always attempts to combat voting fraud and does take appropriate action when its detected and I believe the discussion was pointless, and really just being used by certain people as a bashing decision. At the end of this unique situation for UKVoting & Demon I think my conclusions would be: 1) I think Demon has had its fingers burnt by what was a excellent idea, and I suspect will seriously consider whether they do this kind of thing ever again. 2) UKVoting will certainly be willing to run votes away from its main role a moment as running votes for the uk.* hierarchy, but I suspect more scrutiny of the rules will be taken next time before they are issued. 3) The situation could have been helped if someone from Demon had entered the discussion within demon.news on an official basis instead of people posting on an unofficial level. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- PROPOSAL (Posted August 1998) ======== Effective immediately for a period of one month we will enforce a G1 limit for demon.local only for traffic into and outbound from news.demon.co.uk. What this will mean: Articles injected by customers at news.demon.co.uk cross-posted to demon.local will not be propagated off news.demon.co.uk ; such articles will be accepted by news.demon.co.uk - effectively they will be only visible on that newsbase. Articles injected outside news.demon.co.uk and cross-posted to demon.local will not be propagated to news.demon.co.uk. Articles injected outside or at news.demon.co.uk and posted only to demon.local will be treated as normal. At the end of the one-month period we will as an extraordinary occurrence, run a single simple YES/NO vote to sustain or drop this restriction. We will require at least a 75% majority in favour of retaining the restriction in order to do so. The details of the vote will be posted closer to the time. "Meet" announcements are usually cross-posted to demon.local and other groups ; in this instance it will be necessary for the poster to multi-post them. Since these announcements are made on an infrequent basis there should be no abuse issues raised by this. RESULT OF EXPERIMENT: ===================== This had two noticeable effects. 1) Articles injected by customers at news.demon.co.uk cross-posted to demon.local have not been propagated off news.demon.co.uk. 2) Articles injected outside news.demon.co.uk and cross-posted to demon.local will not be propagated to news.demon.co.uk. Note that articles injected, both inside and outside news.demon.co.uk, and only posted to demon.local have been treated as normal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This vote is being conducted by a neutral third party member of UKVoting. UKVoting is a group of independent votetakers who count votes on CFVs in the uk hierarchy and perform counts for other 3rd parties. The UKVoting web pages can be found at http://www.ukvoting.org.uk There is a five day discussion period after these results are posted to demon.local & demon.news. This discussion should take place in demon.news. Allegations of irregularity should be sent to newsmaster@demon.net and CCed to demon@swinny.cix.co.uk Thanks Swinny - Rob Felton Co-Ordinator, UKVoting (mailto:ukvoting@usenet.org.uk)