Below is the editorial from the March 31, 1997 edition of
InfoWorld. Because what's in InfoWorld Electric isn't always
the same as what's in the print edition, I've retyped it here.
It's, of course, prone to my typing mistakes.
Help us reclaim Readers' Choice Product of the Year awards from OS/2
zealots
The OS/2 Readers' Chocie Produt of the Year game is over and nobody won
-- not the OS/2 boosters who stuffed the ballot box again, not the
products that finished a distant second, and certainly not InfoWorld,
whose good intentions came to naught. But with your help, our annual
Readers' Choice awards will survive.
Long-time readers wont' be surprised by the fact that OS/2 "won" the
Readers' Choice polls that we conducted in Janurary and Feburary. Nor
will you be surprised that it "won" by an overwhelming majority in the
catagories of Client, Server, and Overall Product of the Year. But you
might be surprised by our decision to declare this year's results null
and void.
We didn't make this decision casually, but the facts were undeniable.
In all three catagories, OS/2 received at least six times the number of
votes of its nearest competitors, a definiite indicator of ballot
stuffing giving the history of Readers' Choice voting.
The first two years that OS/2 won, we attributed it to the produts's
value as an enterprise computing solution.
When it won in 1995, my predecessor, Stewart Alsop, predicted taht
four-peat wouldn't occur because OS/2 was being passed along the
technology track. OS/2 advocates interpreted that as a challenge and
made a concerted effort to prove him wrong. Thus, the ballot stuffing
this year and our decisoin to invalidate the results.
We're willingto sacrifice this years's results, but we're not willing to
sacrifice the concept of Readers' Choice awards.
That's why I'm appealing to InfoWorld readers to help us resurrect the
contest. I'd like your suggestions on how to restructure the annual
poll so that it reflects reality.
How should we construct the next contest? Should be abandon the
Web-based voting system we instituted this year? Should we hire an
outside company to conduct a scientifically based survey? Should we
return to printing ballots and distributing them with the newspaper?
Should we disqualify all votes for OS/2 next year? Should we consider
another format entirely for the contest? Send me your suggestions.
Sandy Reed is the editor in chief of InfoWorld. Contact her at
sandy_reed@infoworld.com.
Personal Comments:
I really don't have much to say about this one. It pretty much
speaks for itself. However...
I think it extremely unprofessional of Ms. Reed to use terms like
Zealot. Very unprofessional indeed.
What bothers me the most is that she is making a request of the
print readers. She is requesting that they not let OS/2 win any
future polls. She isn't asking for a fair poll, she's asking for
one where OS/2 will lose. I could probably deal with everything
else if it wasn't for this.
Ms. Reed has very good reason to suspect ballot stuffing. She has
no proof. She doesn't show us an unusual number of last minute
subscriptions and those subscriptions voting for OS/2. She
doesn't show us an unusual burst of votes from the same IP address.
She shows us nothing but the final numbers. She doesn't even
show us that. She refuses to release the actual data. Why?
Perhaps because the numbers show good reason to suspect foul play,
but they prove nothing.
How could OS/2 have won? Later, we get indications that the turnout
was extremely low for this poll. If only 100 people turned out
to vote, it wouldn't take very many OS/2 votes to win. OS/2 users
are excited about their operating system (underdogs usually are).
When they see the opportunity to vote, they will. Is that stuffing?
OS/2 users are unusually excited this year. OS/2 had record sales.
IBM announced an contractual obligation to develop and support OS/2
for no less than ten years. Major new applications are showing up
for OS/2. 1996 was an extremely powerful year for OS/2. If it
won all those other years, it has even more reason to win this year.