[SGVLUG] Web Archive Voting Results.

[David Lawyer]

On Mon, Sep 19, 2005 at 12:34:32PM -0700, Michael Proctor-Smith wrote:
> The fact is that 96.5% of member don't care (most likely) or want it
> to be public. I can not see how you can argue that the results are
> clearly that the group wants there to be web archive, and that most of
> them want it to be public.

Did you ever think about what percent of list recipients actually read
these emails?  As a rule of thumb, perhaps half of recipients
participate in discussions, so for a crude estimate, multiply
discussion participants by 2 (or 1.5, or 1.0, etc.).  The conclusion
is that most "members" never read the question and thus never
responded.  I put 1.0 above since for every lurker there could be say
1.5 posters who only read emails on selected topics of great interest
to them.  I'm sort of one of them since I've deleted a lot of sgvlug
email that I never got around to reading.  So even though I'm a
poster, I don't read all sgvlug emails.

This phenomena was widespread before the Internet.  I once belonged to a
nationwide SIG which had a printed newsletter sent out to about 15
people.  The newsletter writer checked and found that only a couple of
people were actually reading the newsletter and quit, resulting in the
demise of the SIG.  I've had other experiences where only a small
percentage of people read their mail, both with email and hard-copy
mail.
			David Lawyer