From:	jkl <-at-> ccl.net (Jan Labanowski)
Date:	Mon, 19 Oct 1992 16:51:16 -0400
Subject:	Results of vote

Dear Subscribers,
So now the results of vote on the future of Computational Chemistry List.
There were 2 choices:
     A) I want the list to be moved from Ohio Supercomputer Center.
     B) I want the list to stay at the Ohio Supercomputer Center
        under current management.
Unfortunately, we did not get a quorum (500) responses, what means that
the majority of the subscribers are undecided (i.e., do not care what will
happen to the list). Since you will ask anyhow, I will present the results
which I do not consider binding.
Now, how I counted the votes. I was callecting A and B votes in separate mail
folders. Then I ran the following perl script on the A and B folders:

------------------ beginning of perl script
   #!/usr/local/bin/perl
   
   $VOTEFILE = $ARGV[0];   #take name of the file votes from command line
   #open file with votes
   open(VOTEFILE, "<$VOTEFILE") || die "Could not find $VOTEFILE\n";
   #count votes
   $n = 0;
   while() {
     tr/A-Z/a-z/;
     if(/^from\s+(\S+)/) {
       $addresses[$n++] = $1;
       }
     }
    %-% at %-% sorted = sort  %-% at %-% addresses;  #sort votes by address
   printf STDOUT "Number of votes: %d\n", $n;
   #check for repeated addresses
   for ($i = 1; $i < $n; $i++) {
     if($sorted[$i] eq $sorted[$i-1]) {
       printf STDOUT "Address: %s repeated\n", $sorted[$i];
       }
     }
   print STDOUT "All votes \n";
   #write sorted addresses to stdout
   for ($i = 0; $i < $n; $i++) {
     printf STDOUT "%3d  %s\n", $i+1, $sorted[$i];
     }
   
--------------------- end script -----

I had to massage the file, since there where some apparently repeated votes
(e.g., from nobody ^at^ kodak.com, mail, etc.) and I had to correct the From
line.

Now the results:
  A: 8
  B: 415
  X: 1  (I presume X is: do not care)

I have got also many comments on how to make the list better. I will take
it into account and when I have more time, I will try to implement the
changes which are unquestionable imporvements. The suggestions include:
1. Making the chemistry "-at-" ccl.net a News Group but preserving it also as
   an e-mail reflector (many newsgroups do that). You will have a choice
   to do one or the other or both.
2. Puting a GOPHER or WAIS server interface to our archives.

Now. I want to do this, but I am held by two things:
  1) I want to put the chemistry list, ftp site, etc. on a separate,
     stand-alone workstation. You might guess that Ohio Supercomputer Center
     is affected by the last few years of "booming economy". But there is
     a light in the tunnel. If somebody wants to advise me how to get money
     for a better support of this forum, I am all ears. Please understand,
     that it cannot be some cheap hardware, since the list distributes
     sometimes in excess of 30,000 messages a day. Try to do it to your
     workstation and see what happens.

  2) There are several deadlines which I have to meet (yes, I also work...)
     and I simply do not have time to do much before the end of November.

Now, for some of you the list internal working is transparent. For me it is
not, and actually, there are many small improvements which were recently
implemented in the script which distributes the mail: You may notice that
you see less subscription messages on the list (actually I do not remember
a single one in last few months). You may have noticed that all messages
have Subject: lines. I also implemented an exclusion list. List now also sends
a confirmation to people who post the message (except to mailers who return
the "mail" address on the first line of header). You may say, these are all
easy things --- maybe, I wonder how many of you really know how to do it.
I did not and had to find out the hard way. There are also some other small
improvements on its way.

Finaly, some information about the list itself for those who refuse to read
the help file for the list. You really should.

The list, beside sending you messages, has archives. They hold all posted
messages, but also have some reviews, free software and job clearing house.
You may retrieve the following files for more information about the list:
   help --- rules and description of list services
   index --- index of files in the archives. The Subject lines of messages
             are also included
   software --- list of free software available from the archives
   positions.offered --- list of job opennings submitted to the list
   positions.wanted --- CV's of people looking for a job

You can get these files either via e-mail by sending a message:
    send file-name from chemistry
to OSCPOST <-at-> ccl.net or OSCPOST <-at-> OHSTPY.BITNET (file-name is one of
the files
described above) or by ftp to www.ccl.net [128.146.36.48], e.g.:
  ftp www.ccl.net   (or ftp 128.146.36.48)
  Login: anonymous
  Password: Your_email_address
  ftp> ascii
  ftp> cd pub/chemistry
  ftp> get file-name
  ftp> quit

Sorry for taking so much bandwidth with administration.

Jan Labanowski
Ohio Supercomputer Center
jkl-0at0-ccl.net

   






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