CALL FOR VOTES -- comp.sources.reviewed

[Kent Landfield]

In article <1991Feb28.053121.7739 at rick.doc.ca> andrew at calvin.doc.ca (Andrew Patrick) writes:
>This is an official Call for Votes for the proposed newsgroup
>"comp.sources.reviewed".  "Comp.sources.reviewed" will be a moderated
>newsgroup (moderator: Andrew Patrick [andrew at calvin.doc.ca]) with the
>following charter:
>
>    "Comp.sources.reviewed" is a moderated newsgroup for the
>    distribution of program sources that have been subjected to a Peer
>    Review process.  Similar to the process used for academic
>    journals, submissions are sent to a moderator who then sends the
>    sources to Peer Review volunteers for evaluation.  

Question: What types of packages are you envisioning on reviewing ?
Packages like elm, mush, perl, ... have their own beta test groups
who usually do a solid job of testing their software. For that matter,
any software that has a beta test team would probably not need or have
any reason to post through this group.  

Question: Are you planning on accepting any type of software running
on unix, dos, coherent, minix, acorn, amiga ...? Or will this be focused 
for a specific operational environment? How will you locate enough 
reviewers for packages that run in other than the major environments.

Question: What happens when you cannot find enough people to review the
package ? Is the submission rejected ?? Are we going to be seeing a lot
of "requests for reviewers" on the net ?

Question: This whole thing seems to have started as an emotional reaction
to delays in postings to c.s.unix. What are the expected time delays in
submissions through this group ??  Just the setup to evaluate a package
by your description is going to take a bit of time. The review by multiple
people will take time. [ Even the reviewers have real jobs... :-) ] If
there are any questions, problem etc., that will take more time.  My
guess is that you are looking at a 45 to 60 day delay on the optimistic
side. Doesn't this procedure usually take 6 to 9 months for submissions 
to be accepted and published in academic journals ??

I can see that there could be a use for this group but I don't think that
there has been enough discussion for a real call for votes.  In the 
discussion period I have seen a grand total of 5 articles on the topic and
three of them have come from Andrew Patrick [andrew at calvin.doc.ca].  If
we are going to do this, lets do it right. There has not been enough
discussion to warrant a vote.  My intention here is to try to get some
information and to stimulate a discussion so that any vote is based on 
merit and not emotion...

			-Kent+
-- 
Kent Landfield                   INTERNET: kent at sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM
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