The Result of a Vote
At the end of the voting period, the vote-taker has to post (to news.announce.newgroups) the tally and email addresses of the votes received. Again, it can also be posted to any of the groups listed in the original CFV. The tally should make clear which way a person voted, so the results can be verified if it proves necessary to do so.
After the vote result is posted to news.announce.newgroups, there is a mandatory five-day waiting period. This affords everyone the opportunity to correct any errors or inconsistencies in the voter list or the voting procedure.
Creation of the Group
If, after the waiting period, there are no serious objections that might invalidate the vote, the vote is put to the "water test." If there were 100 more valid YES/create votes than NO/don't create votes, and at least two-thirds of the total number of votes are in favor of creation, then a newgroup control message can be sent out (often by the moderator of news.announce.newgroups). If the 100-vote margin or the two-thirds percentage isn't met, the group has failed and can't be created.
If the proposal failed, all is not lost—-after a six-month waiting period (a "cooling down"), a new Request For Discussion can be posted to news.groups, and the whole process can start over again. If after a couple of tries it becomes obvious that the group is not wanted or needed, the vote-taker should humbly step back and accept the opinion of the majority. (As life goes, so goes Usenet.)
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Glossary
This glossary is only a tiny subset of all of the various terms and other things that people regularly use on The Net. For a more complete (and very entertaining) reference, it's suggested you get a copy of The New Hacker's Dictionary, which is based on a VERY large text file called the Jargon File. Edited by Eric Raymond (eric@snark.thyrsus.com), it is available from the MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 02142; its ISBN number is 0-262-68069-6. Also see RFC-1208, A Glossary of Networking Terms.
:-) This odd symbol is one of the ways a person can portray "mood" in the very flat medium of computers—-by using "smilies." This is `metacommunication', and there are literally hundreds of them, from the obvious to the obscure. This particular example expresses "happiness." Don't see it? Tilt your head to the left 90 degrees. Smilies are also used to denote sarcasm.