Since August of 1993, the USENET Volunteer Votetakers --- The Knights
Who Say
Ack! --- have conducted
polls for close to a gross of groups.
Co-ordinated by
Ron Dippold, who has himself handled several dozen
proposals, they have provided a very valuable service to
USENET by
bringing quality and consistency to a observably less than ideal group
creation process. They do their jobs with
no compensation but the
feeling that they are contribution
something positive to the network
news community. It's generally a job done without observable
gratitude, and I don't want it overlooked.
Knights, on behalf of myself and many group proponents,
users and
administrators everywhere, I say thank you. Well done!
The UVV has pretty much put an end to the formerly-common flamewars over
vote results; biased vote-takers, vote floodings, and other Usenet Big 7 voting
rules violations have dropped remarkably since their inception. They will
also do straw polls on various subjects, in addition to their usual CFV
vote counting, if asked nicely.