Group Evaluation
Service Specification
By Jacob Palme
Department of Computer and Systems Sciences
Stockholm University and KTH
First version: 98-08-05 • Last revision: 98-09-06 12.38
Table of contents
1.	Abstract	2
2.	Objective and Overview	2
3.	Setting up a Query, Step 1	4
4.	Setting up a Query, step 2	8
5.	Setting up a Query: Confirmation exchange	11
6.	Sending out the Query	13
7.	Plain text variant	13
8.	HTML variant	16
9.	MIME Structure of Query Message	22
10.	Reporting the Query Results	24
11.	Use of Internet standards	29
12.	E-mail standards	29
13.	HTTP standard	30
14.	Logging	30
10	Additional optional functions	30
11	Summary of Research Results on Problems with Group Discussions via E-mail	31

This specification, including sample web pages, can be found at URL:
http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query/group-evaluation-index.html
1.	Abstract
Experience shows that there are psychological problems with discussions via e-mail. The reason for these efficiency problems is probably the long turn-around-time and the lack of body language and voice inflection. This specification describes a proposed service, which intends to alleviate this problem by helping people in a discussion group find out the views of each other without an overflow of messages. If this service is successful, it will make use of electronic mail more efficient.
2.	Objective and Overview
More and more of the communication in our society is done through e-mail. However, many researchers on the social and organizational effects of e-mail have shown that there are certain problems when e-mail is used for decisions. A more comprehensive overview about this is given in appendix A. There is a tendency, when discussing an issue through e-mail, to repeat arguments over and over and never get to a conclusion. This sometimes causes discussions through e-mail to take too much time. One of the reasons for this is probably the lack of body language, which means that a person has to write a message to show his/her opinion.
 Because of this, experienced users of e-mail tend to organize their work so that agreements on controversial issues are taken at face-to-face meetings. However, because of the high cost of travel, face-to-face meetings in geographically distributed groups cannot be held very often. It would thus be beneficial, if agreements on controversial issues could more easily be reached while discussing issues via e-mail.
Discussions through e-mail can be aided by several different additional services. One such service is a service to easier find out the views of people, and to find out which issues are the real controversial issues.
A simple example. A decision has to be taken about the time for a meeting. In a face-to-face meeting, the most common algorithm for making such a decision is:
1.	Someone proposes a date.
2.	Someone else says: No, that date is not good for me.
3.	A new date is proposed.
4.	Go back to step 2 until a date has been found which is accepted by all.
This process is then repeated until a date is found which is satisfactory to all who are present. Those who could not come to the meeting are ignored. The process described above will not work through e-mail. Because of the long turn-a-round time, typically 6-48 hours, the process described above will take too much time. In e-mail, instead, the best procedure to decide on the time for a face-to-face meeting has been found to be the following algorithm:
i.	Propose five to ten different possible dates.
ii.	Ask each participants how good those dates are for them.
iii.	Collect the responses, tabulate them, and select the best date.
We believe that a similar algorithm could be beneficial to many discussions through e-mail. The algorithm would be one of enumerating alternatives, and asking each participants to rate each of the alternatives, typically on a scale like “very good, good, acceptable, bad, very bad”. Such a query would give valuable information about the opinions of people, about which issues are controversial, and would thus aid decisions. Note that it is not our proposal that decisions should be taken automatically by some kind of electronic voting procedure. Our proposal is to aid the human decision making by finding and tabulating the views of people. In a normal face-to-face meetings, such views are to a large extent communicated by body language, voice inflection and other channels not available when communicating via e-mail.
We think the best procedure should list the names of each participant and what their views were. In many discussion groups, the goal is not to reach any majority decision. Rather, the opinions of those with lot of competence and knowledge is valued more than the opinions of beginners. This is well-known and accepted.
This proposal suggest the setting up of a WWW and e-mail-based service. The basic facilities of this service will be:
1.	Through interaction via the web, the chair can specify a query (see page 4 ff).
2.	The query is then sent by e-mail to participants (see page 13 ff).
3.	The participants respond individually.
4.	Their responses are collected through e-mail.
5.	The result is reported on the WWW or through e-mail (see page 22 ff).
This specification describes the functionality of a service to aid all of these steps. Our intention is to make this service available to anyone on the Internet, and we believe that this will become a popular and much used service.
3.	Setting up a Query, Step 1
Below is the user view of the first web based form to be used to specify a query.
This form can also be found at
HTTP://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query/group-evaluation-service-1.html. That URL might give a better understanding of the form than the written text below.
The form is shown first as screen dumps, made with a web browser, then repeated with interspersed comments.

More information  Who are providing this service  legal
Language	  			
“Switch language” will change the user interface language. But if the user selects a new language in the pull-down menu, but does not push “Switch language”, the new language will still be used in all future texts and windows.
The first version will have support for English and Swedish, but will be designed to make it easy to add support for more languages.
How will the query be posted?		By individual e-mail (only selected people can reply)		
		To a mailing list (all who get the query can reply)		
		To a mailing list with you as the sender.
(Only use this option if the  mailing list is writeprotected and this is needed for the list to accept  the query. Disadvantage: Some responses may be sent to you, and you will have to manually or by a filter forward them to the OptionRate server.)		
		On the web (anyone can reply)		
1.	 In the first case, the user will have to specify the e-mail addresses of all who can answer the query. With this choice, every query message will have a different transaction id, so that only one vote is counted for each user.
2.	In the second case, the user will have to specify one or more e-mail addresses of mailing lists. But there will not be any checking that responses only come from members of those lists. The only check will be for the transaction ID, common to all recipients, in the query message. Anyone who gets this message, and thus has the transaction ID, can reply.
3.	The third case is only needed if the query is sent to a write-protected mailing list, and the query server does not have rights to post to this list.
4.	In the fourth case, anyone who accesses the publicly available web page with the query, will be able to respond. The user is responsible for publishing the URL of this web page, and by publishing it to restricted recipients, the user can restrict who may respond. The response web page itself, however, will be available for anyone who knows its URL. It will, however, not be possible to find its URL by looking, through the web, at the directory of the directory, on which the URL is located.
When will results be tabulated?				
Responses can be sent in before the start date. But responses will not be available on the web page for responses. The response results on the web page will be retabulated within five minutes after the arrival of new responses. Responses arriving after the final date will be returned unopened to the sender. At the final date, a final tabulation of responses will be sent by e-mail.
Who will see the results?		Anyone, on the web		
	 	By e-mail to:		
		All who responded to the query		
		All who were invited to respond		
		You only		
If “Anyone, on the web” is not checked, then a password will be needed to get the responses. The password is sent to the user when starting the query. The user can send the URL and password of the response page to other people, to allow them acces to the results.
The other three options above control where the final responses, tabulated at the final date, will be sent by e-mail.
How will the results be shown?		List of how everyone replied plus sums (open ballot)		
		Only sums, no individual responses (secret ballot)		
Controls display of the table of individual responses. Comments, however, will be shown with their sender even with secret ballot. There should be an option to delete falsified, unethical or illegal comments. This is similar to the ability for a moderator to remove items from a discussion group. (How is this done? By editing a text file? Who can do it? The person who started the query? The person responsible for the server where the query is stored must also have this right, in order to comply with the BBS act.)
Additional information:

(this information will be disclosed to all who are invited to respond or see the results)	E-mail (mandatory):		
	The information below is not required:	
	Name:		
	Phone:		
	Personal Web URL:		
	Fax:		
	Postal address: 		
	Issue Back-
ground URL:		
This information is saved and provided in the query and the response tabulation. The e-mail address is also used to send a confirmation message to the user. The query will not be sent out/posted until the user has replied to confirm this confirmation message.
How many options will respondents be asked to compare		
The form in step 2 will include as many options as the user specified above in the step 1 form.
Bottom of Form
4.	Setting up a Query, step 2
Below is the user view of the second web based form to be used to specify a query.
This form can also be found at
HTTP://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query/group-evaluation-service-2.html. That URL will give a better understanding of the form than the written text below.
The form is shown first as screen dumps, made with a web browser, then repeated with interspersed comments.

More information  Who are providing this service  legal
Issue to compare options for:			
Option A:			
Option B:			
These texts are included in the query and the response reports. The number of text boxes for options is the same as the number of options, which the user requested in the step 1 form.
Evaluation scale	     	
The number of steps cannot be changed, but the user can change the labels for the steps, too, for example “top cool”, “cool”, “uh”, “scourge”, “calamity”, or “this month”, “this year”, “some time”, “improbable”, “impossible”. or “>1000 $”, “500-1000 $”, “100-500 $”, “< 500 $”, “worthless”.
Number of options (between 2 and 25):		
The default is the number of options specified by the user in step 1. Changing this number and pushing the change button above, will return a new step 2 form, with data entered in the previous step 2 form prefilled, but with a different number of options.
Specification of query recipients:	Recipients must be specified with e-mail addresses, separated by commas (,).	
		
If the query is only to be posted on the web, this field is not included in the step 2 form. If the query is to be sent to individually listed recipients, the names of these must be provided or uploaded here. If the query is to be sent to one or more mailing lists, this form is used to input the names of these mailing lists.
			
Note: We will send an e-mail to you. The inquiry will not start until you have confirmed by replying to this e-mail.	
Inquiries will not start until the user has confirmed the query by e-mail.  This procedure gives some protection against sending a query in someone elses name. To get better protection, also starting queries with e-mail addresses in anonymous e-mail servers, like Hotmail, have to be stopped. This will not be included in the first version, but may be added later, if needed.
Bottom of Form
5.	Setting up a Query: Confirmation exchange
The following confirmation message will be sent by e-mail to the user. Only when the user has responded, with the proper password included in the response, will the query be sent. In this way, anonymous queries and misuse of the service will be made more difficult.
From: WebWiews@cmc.dsv.su.se
To: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
Subject: OptionRate confirmation letter

OptionRate confirmation letter
------------------------------

Your query: Which of these places would you like as a venue
for future IETF meetings?

Password: 1237634561

Remember this password, you will need it to access the results
of the query at URL:
http://cmc.dsv.su.se/124345431.html

The query will not be posted until you have responded to this
confirmation letter. Respond by replying to this message,
including the whole text of this message (except the
attachments). It is OK if you add ">" or "> " in front of the
lines of this message in your reply.

Attachment 1: How the query will look like in pure ASCII format
(do not respond yet, since the query has not been started)

Attachment 2: How the query will look like in HTML format
(do not respond yet, since the query has not been started)

Attachment 3: List of recipients, to whom the query will be sent.

If a confirmation message arrives, in which the password (1237634561) and the query URL (http://cmc.dsv.su.se/124345431.html) did not agree, a new message will be sent with the following text:
From: WebWiews@cmc.dsv.su.se
To: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
Subject: ***** OptionRate confirmation letter error *****

***** Sorry, your response to the confirmation letter below did not
***** include the correct password and URL. Please resend your
***** confirmation as specified below:

OptionRate confirmation letter
------------------------------

Your query: Which of these places would you like as a venue
for future IETF meetings?

Password: 1237634561

Remember this password, you will need it to access the results
of the query at URL:
http://cmc.dsv.su.se/124345431.html

The query will not be posted until you have responded to this
confirmation letter. Respond by replying to this message,
including the whole text of this message (except the
attachments). It is OK if you add ">" or "> " in front of the
lines of this message in your reply.

Attachment 1: How the query will look like in pure ASCII format
(do not respond yet, since the query has not been started)

Attachment 2: How the query will look like in HTML format
(do not respond yet, since the query has not been started)

Attachment 3: List of recipients, to whom the query will be sent.

6.	Sending out the Query
Below is the user view of the web based form to be used by people who send in their responses to the query.
Depending on the requests by the person starting the query (see page 6), this form is either put up on the web or sent by e-mail. If it is sent by e-mail, it is sent in the MIME multipart/alternative format, with the plain text variant as first alternative and the HTML variant as second alternative.
7.	Plain text variant
This plain text variant is only used if the query is to be sent through e-mail, and is then used as the first part of a multipart/alternative. This means that those recipients, which have MHTML compliant mailers (like Eudora, Microsoft Outlook Express, Netscape Communicator) will never see this plain text variant.
! State Your Views!                                 ID: 123456789
! 
! How to reply: Send a reply to this message to
! OptionRate@cmc.dsv.su.se. Remove the "! ", ">! " or "> ! "
! in front of your evaluation of each choice.
! 
! Issue: Which of these places would you like as a venue for future
!        IETF meetings?
! 
! Options:
! 
A Danvers is a place to the North of Boston, ma. The hotel is on a
! hill, surrounded by motor ways on sides. There is a golf court
! close to the hotel.
! very good
! good
! acceptable
! bad
! very bad
! abstain
! 
B Chicago
! very good
! good
! acceptable
! bad
! very bad
! abstain
! 
C San Jose
! very good
! good
! acceptable
! bad
! very bad
! abstain
! 
D Los Angeles
! very good
! good
! acceptable
! bad
! very bad
! abstain
! 
E Memphis
! very good
! good
! acceptable
! bad
! very bad
! abstain
! 
F Dallas
! very good
! good
! acceptable
! bad
! very bad
! abstain
! 
G Washington D.C.
! very good
! good
! acceptable
! bad
! very bad
! abstain
! 
H Munich, Germany
! very good
! good
! acceptable
! bad
! very bad
! abstain

Comment
! Here you can write a comment about the issue
! (not required, your comment, with your e-mail address,
! will be shown with the results of the query, add lines
! as needed):

! Who is asking?
! Name: Jacob Palme
! E-mail: jpalme@dsv.su.se
! Phone: +46-8-16 16 67
! Fax: +46-8-783 08 29
! Postal address: Skeppargatan 73, SE-115 30 Stockholm, Sweden
! Home page: http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme

! Who can respond?
! Anyone, through a form on the web.
! All who get this form by e-mail, it is sent to the mailing list: 
! ietf@ietf.org.
! All who get this form by personal e-mail.

! When can you respond? Your response must be sent before 10 August
! 1998:00:00+02:00. You can change your mind, by sending in a new
! response before this date.

! When will results be available? Results will be available from
! 1 August 1998:00:00+02:00.

! Where are results shown? Results will be shown at URL:
! http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query-spec/124345431.html
! Results will be sent by e-mail.

! What results are shown? Every individual response is shown with
! name of the respondee (Open Ballot)

! What results are shown?Only totals, no individual responses will
! be shown (Secret Ballot)

! More information about this query:
! http://http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query-spec/ietf-location-query.html

! More information about the query service:
! http://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query-spec/choice-info

8.	HTML variant
If the query is to be performed through the web, this HTML variant is put up on the web. If the query is to be performed through e-mail, this HTML variant is sent as the second part of a multipart/alternative MIME message.
This form can also be found at
HTTP://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query/group-evaluation-query.html. That URL will give a better understanding of the form than the written text below.
The form is shown first as screen dumps, made with a web browser, then repeated with interspersed comments.

The header above is created as a GIF image. Since many mailers are not very good at handling images in HTML e-mail, I suggest that when this form is sent by e-mail, the GIF image above is replaced by conventional text <H1>:
State Your Views
Later on, when MHTML implementations become more stable, we might include GIF images also in the HTML sent via e-mail.
The form below is a HTML form using the “mailto:” action scheme, even when it is posted on the web. This action scheme will only work if the user has specified an e-mail address to his browser, and that e-mail address is then used when sending the response. This will make it a little more difficult for someone to cheat the query process. The incoming e-mail query responses will be saved in full in the query server (i) for an open ballot (b) if they contained any textual comment.
This form can also be found at
HTTP://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query/group-evaluation-query.html. That URL might give a better understanding of the form than the written text below.
If, during the start-up process, the query was set up to be sent as individual e-mail to each responder, each of them will get a different transaction id, and the server will remember these transaction num bers. In that case,
1.	if a second response is received from the same id, it will replace the previous response. This process will make it technically posible to find out, for a secret ballot, what each respondent wrote. To make this difficult, the information will be stored in encrypted format and only accesible to the query server program.
2.	The server can check that only approved responders can respond, and reject responses from people not on the list.
If, during the start-up process, the query was set up to be sent to a mailing list or published on a web site:
1.	Only responses with the correct transaction ID, included in the query form as a hidden field, will be accepted.
2.	It is still possible to only accept one response from each e-mail address, and to accept changes in the response from one e-mail address, whose user changed his/her mind. It is, however, not possible to avoid cheating by sending responses from different e-mail addresses.
If this message does not contain a form, which you can fill in, this may be because of restrictions in the e-mail software you are using. In that case, either use the plain text version which is also included in this e-mail, or view this message with a web browser, using a command like "Open in Browser" in your e-mail software.
The text above is needed because some e-mail software does not handle HTML forms correctly. It is only included when the form is sent by e-mail, not in a version of the query form on the web (if such is to be provided).
Issue	Which of these places would you like as a venue for future IETF meetings? 		
The text of the query above is the same as was specified in step 1 of the query start-up process.
Options	
The pop-up menus above will by default use the rating scale “Very good”, “Good”, “Acceptable”, “Bad” and “Very bad”, unless a different scale was specified in the start-up of the query. The texts are taken from step 2 of the start-up of the query.
Your comment:	Here you can write a comment about the issue (not required, your comment, with your e-mail address, will be shown with the results of the query):
		
Comments written by users will be posted at the end of the query result report. Even if the ballot is secret, the name will be shown of the person who wrote the comment.
Who is asking?	This query was sent by
Name: Jacob Palme
E-mail: jpalme@dsv.su.se
Phone: +46-8-16 16 67
Fax: +46-8-783 08 29
Postal address: Skeppargatan 73, SE-115 30 Stockholm, Sweden		
Only those fields which were supplied at the start-up process will be shown in the field above. The only mandatory field is the e-mail address of the creator.
Who can respond?	Anyone, through a form on the web.
All who get this form by e-mail, it is sent to the mailing list: ietf@ietf.org.
All who get this form by personal e-mail.		
The field above will in reality only contain one of the three lines above, depending on what kind of ballot was requested.
When can you respond?	Your response must be sent before Wed, 10 August 1998:00:00+02:00. You can change an already sent in response, by sending in a new response before this date.		
Responses after this time, 9 August 1998:22:00 GMT, will be rejected. This is also the time, at which the results will be sent by e-mail, if so specified in the query specification. The time is shown using the time zone specified in step 1 of the query set-up process.
When will results be available?	Results will be available from 1 August 1998:00:00+02:00.		
This is the time, when the results will start becoming available in the web page.
Where are results shown?	Results will be shown on the web.
Results will be sent by e-mail.		
Only one of the lines above may be shown, if results will only be available one way. “Results will be shown on the web” contains a link to the web page where the results will be shown. If the results are only available to the creator of the query through a special password, the line “Results will be shown on the web” is not included. In this case, and if no results are to be sent by e-mail either, the box below will instead contain the text “Results will only be available to a restricted set of people.”
What results are shown?	Every individual response is shown with name of the respondee (Open Ballot)
Only totals, no individual responses will be shown (Secret Ballot) 		
Only one of the two choices above is shown.
More information:	More information about this query.
More information about the query service.
Who are providing this service?
legal. 		
The first line above is only included if the person starting the query specified such a URL. The other lines contain links to information pages about the query service itself.
Send your response:			
Bottom of Form
When the above from has been submitted, an e-mail message is sent back to the person confirming this with the text:
Subject: Confirmation of query response
Date: Mon, 3 Aug 1998 8:54

Confirmation of query response
-----------------------------

This is to confirm that a response from you to the query at URL:
http://cmc.dsv.su.se/124345431.html
was received on Mon, 3 Aug 1998 8:54.
9.	MIME Structure of Query Message
Here is the suggested MIME structure of the query message. “... ... ...” mark ellipses (omitted parts in this documentation which should be there in the real implementation):
Mime-Version: 1.0
Message-Id: <123456@query-service.cmc.dsv.su.se>
X-Mailer: OptionRate@cmc.dsv.su.se
Date: Wed, 5 Aug 1998 11:37:27 +0200
To: IETF general mailing list <ietf@ietf.org>
From: OptionRate@cmc.dsv.su.se
On-Behalf-Of: Jacob Palme <jpalme@dsv.su.se>
Reply-To: OptionRate@cmc.dsv.su.se
Subject: (Q) Which of these places would you like as a venue for future IETF meetings?
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="query-service-boundary"

--query-service-boundary
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: Quoted-Printable

! State Your Views!                                      ID: 123456789
! 
! How to reply: Send a reply to this message to
! OptionRate@cmc.dsv.su.se. Remove the "! ", ">! " or "> ! "
! in front of your evaluation of each choice.
! 
! Issue: Which of these places would you like as a venue for future
!        IETF meetings?
! 
! Options:
   ... ... ...

--query-service-boundary
Content-Type: text/html; charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: Quoted-Printable

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
            "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
<HTML>
<HEAD>
  <TITLE>OptionRate query form</TITLE>
</HEAD>

<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">

<FORM ACTION="mailto:OptionRate@cmc.dsv.su.se" METHOD="POST"
  ENCTYPE="application/x-www-form-urlencoded">
  <INPUT TYPE="HIDDEN" NAME="transaction-id" SIZE="-1" VALUE="123456789">

<BR><BR>

<H1 ALIGN="CENTER">State Your Views?"</H1>

<P<FONT SIZE="-1">
If this message does not contain a form, which you can fill in, this may be
because of restrictions in the e-mail software you are using. In that case,
either use the plain text version which is also included in this e-mail, or
view this message with a web browser, using a command like "Open in Browser"
in your e-mail software.</FONT></P>
... ... ...
--query-service-boundary--

A note about the mesage format above:
1.	If the creator of the query checked the radio button for write-protected mailing lists, this message may have to be sent in the name of the creator, both in the From: header and as SMTP sender. Reply-To indicates where query responses are to go. If the creator did not check this radio button, then queries are sent with the SMTP-sender and the From: header as where responses are to be sent, and the e-mail address of the requestor is put into a "On-Behalf-Of" header.

This will not be any problem with the HTML variant of the query, since the address where the query is to be sent will then be indicated in the HTML FORM ACTION element.
10.	Reporting the Query Results
If a person accesses the URL for the results, before the start time of compiling the report, that person will get the following information. The sample report below can look like the example below.
This form can also be found at
HTTP://www.dsv.su.se/~jpalme/query/group-evaluation-report.html. That URL might give a better understanding of the form than the written text below.
The form is shown first as screen dumps, made with a web browser, then repeated with interspersed comments.

Issue	Which of these places would you like as a venue for future IETF meetings?		
Options	A	Danvers is a place to the North of Boston, ma. The hotel is on a hill, surrounded by motor ways on sides. There is a golf court close to the hotel. 	
	B	Chicago 	
	C	San Jose 	
	D	Los Angeles 	
	E	Memphis 	
	F	Dallas 	
	G	Washington D.C. 	
	H	Munich, Germany 	
Rating scale:	1	Very good	
	2	Good	
	3	Acceptable	
	4	Bad	
	5	Very bad	
 	0	Abstain or did not evaluate	
Responses	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	comments 	
jsmith@foo.bar 	1	2	1	4	4	4	2	3	  	
mary@foo.net 	2	2	2	4	4	4	4	4	comment 	
cleopatra@ietf.org 	2	2	3	4	5	5	5	0	comment 	
 	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H		
Very good 	1	0	1	0	0	0	0	0		
Good 	2	3	1	0	0	0	0	0		
Acceptable 	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0		
Bad 	0	0	0	1	1	1	1	1		
Very bad 	0	0	0	0	1	1	1	0		
Abstain 	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1		
Average 	1.7	2.0	2.0	4.0	4.3	4.3	2.7	3.5		
If this web page is requested before the start date of computing the results, the table of responses above will be replaced with the text below:
Responses	Results will be available from 1 August 1998:00:00+02:00.		
The information below will depend on how this query was set up. See the query form (shown in section 8 on pages 21-22) for explanation.
Who is asking?	This query was sent by
Name: Jacob Palme
E-mail: jpalme@dsv.su.se
Phone: +46-8-16 16 67
Fax: +46-8-783 08 29
Postal address: Skeppargatan 73, SE-115 30 Stockholm, Sweden		
Who can respond?	Anyone, through a form on the web.
All who get this form by e-mail, it is sent to the mailing list: ietf@ietf.org.
All who get this form by personal e-mail.		
When can you respond?	Your response must be sent before 10 August 1998:00:00+02:00.		
When will results be available?	Results will be available from 1 August 1998:00:00+02:00.		
More information: 	More information about this query.
More information about the query service.
Who are providing this service?
legal. 		
Comments:	From: mary@foo.net
Date: 5 Aug 1998
Why did you not include Moscow in the options.

From: cleopatra@ietf.org
Date: 3 Aug 1998
Some of the cities proposed do not have any building suiltable for an IETF meeting. So it is meaningless to ask people's views on those locations.		
Above are shown the comments provided by respondents. Even if the query is a secret ballot, comments will be shown with the e-mail address of the person writing the comment (i.e. no anonymous comments).
11.	Use of Internet standards
Wherever possible and reasonable, OptionRate should use existing Internet standards. In particular:
12.	E-mail standards
Standards used: SMTP, RFC822, MIME, MHTML.
Table of e-mail messages sent and received:
Confirmation message	For every new query, the creator is asked to confirm the query through e-mail before the query is sent out.	
Responses to confirmation messages	Responses to these confirmation messages are received and handled.	
Sending out the query	Depending on how the query was set out, it may be sent by e-mail to either individual users or mailing lists. When sent to individual users, each gets a separate transaction ID to ensure that a new response from the same person replaces the previous response from the same person. The format of the query, when sent out through e-mail, is described in the chapter MIME Structure of Query Message on page 22.	
Getting the responses.	Responses to queries are always sent to the query server through e-mail, not through HTTP.	
Sending out the results	The results of a query will, again depending on how the query was set up, be sent out via e-mail.	
Certain error or warning messages	may also be sent by e-mail.	
All e-mail messages sent by the service always contain a header field which begins with “X-Mailer: OptionRate@”followed by the e-mail domains of the server. This field will make it easy for those recipients and mailing list adminstrators, who so wish, to filter on this field. For example, a mailing list administrator can use this field to stop any OptionRate queries through his mailing list, or only allow those sent by the moderator of the list.
13.	HTTP standard
Standards used: HTTP and HTML. Either HTTP 1.0 or 1.1 can be used. HTML version "4 transitional" is suggested, since this is less restrictive than the standard version 4 This means that each HTML page in the service should begin with the two lines:
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd">
Table of HTTP pages used:
Query set up 
step 1 and 2	Only available by HTTP.	
Query form	May be published through HTTP if requested in the set-up process.	
Query results	May be published through HTTP if requested in the set-up process. A password may be required if only certain people are allowed to see the result.	
14.	Logging
Even though not shown on the user information, the system will log all HTTP, SMTP and RFC822 information for all incoming messages. The only exception from this is that for secret ballotting, information from query responses will be limited to make it more difficult to break the secrecy. That information which has to be kept (to allow a user to change his mind by sending in a new response) will be stored in one-way encrypted format, to make it more difficult to break the secrecy of the ballot.
10	Additional optional functions
Depending on the available time, the following optional additional functions may be added:
1.	The sending of more than one query question in one e-mail letter.
2.	Other formats for query questions, such as ordering of choices, yes/no/abstain questions, choices where only one value can be selected by each respondent, numerical value estimates with upper and lower bounds.
11	Summary of Research Results on Problems with Group Discussions via E-mail
(The text below is copied from my book Electronic Mail, published by Artech books in 1995, with some additions made after publication of the book.)

In preparing for decisions, it is important to assemble all facts, ideas, alternatives, and consequences before making the decision. CMC has been found to be more efficient than face-to-face meetings in assembling information, because more people can be reached more quickly and at reasonable costs [7]. CMC has also been found to be more efficient for at coordinating the work done at different places in an organization [8]. Traditional media, like travel, face-to-face meetings, courses, inventories, and company regulations, are not always very efficient in coping with such coordination problems. Travel may be too expensive. The main advantage of CMC is that it goes on all the time in parallel with other activities. Whenever you have a problem, you can immediately reach a group of people who can help you.
The lack of body language, voice inflection, etc. increases the risk of misunderstandings. Locked situations will more easily occur in CMC, where people stick with their initial opinions and are unable to agree. CMC may need to be combined with face-to-face or phone communication in such cases.
To reach an agreement, or at least to make a decision in order to go forward, it is important to get a feeling about the general view of the participants. This is not only a matter of the majority view, a strongly held minority view may succeed against a less strongly held majority view. Most messaging systems do not provide tools to get such a feeling of the general view, and this can seriously restrain progress. In most messaging systems, you only see the opinions of those who actively write messages, while in face-to-face meetings, also the opinions of other participants are felt by a good chairman through body language.
In face-to-face meetings, the limited time and desires of the participants to get results will often stop a discussion on an item when nothing more important is said and the discussion starts to repeat itself. In most messaging systems, there is no such tool to stop discussion, and this can cause discussions to be too longwinded. Experienced chairpersons in messaging groups have developed tools to at least partially alleviate these problems, by forcefully saying “no more discussion on this” and by trying to summarize the opinions.
Many messaging-based groups (mailing lists, newsgroups, bulletin boards, etc.) allow anyone to participate. Sometimes this causes serious clashes between different groups of people who want to discuss different things, and often the only resolution is to split the group or to exclude certain members from further participation. In face-to-face meetings, less drastic measures are often available.
Possible, future development of CSCW techniques will develop computerized tools which will help to solve these problems and be able to replace the face-to-face cues. But such tools are not commonly in use yet. Certainly, chairmen of messaging based groups need to learn new skills in order for the new medium to work well.
Some researchers [5] claim that electronic mail tends to favor something called “flaming”, by which is meant stormy debates of uncontrolled outbursts of anger. Other researchers do not agree that flaming is more common in e-mail than in other human communications media or not. The word “flaming” is also sometimes meant to refer to sudden intensive bursts of lot of messages in e-mail distribution lists and conference systems, often on small specialised issues and with much repetition and long-worded contributions. The difficulty of reaching consensus in e-mail may be one reason why such flame bursts sometimes tend to be more long-lived than in other human discourse. Another reason is that there is usually no time limitations in e-mail as in face-to-face meetings. Sometimes etchical rules fo