Results of quick vote

Thomas A. Fine (fine@cis.ohio-state.edu)
Tue, 18 May 93 21:18:30 -0400


The results are below. Unfortunately, there was no clear winner.
Things can generally be divided into two camps: those who want
the mailing list to only exist for those people with some sort of
access problem, and those who want the mailing list to serve a separate
purpose from the newsgroup. These two ideas aren't at all compatible.

Let me say at this point what will be set up. There WILL be an archive
of the newsgroup, with a Web interface, maintained at this site. I'm
in the process of setting it up now. So it will be possible for people
with no access to usenet to READ the stuff thru the web.

Now for my opinion. Traffic thus far on the newsgroup has been light.
While there has been a lot of noise, this will be reduced as soon as an
FAQ is ready, and as soon as people stop seeing the newgroup message.
Hopefully this will be more true here than in other groups because they
(newbies) will have the thrill of reading the FAQ thru the web, so they
can play with the software rather than annoy us with questions.

I very much agree with the notion that for a successful web, we have to
get the newbies involved. As it is, the mailing list is seeing some of
this anyway, and I think the mailing list is to big to handle. If
we really really want separate channels for such discussions, I'd suggest
we do one of the following:

1. add another (moderated) newsgroup - comp.infosystems.www.tech
(who wants to moderate it?)
or
2. create a separate mailing list for same.

comments?

>Proposal 1.
> No gateway, let the mailing list die.
> Vote here if you are planning on reading the newsgroup and unsubscribing
> from the mailing list. Note that there will be at least a one-direction
> gateway; I just wonder how may people won't care if it is there.

12 votes

>Proposal 2.
> Bi-directional gateway.
> Vote here if you have no USENET access whatsoever and want to use the
> mailing list as an interface to the newsgroup

9 votes

>Proposal 3.
> One-directional gateway. (from mailing list to newsgroup)
> Vote here if you can read USENET, but not post, or if you want the
> mailing list to become a small subset of the newsgroup, so you won't
> have to read the newsgroup.

1 vote

>Proposal 4.
> One-directional gateway plus newsgroup archiving under the Web.
> Vote here for a compromise between Prop 2 and Prop 3.

9 votes

>Proposal 5.
> One and a half directional gateway. Articles are sent from mailing
> list to newsgroup. Digests of articles are sent from newsgroup to
> mailing list.
> Vote here if for reasons I can't imagine. Well, maybe if you
> are a uucp site, with no USENET or Web access. Yuck.

2 votes