[PL] PL2006 Program Ballot

[Susan Bugher]

Thanks for all your efforts, Susan. My vote was missed, in spite of
several tries, thanks to my news server (free.terabit.news). Below is
what I had sent 02-Nov-05, but was never posted...

Annoying. This is a gray area - IMO missed means posted *somewhere* -
but I will count your votes if no one objects.

Susan
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[Susan Bugher]

isileth wrote:

There were 12 posts in this thread on that day (7 Nov).
All of them by posters with unfamiliair names.

isileth, (e-mail address removed), Prozac, Maurizio Catalano, Malossi47,
Aragon, KinetiK, (e-mail address removed), Danix, LittleEndian,
(e-mail address removed), Albirosso

Some of them starting in Italian with "Susan Bugher ha scritto:" .
All of them support ZipGenius, alone or amongst other programs.

Looks to me like someone was desperately trying to get ZipGenius in.

When I saw those votes it did seem likely that some sort of "get out the
vote" effort had taken place. Asking people to visit a web site and
vote/express favorable opinions about a program is a fairly common
practice - I've seen such requests on a number of author's web sites.

"Da rules" http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/2006/2006PL-Procedures.php
don't spell out a required level of participation in ACF to qualify as a
voter. I think the question is whether we want to have such a rule in
the future.

The people who voted for ZipGenius (listed by date posted):

Lew/+Silat" <[email protected]>
Henry The Mole" <[email protected]>
REM <[email protected]>
Jim Daniel <[email protected]>
[audiogalaxy]" <[email protected]>
Marten Kemp <[email protected]>
Albirosso" <[email protected]>
(e-mail address removed)
LittleEndian" <[email protected]>
Danix" <[email protected]>
(e-mail address removed)
KinetiK" <[email protected]>
Aragon" <[email protected]>
Maurizio Catalano <[email protected]_exist>
Malossi47" <[email protected]>
Prozac" <[email protected]>
(e-mail address removed)
isileth" <[email protected]>

Susan
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[B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson]

On 10 Nov 2005 06:00:11 -0800, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

[ZipGenius 'promoted'?]

I usually don't interfere with the PW annual ballot but this suspect is
really hurting.

Don't feel offended. Those posts *look* (hm, lets call it) 'unusual'.
We need to sort that out - to hold up the quality of the PW list.
Any competitor of ZipGenius getting similar voting would be put to
proof, too.

ZipGenius will also profit from that process. If it makes the list
again, it will do so after an accurate selection process. (Like any
other program on the list.)

They are all ZipGenius italian users and - at the same
time - they are all users of an I.T. website where I am one of the
admins ( http://www.wininizio.it ). One of them discovered the PW
ballot on the last day and spread the word among these people.

Can you post a deep-link to the forum post in question to confirm
that? I've only seen the thread on the PW2005 selection from last
year. To be straight: You don't need to do this. (Innocent, until
proven otherwise... ;-) ) It just would solidify your position.

Also, if someone is suspecting that klingon666's message is a fake vote
because has an italian part of his message even if he is writing from
japan, then he is wrong at all: he is an italian teacher living and
working in Japan.

You got that wrong. I thought the Japan origin of that post as an
additional fact shifting the balance to 'no fake'. Of course I
didn't think of someone living in Japan, but thought the poster on
a holiday trip.

The pricelessware list is almost unknown in Italy: very few italian
internet users have ever heard of that but this time it happened: some
italians have discovered it and wanted to promote an italian product.

That's a good thing. In general. ;-) But thinking of the few
people voting to the PW list at all (101), the 12 people make an
important impact on the result. As they seem to not truly be real
'participants' of acf (as set up as origin of the PW list) one
could argue to cancel those votes. I 'vote' ;-) against such
proceeding.

Instead, we should invite all those people to come to acf on a
regular basis. Maybe just as lurker, better yet participating
actively (from time to time).

If you feel that having users that love a product and want to promote
it everywhere is evil,

Definitely *not*!

then remove ZipGenius from the PW List and CD-ROM distribution, please.

Not, if the program belongs there. And (after 'investigation') all
ZipGenius votes seem to be valid, IMHO.

BeAr

 

[Susan Bugher]

On 10 Nov 2005 06:00:11 -0800, (e-mail address removed) wrote:

[ZipGenius 'promoted'?]

I usually don't interfere with the PW annual ballot but this suspect is
really hurting.

Don't feel offended. Those posts *look* (hm, lets call it) 'unusual'.
We need to sort that out - to hold up the quality of the PW list.
Any competitor of ZipGenius getting similar voting would be put to
proof, too.

Yup - voting is done in the newsgroup so that *everyone* can review the
ballots. IOW - so that others can point out possible irregularities in
the voting, check *my* vote counts etc. etc.

That's a good thing. In general. ;-) But thinking of the few
people voting to the PW list at all (101), the 12 people make an
important impact on the result. As they seem to not truly be real
'participants' of acf (as set up as origin of the PW list) one
could argue to cancel those votes. I 'vote' ;-) against such
proceeding.

I agree with all the above. ISTM encouraging author's to mention the
Pricelessware selection process on their web sites or in their forums
when one of their programs has been nominated is a better way to "level
the playing field" than trying to restrict the "eligible" voters.

Instead, we should invite all those people to come to acf on a
regular basis. Maybe just as lurker, better yet participating
actively (from time to time).

I agree.

Definitely *not*!

Amen.

Not, if the program belongs there. And (after 'investigation') all
ZipGenius votes seem to be valid, IMHO.

I agree.

Susan
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[Susan Bugher]

Susan Bugher wrote:

November 1 - November 7, 2005 Voting period

Your ballot will not be counted as it was posted on November 10.

Susan
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[Susan Bugher]

Sietse Fliege wrote:

When I saw those votes it did seem likely that some sort of "get out the
vote" effort had taken place. Asking people to visit a web site and
vote/express favorable opinions about a program is a fairly common
practice - I've seen such requests on a number of author's web sites.

Not as noticeable as the clump of votes for ZipGenius but I think there
was a "get out the vote" effort for R too - or some sock puppets voting.
(R was nominated last year too - it received 3 votes. This year it
received 10 votes.)

R - the program is seldom mentioned in ACF. [I googled for R's URL:
Results 1 - 28 of 28 for www.r-project.org group:alt.comp.freeware - The
first post was made on Sep 19 2000.]

I googled for the names of the people who voted for it (several names
returned results only when I included the @_____ portion) Results:

(e-mail address removed) ( Results 1 - 1 of 1)
(e-mail address removed) ( Results 1 - 1 of 1)
(e-mail address removed) (did not match any documents.)
(e-mail address removed) ( Results 1 - 1 of 1 )
(e-mail address removed) ( Results 1 - 14)
Charles Cleland ( Results 1 - 1 of 1)
B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson Results 1 - 100 of 248
Marten Kemp ( Results 1 - 24 of 24)
Albirosso ( Results 1 - 1)
(e-mail address removed) ( Results 1 - 1 of 1)

and note:

Searched all groups Results 1 - 1 of 1 for author:[email protected]
Searched all groups Results 1 - 1 of 1 for author:Charles author:Cleland
author:<[email protected]>
Searched all groups Results 1 - 1 of 1 for author:Albirosso
Searched all groups Results 1 - 1 of 1 for author:[email protected]

Susan
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[B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson]

Not as noticeable as the clump of votes for ZipGenius but I think there
was a "get out the vote" effort for R too - or some sock puppets voting.
(R was nominated last year too - it received 3 votes. This year it
received 10 votes.) [...]
I googled for the names of the people who voted for it (several names
returned results only when I included the @_____ portion) Results: [...]
B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson Results 1 - 100 of 248

I'm always surprised when a program I like gets more than a couple of
honored mentions. ;-) Last year the R voting result really was a mess.

Albirosso and klingon666 got dragged into the PW voting via ZipGenius,
obviously. Both selected a *huge* list of programs. That could mean
they test and use a lot of freeware. Or they just voted for every
program they ever heard of. It is of no use to speculate on that.
In the light of the explanation Matteo Riso posted (klingon666 being
a teacher abroad) I think it quiet possible that he uses R.

Marten Kemp and Gabor Grothendieck (posted the R description and the
nomination) have been proven 'participant of acf' for some time. ;-)

Marc Schwartz is very active in Usenet in general, but didn't seem
to have posted in acf before. He still might be an 'active lurker'. ;-)
Besides: If he is related to the acf regular Howard Schwartz, he might
have got information about the voting from Howard.

Chuck Cleland is active in groups with scientific (statistic) themes.
Patrick Burns has a consulting firm on statistics. He, too, writes
about R (and S) from time to time within the Usenet. FZagmutt will
be Dr. Francisco Zagmutt from Chile. Another one who sometimes
writes about statistics. (Signs posts usually with FZ.) All 3 might
be lurker in acf.

That leaves 'no_nomine', who sent a nearly blank posting. <Shrug>

The amassment of posts on the 3th of November makes it likely that
some reminder was posted somewhere. (Inside a statistics related
group or forum.) Maybe Gabor could tell sth. more about that. (But
he shouldn't... ;-) )

IMHO, R is worth to be selected PW. Even if we 'virtually' cut one
or two votes: the program has enough support to be selected. (When
following the rule that less common subcategories can be filled
with programs which have reasonable support but miss the 10-vote
border.)

BeAr

 

[ggrothendieck]

I think there

was a "get out the vote" effort for R too - or some sock puppets voting.

I posted an email on an R list mentioning the pricelessware vote.
Also, this year not only did I provide a description for R but I also
provided a more in depth post on this, the acf, newsgroup providing
some links that anyone interested in investigating R could follow and
I also included a sample R program in case anyone wanted to see
what R code looks like. Its likely that one or more of those actions
increased the voting on R (although I also provided a description of
wcd and told only one other person yet in both the case of wcd and
R the votes increased from 3 last year to 10 this year -- that is the
voting for wcd increased just as much as for R).

 

[Sietse Fliege]

Susan Bugher wrote:

ISTM encouraging author's to mention the
Pricelessware selection process on their web sites or in their forums
when one of their programs has been nominated is a better way to
"level the playing field" than trying to restrict the "eligible"
voters.

Personally, I don't like too much the situation where 2/3 of the votes for a
program come in as a result of a "get out the vote" effort from outside
a.c.f. Google-posters.
So I don't share your opinion about encouraging those 'outside' votes.
OTOH, I also don't like restricting 'elegibile' voters.
Which means I don't see a good solution for the level playing field
'problem'. I don't see it as too much of a problem though, for now.

 

[Sietse Fliege]

"Da rules" http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/2006/2006PL-Procedures.php
don't spell out a required level of participation in ACF to qualify
as a voter. I think the question is whether we want to have such a
rule in the future.

I think that is only the question, if we make it the question.
That is: are there enough people who feel strongly that it is an issue that
should be addressed.

To me it does not look like that is the case.

 

[Sietse Fliege]

B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson wrote:


Thanks a lot, BeAr, for your hard work and valuable input.

Sietse Fliege wrote:

If a single person sent all those posts, a considerable amount of
work was necessary. Maybe we should honor that? ;-)

Doh! Silly me! I completely missed the possibility of a group effort.
I fixated on the idea of a single person posting and, even more unforgivable
if that's possible, I then forgot to check the IP addresses.
People like me should be banned from usenet.

To be sure, of course I never thought of the author himself as a candidate.
I am not that stupid.

 

[Susan Bugher]

The amassment of posts on the 3th of November makes it likely that
some reminder was posted somewhere. (Inside a statistics related
group or forum.) Maybe Gabor could tell sth. more about that. (But
he shouldn't... ;-) )

Thanks for the additional info BeAr. I *was* a bit startled today to
discover so many "unknown to Google" voters - thanks for identifying
them and laying my concern about sock puppets to rest.

IMHO, R is worth to be selected PW. Even if we 'virtually' cut one
or two votes: the program has enough support to be selected. (When
following the rule that less common subcategories can be filled
with programs which have reasonable support but miss the 10-vote
border.)

R and ZipGenius were the two programs I *noticed* as having somewhat
"unexpected/unusual" votes/voting patterns. IMO it's sensible to take a
closer look at such cases - just in case. . . FWIW - there's no
procedure for disqualifying votes - IMO none is needed as there is a
general procedure for disqualifying programs.

http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/2006/2006PL-Procedures.php

"Final Selection Procedure" . . . . "If you feel that a program is not
a good choice for the Pricelessware List post your objections."

IMO that's broad enough to take care of pretty much any problem that
might arise.

Susan
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[Susan Bugher]

Susan Bugher wrote:

Personally, I don't like too much the situation where 2/3 of the votes for a
program come in as a result of a "get out the vote" effort from outside
a.c.f. Google-posters.
So I don't share your opinion about encouraging those 'outside' votes.

Reread my comment. I recommended that as the "lesser of two evils".

One potential side benefit seems worth mentioning though - ACF might
gain new participants as a result of a "get out the vote" effort. IOW -
this year's outsiders might become next year's "regular participants".

OTOH, I also don't like restricting 'elegibile' voters.

Me either.

Susan
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[Larry Sabo]

Annoying. This is a gray area - IMO missed means posted *somewhere* -
but I will count your votes if no one objects.

Susan

I use Agent 1.93 and was using free.teranews as my news service. When
I edited your post to create my vote, and pressed Send, it showed in
the Outbox as having been sent. I could download new headers but my
post never appeared, for anything posted on any newsgroup over the
past week and a half. Teranews have since explaned that their free
news service is no more; I signed up for the paid service and
re-posted my vote; still didn't show up. I have now subscribed to
UseNet-news and all is well.

My apologies if this presents a problem, and I'll understand if my
vote can't be counted. I don't want to put you to extra work; you've
done enough already.

Larry

 

[Sietse Fliege]

Reread my comment.

I now did.

I recommended that as the "lesser of two evils". >

Perfectly clear now.

One potential side benefit seems worth mentioning though - ACF might
gain new participants as a result of a "get out the vote" effort. IOW
- this year's outsiders might become next year's "regular
participants".

Now, don't push it! LOL

 

[Mike Bourke]

I now did.


Perfectly clear now.


Now, don't push it! LOL

The hope is that they would take the time and trouble to look around while
they are here, and find something of interest to them. Or at least recognise
it's value as a resource! This is why the nonsense that some delinquints
participated in while discussing Smartsound Quicktracks over the last couple
of days was so annoying - but then, I always get annoyed at people who laugh
at someone else's misfortunes.

Mike Bourke

 

[Susan Bugher]

I use Agent 1.93 and was using free.teranews as my news service. When
I edited your post to create my vote, and pressed Send, it showed in
the Outbox as having been sent. I could download new headers but my
post never appeared, for anything posted on any newsgroup over the
past week and a half. Teranews have since explaned that their free
news service is no more; I signed up for the paid service and
re-posted my vote; still didn't show up. I have now subscribed to
UseNet-news and all is well.

My apologies if this presents a problem, and I'll understand if my
vote can't be counted. I don't want to put you to extra work; you've
done enough already.

Nope, no problem. You had reason to believe the post was made and I
haven't seen any objection to counting your votes. I'll add your votes
and post the revised count.

Susan
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[Larry Sabo]

Larry Sabo wrote:
Annoying. This is a gray area - IMO missed means posted *somewhere* -
but I will count your votes if no one objects.

[snip]

My apologies if this presents a problem, and I'll understand if my
vote can't be counted. I don't want to put you to extra work; you've
done enough already.

Nope, no problem. You had reason to believe the post was made and I
haven't seen any objection to counting your votes. I'll add your votes
and post the revised count.

Susan

Thank you Susan. That's very good of you. Again, my apologies for the
nuisance.

Regards,
Larry

 

[zipgenius]

B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson ha scritto:

On Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:57:19 -0500, Susan Bugher wrote:


I'm always surprised when a program I like gets more than a couple of
honored mentions. ;-) Last year the R voting result really was a mess.

Albirosso and klingon666 got dragged into the PW voting via ZipGenius,
obviously. Both selected a *huge* list of programs. That could mean
they test and use a lot of freeware. Or they just voted for every
program they ever heard of. It is of no use to speculate on that.
In the light of the explanation Matteo Riso posted (klingon666 being
a teacher abroad) I think it quiet possible that he uses R.

As I wrote, these people are also members (and staff members) at
WinInizio.it: there is a project called "WinInizio Pen Pack" there
(http://penpack.wininizio.it). It is a large collection of free/free
for non commercial/open source software that is optimized to run from
an USB pen-drive; this project involves many WI members because they
download and test any kind of software, they optimize it to run as a
no-install program and they ask for authorization to software
developers, so all those WI members have an almost full knowledge of
the free software scenario.

 

[B. R. 'BeAr' Ederson]

As I wrote, these people are also members (and staff members) at
WinInizio.it: there is a project called "WinInizio Pen Pack" there
(http://penpack.wininizio.it). It is a large collection of free/free
for non commercial/open source software that is optimized to run from
an USB pen-drive; this project involves many WI members because they
download and test any kind of software, they optimize it to run as a
no-install program and they ask for authorization to software
developers, so all those WI members have an almost full knowledge of
the free software scenario.

....and are most welcome to participate in this group and share their
knowledge. Thanks a lot for your clarifications!

BeAr