The Petition – A Reply

Yesterday, we published an article titled So Called Fans Bring Shame on Bolton Amongst other things, it cast doubt on the validity of an on-line petition which seeks the views of fans on Gary Megson and Phil Gartside. An e-mail was received yesterday afternoon, in response to those criticisms. An extract can be found below.

?The petition has not been setup in order to incite any trouble of any kind. The petition was setup as a communication channel for fans in order to see what fans are really feeling about the current situation with the club. As you may have already seen, the petition is not a closed petition where the questions are simply asking for Phil Gartside and Gary Megson out of the club. Additional questions have been added where fans have the option to select for either or neither to leave the club.

There have been quite a number of fans who have registered their vote, who would actually like to give both Phil Gartside and Gary Megson a chance. Yes, the petition is open with no email verification, but the petition is moderated by myself every 10 minutes or so.

At this moment in time, I have in total received 793 votes but only 725 currently stand as actual votes as I’ve removed duplications, fake addresses etc. I can understand your point that verification is important in order to collate more accurate results but how many fans would you see register their details in order to receive a verification mail, clarify they are a ‘real’ person and then register their vote? It is quite a long winded process. Instead I have taken the responsibility of moderating the activity on the petition. To ensure that fans do not register multiple votes in a short space of time, I have setup a feature which only accepts votes from a unique IP address, and if there are multiple votes needed to be made from one IP address (e.g. family), there is a timeout facility in place where they can do so after a short period of time.

I have seen over the last week or so where a few fans have tried to register votes asking for both Phil and Gary out of the club. These so called fans waited for the timeout to expire and registered their vote again. I simply deleted these votes and increased the timeout period on each occasion for these voters. I have not seen any votes come in from these so called fans since.

I hope you can understand the effort that is going into making this a fair vote and as an individual who has set this up, it can be quite time consuming. I am not using the results of this petition to ‘force’ Phil and Gary to leave the club. This petition has given all fans the opportunity to channel their frustration.

I have without any effort managed to get support from the press and media, and come 2nd May, you will see that the results are being published and aired by many sources. I will collate the results and pass forward to the club and all of papers and radio stations that have agreed to publish / air the results.

However, I would like to state that any personal details that have been collected such as email addresses WILL NOT be forwarded to the media/press or the club. Comments will certainly be forwarded!…



The petition can be viewed/signed Here