I do not disagree with Stan that there could be better ways to sample the
will of the user community; however,

- We were operating on a very short time table. We only had 10 days from the
end of SIG3000 to get ballots and a system prepared for voting, so we went
with an existing system that had been used in the past.

- More importantly, we WANT people to HAVE TO CHOOSE what is really
important to them, to prioritize. The worst thing that could happen from my
perspective as SIGMPE chairman would be for 15 items on the SIGMPE ballot to
end up bunched together at the top with about the same number of votes. The
inclusion we are striving for will not happen. Instead, a very small group
of people will decide what items make the final SIB ballot without the
benefit of the collective wisdom of the user community. Of the 28 items on
the SIGMPE ballot, I would probably like to see at least 20 or more
implemented. But, the fact is we can only bring as many as 10 items from
each SIG to a conference to determine the final SIB. This final SIB can have
at most 25 items. The best outcome, from my perspective, on the SIGMPE
ballot would be for 4 or 5 items to clearly dominate the voting. Under these
circumstances, I think we could be reasonably certain the items would end up
on the final SIB (assuming they survive the "do-ability" test). This is why
I spread my 10 votes among only 5 items and seriously considered casting all
10 votes for just one item.

John

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stan Sieler [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Tuesday, March 06, 2001 9:57 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [HP3000-L] SIG Ballot voting closes at 5:00 PM PST on
> Friday, March 9
>
>
> Re:
> > I went to the ballots to vote, but because there are a lot
> more issues I
> > feel are important to me than I can spread my votes across
> in a meaningful
> > manner, I decided to defer voting until I can prioritize the issues.
>
> I agree...I'd rather let users vote as many points as they want across
> as many items as they want.  Then, we could use a program on the
> backend to normalize their voting.  I.e., if I voted 100 points for
> item A, and 50 points for item B, and 1 point for item C, and
> nothing else,
> the program would normalize that to 6.6 votes for item A, and
> 3.3 votes for
> item B, and something like 0.06 votes for item C.
>
> As it is now, if 11 things are interesting out of the 28 items on the
> ballot, the voter is screwed...they can't indicate that interest!
>
> Stan Sieler
> [log in to unmask]
> www.allegro.com/sieler/wanted/index.html
> www.allegro.com/sieler
>
>