Hello all IMAGE Users:

As announced by my SIGIMAGE Executive Committee (SIEC)
colleague Joe Geiser last Thursday evening, the '99 SIGIMAGE
Ballot is now up on the web and the polls are open, at:

www.csillc.com/sigimage/

One correction and clarification:  On the above home page
for the '99 Ballot, it says:

" Vote against an item with a negative number, vote for an item
with a positive number. Your vote total may not exceed 10."

Then after you complete entry of the demographic info, on the
actual ballot it says:

"Please remember that your total votes must not exceed 10.
You may use negative numbers to offset other positives, but
in the end, your ballot total must not exceed 10 votes."


This oversight is mostly my fault, for not being clear in the
text that I sent to SIGIMAGE webmeister Joe Geiser before I
went skiing last weekend:  What I meant to specify is that the
*absolute* total of all votes on any one ballot must not exceed
10:  Ignore the sign when adding votes;  i.e.:  negative votes
do NOT "offset" positives.  As Gavin already pointed out, if
allowed and carried to extremes this would allow one ballot to
include "-9" votes for 10 items offset by a "+99" vote for an
11th item.  I hope all will agree that this would "skew" our ballot
results in an undesirable way....

Sooo...:  Please continue to vote if you have not already done
so, but:  If you DO vote first thing starting Monday 8 March, be
advised that the additional edit checks to prevent doing Gavin's
"-90, +99" thing may not be in place immediately.  In which case
until said edit checks ARE in place, you will have to be careful
if you enter a negative vote for one or more items, to make sure
that your absolute vote total does not exceed 10.

For the small handful of voters who entered negative votes for
one or more items and in so doing exceeded 10 absolute, we
will be contacting you to ask your indulgence in submitting a
revised ballot.   But please do not try and do so until we let you
know it is O.K. to proceed;  the check for duplicate ballots will
prevent you from doing so until the initial entry is reset.

Mea culpa, mea culpa...  sorry for the confusion....  beat up
on yours truly for the error if you wish, but please do not let
it keep anyone from voting:  As Joe has already mentioned,
we are hoping to substantially better our record of 112 ballots
returned for 1998 in 1999.....  signs so far are good:  After the
first weekend we are already nearly half-way to last year's
total.....

thanks,

Ken Sletten
SIGIMAGE Chair