From: bwr607@hotmail.com
Lionel wrote in
news:rl43k0180t8e9i8oc2d2m02luhfuhqdm4f@4ax.com:
> Kibo informs me that Bard stated that:
>
>>A long time ago, pehaps when self conducted polls or shortly after
>>UVV came into being, votes were invalidated bacause of "No Usenet
>>Presense" . This rule was discarded because lurkers do have the right
>>to vote.
>
> In discussions here about the CFV system, I keep on hearing people
> talking about the 'right' of the lurkers to vote in CFVs, as though it's
> a law of physics that's no more debatable than the law of gravity,
> rather than just a reminder that Usenet was once small enough that there
> was a fair chance that you'd actually met most of the people lurking in
> your favourite newsgroup.
> Why should people who do nothing at all to contribute to the collective
> wisdom of a technical newsgroup have any say at all in how it's managed?
> It's not like they're paying the participants to provide them with the
> information or entertainment that motivates them to read that group.
> Even the rawest newbie who posts nothing more to RPD than his dilemma
> over which $150 digicam he should buy his teenage kid for xmas,
> disappears for a few weeks, then posts a one line "Thanks for your
> advice - my kid loves the camera I bought him" note a few weeks later
> has done more to contribute to the well-being of the newsgroup than a
> thousand lurkers.
> As you in news.groups surely know, the single most important factor that
> determines whether a newsgroup thrives or whithers is the community
> created by the people posting in that group. Without the posters, a
> newsgroup is nothing more than an entry in a bunch of configuration
> files.
> Deciding the fate of a CFV on the vote of people who've never posted to
> any of the newsgroups involved in the CFV makes about as much sense as
> pro football players following the 'advice' that the fans scream at them
> while watching the game on TV. Even the trolls do more to contribute to
> the Usenet body politic than the lurkers do, merely by virtue of the
> fact that at least they actually participate in the process & have some
> sort of stake in the outcome.
>
>>Even if there was a descion to go back looking for a Usenet Presense,
>>if one wanted to multi-vote all they would need to do is maintain two
>>or more identities.
>
> Which would be quite hard work. *Much* harder work than just setting up
> a bunch of email accounts on a dozen different domains, which is all
> that it takes to stack a CFV at present. I personally manage several
> dozen domains for various organisations, so it'd be trivial for me to
> create a voting bloc that'd be both bigger & less suspicious-looking
> than that of the entire Stromboli clan. And these days, it's not all
> that hard for any random, non-technical Usenetizen to rustle up half a
> dozen email accounts by spending an afternoon Googling for free webmail
> providers & signing up for accounts.
> Now suppose, hypothetically, that the rules were changed to only permit
> votes from people with at least a six month posting history in any of
> the groups involved in the CFV. IMO, if a troll's both creative &
> dedicated enough to create multiple identities & generate six months
> worth of authentic-looking newsgroup presence for each of them, you
> might as well acknowledge that they're going to beat any online system
> you could possibly come up with, & just take comfort in the knowledge
> that it's entirely possible that some other troll is doing the same
> thing, but is voting the other way.
>
While not perfect, I like your Usenet presence criteria better than a
suggested "register 6 months before you can vote" or "you can vote if you
have already voted on another CFV" scenario. The latter, IMO, encourages
serial voting. At the very least, obvious serial voting like the recent
"Stromboli" fiasco should be banned. They voted on 3 CFVs in a row..and the
"family" appears to be getting bigger with each vote.
--
Bill
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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