evan@telly.on.ca (Evan Leibovitch) (11/04/90)
[ I am conducting this vote on behalf of Steve Elias
<eli@PWS.BULL.COM>, who was involved in the discussion regarding the
creation of this newsgroup. I apologize for the delay in actually
calling for the vote. I was not involved in the discussion, and while
I am personally in favour of the group, I would not consider myself a
proponent. ]
This is a CALL FOR VOTES for a proposed unmoderated newsgroup,
comp.dcom.fax.
The proposed function of the group is to provide a forum for
discussion of computer and standalone facsimile technology, including
computerfax hardware/software, faxmodems, standalone fax machines,
plain paper fax machines, and other fax devices.
COMMENTARY: The call for discussion for comp.*.fax was posted many
moonths ago, and there was very little discussion. The person who
issued the call mistook the lack of discussion to be a lack of
interest. When he withdrew the call for discussion, many people
responded at that time indicating that they supported the idea for a
comp.dcom.fax newsgroup.
HOW TO VOTE: Mail (do not post) your votes by either replying to this
posting, or sending mail to
fax@telly.on.ca
If you have problems reaching me that way,
...!uunet!attcan!telly!fax
should get your vote here as well. Note that votes which are posted
rather than mailed will be ignored, and not counted in the final
total. Please state clearly whather your vote is "yes" or "no" in the
subject line of you message. Votes mailed to me personally (rather
than the "fax" account) are discouraged but will be accepted.
Voting closes on December 2, 1990. At that time, if there are more
than 100 "yes" votes than "no" votes, and if the "yes" votes outnumber
the "no" votes by a ratio of at least 2-1, I will issue a call for the
group's creation.
There will be a single mass acknowledgement posted midway through the
vote, and another one which will accompany the final vote tally. There
will be no individual replies to votes.
Thank you.
Evan Leibovitch, Sound Software, located in beautiful Brampton, Ontario
evan@telly.on.ca / uunet!attcan!telly!evan / (416) 452-0504
...quoth the Raven, "Eat My Shorts!" -- Barttelecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) (11/04/90)
The Call For Votes message appearing in this issue of the Digest is required here since Usenet (to whom the Digest is gatewayed as comp.dcom.telecom) requires that in addition to announcement of voting in news.groups, persons in groups likely to be affected are also to be notified. The establishment of 'comp.dcom.fax' would affect this group since it is likely some messages which previously would have appeared in telecom pertaining to Fax will no longer appear here. It is possible some articles about Fax might be cross-posted, as now happens sometimes with articles about modems which appear in comp.dcom.modems at the same time as here. I do not believe there is sufficient traffic in the subject matter of Fax at this time to warrant a separate group. In any event, some readers of TELECOM Digest are unable to receive the Usenet news groups and (unless the article is cross-posted) would not be able to see posts pertaining to Fax if they did not appear here. My recommendation therefore is to vote NO for the establishment of comp.dcom.fax. After you have made your decision, please send your vote to the address given in the previous message. *Do not* send your vote to me. Thank you. Patrick Townson TELECOM Moderator
johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us (John R. Levine) (11/05/90)
Do you see alt.fax? It doesn't go everywhere Usenet does, so you may
not. It's been running 5 - 10 messages per day lately. There's
plenty of traffic for a real news group.
Regards,
John Levine, johnl@iecc.cambridge.ma.us, {spdcc|ima|world}!esegue!johnlyarvin-norman@cs.yale.edu (Norman Yarvin) (11/05/90)
telecom@eecs.nwu.edu (TELECOM Moderator) writes: >I do not believe there is sufficient traffic in the subject matter of >Fax at this time to warrant a separate group. The newsgroup "alt.fax" already exists; the reason put forth for creating comp.dcom.fax has been to move alt.fax to the mainstream hierarchy. The traffic in question has already left TELECOM Digest. [Moderator's Note: In the above three messages we have rebuttals to my comment yesterday that a fax newsgroup is not needed. Since I printed one point of view, I am including these opposing viewpoints. Discussion about the establishment of new groups ordinarily should take place in 'news.groups'. Thanks. PAT]
JAJZ801@calstate.bitnet (11/08/90)
> The establishment of 'comp.dcom.fax' would affect this group since it > is likely some messages which previously would have appeared in > telecom pertaining to Fax will no longer appear here. > I do not believe there is sufficient traffic in the subject matter of > Fax at this time to warrant a separate group. While I agree with some of PAT's arguments about the creation of comp.dcom.fax (note there already is an alt.fax with some regular traffic), I disagree with his recommendation to vote NO because: While it is true, that it would lose the vast knowledge available from the many readers of telecom. However, I don't recall seeing many fax-related messages in the Digest (most on switches and the like), while there are, on average, a few messages per day on alt.fax. PAT could 'fix' this loss by cross-posting himself (unless this is a violation of some Usenet tenet). This would enable him to perform is usual function of keeping signal to noise at a reasonable level while still keeping the information available. Of course I don't know if he wants more work to do ... However, the bigger issue in my mind is the volume of mail to the digest and the volume from it. Unless PAT is willing to commit to publishing ALL the fax-related messages, then some may be lost due to the winnowing and editing process he must, of necessity, do. And the digest volume and frequency present a lot of material to weed (no insult intended) through to find fax-specific information or replies. The fact that telecom is moderated also imposes a time buffer to the response process. Since I think PAT, himself, can fix the losses resulting from the creation of the new group, with apologies to all who are just now recovering from the pre-election deluge, I say vote YES. Jeff Sicherman [Moderator's Note: Thank you for your opinion, but PAT has no intention of taking on the extra work. As it is, I screen over a hundred articles daily for telecom, of which you see a minimum of 12-15 on days when I am too busy to do more than one issue, and perhaps 40-50 on days when I do several issues. PAT]
cos@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu (Ofer Inbar) (11/12/90)
Just a note to people considering voting on this: This is not an official vote as per Usenet guidelines, since the CFD and CFV did not appear in news.announce.newgroups; consequently, you will find that it will likely get low propogation. Also, it will make things more confusing if someone later tries to create this group 'officially'. Whether or not you like the guidelines, realize that there are newsadmins who will not create an 'unofficial' newsgroup. So you might want to forget this and start over again with a CFD, this time in news.announce.newgroups as well as here. Yes, I know, there was an official CFD a while back, but the poster withdrew it and it has long since expired anyway, without vote. Cos (Ofer Inbar) -- cos@chaos.cs.brandeis.edu WBRS (BRiS) -- WBRS@binah.cc.brandeis.edu WBRS@brandeis.bitnet