2006 ENnies Judge Voting Poll/Thread

[Crothian]

Well, I doubt many people read the qualification bios. I'll bet that most people vote for names that they recognize, which equates to high post count.

I do believe you're qualified and I voted accordingly, but there are others who I also think qualified and who would be new additions that are not getting the votes.

I think you are right, but I'm hoping people are reading the qualifications and voting for who they feel is the best based on that.

 

[diaglo]

I think you are right, but I'm hoping people are reading the qualifications and voting for who they feel is the best based on that.

i think people know you (and others) by your (their) posts.

i know not all people who lurk post. but i don't think you can get a feel for how they would vote even by looking at them on paper without reading some of their posts in action.

thus why most companies have trial periods when they hire n00bs.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Well, people do tend to like the familiar and fear the unknown. Heck, H.P. Lovecraft made a career out of it no?

On the other hand, people with higher post counts tend to be a little more familiar in terms of their likes and dislikes. Their personalities can bleed through some posts too, and give readers a good idea of their 'presence' so to say.

 

[Conaill]

In order to get more participation, and less influence of popularity and sheer postcount on the votes, it would be REALLY useful if we could link each name on the poll to their "campaign speech". Right now, you have to follow the link to the Nomination thread, and then browse around in there for the vaarious statements by the candidates. That alone may keep people from voting, or just voting for the 1-2 people whose name they recognize...

PS: The non-blinded Approval Voting we're using now is kinda interesting. It's not entirely clear what the optimal strategy would be, because the psychology of the voters comes into play as well. For example, you may be able to boost an underdog early (especialy if you can collude with a couple of friends) so they get more visibility than they would have if they were stuck in the single digit pile. Excluding such psychological effects, the optimal strategy would be to vote as late as possible, so you can adjust your votes to maximize your impact on the outcome. In any case, this voting method will likely depress the top votes somewhat (because people will figure those results are already set in stone anyway), in favor of the second tier of candidates - i.e. those for which the election is still somewhat undecided. The latter might not be a bad idea - it encourages some fresh blood - but I do think there are better and more fair ways to achieve that. Term limits are probably something that should be considered...

 

[Umbran]

In a sense you are going after a problem we do not have; the judging panel does turn over and different people are elected every year,

I have not stated that the current turnover rate is a problem, in and of itself. I have speculated that increasing it might have beneficial results for the overall health of the Ennies. The same ends might be reached by other means. This is merely the particular means being discussed at the moment.

If we decide that a great many things could be improved if the turnover rate increased, then the rate could be called the root problem, I suppose. But I'm not looking at it that way right now.

If you really want to get elected, you know what you have to do: campaign.

As noted before - it is my understanding that active campaigning is not allowed on the site. We can make ourselves visible, but we aren't supposed to say, "Please go vote for me!" on the boards.

Besides, if you want drama in the election, make as many witty posts as TB, write as many reviews as Crothian; create drama, in other words, by presenting yourself as a candidate of equal attractiveness to the incumbents.

This sort of "passive/unintentional campaigning" is, of course, the source of the dependance upon postcount. It is an unfortunate linkage, I think - there may be candidates who would be fine judges who are excluded because they don't think a year in advence that they have to post incessantly to get noticed enough to win an election.

I was, separately, intending to suggest a sort of contest for judges in the future - folks nominate themselves, the BoD finds a small product none of them have reviewed (I expect there's any number of small presses who'd volunteer a pdf for the purpose), and each nominee writes a review. The reviews are collected, and all posted at the same time for public review before voting. This would unfortunately greatly expand the time required between nomination and voting, but it would give voters comparable perspectives on the nominees.

To keep the time down, this could be entirely vountary - judges have three days from nominations to get it done...

"Hey guys! You should really vote in this election! The field is populated by unknowns you'll have to do extra work to learn about. You won't be allowed to vote for the people you think will do the best job. And you are less likely to be able to trust that casting your vote will result in the election of competent judges."

The right to vote implies a certain duty on the part of the voter to educate themselves, and the system we have implicitly assumes the acceptance of a certain level of risk. If we are really interested in a system that maximizes ease for the voter, and tries to assure a certain level of performance, we should only elect new faces to replace old ones that no longer wish to serve. That way, some years, no vote would be required at all, since all judges were previously proven to be acceptable.

And again - you guys keep harping on the greater assurance of election of competent judges. But you've not yet shown a single case where a new judge has been shown to be incompetent! You keep saying we need insurance, but you've not shown there's a high enough level of risk to require it.

Umbran, I always vote for you, knowing you will lose.

I always nominate myself, quite aware of the same thing

What you are really saying is that you don't trust the voters to choose the best candidates.

I fully trust the voters to elect a panel of competent judges. They have never failed to do so. If anything, I'm trusting them more than you and TB - I trust them to find good judges with fewer incumbents as a crutch

What I have said, and what keeps getting ignored, is that we might consider that there's more invovled than getting five people who can judge products for this year. If the trend MW shows continues, we have a health problem that ought to be addressed.

We don't need to demonstrate that incumbents do a better job;

I'm apparently not making myself clear - this isn't about who does the better job of judging. I agree that the incumbent judges do a good job. I am also of the (apparently unpopular) opinion that there's a mess of people who vounteer every year who could do the job as well as the incumbents. No offense, guys, but if we thought you were indespensible, we'd not have elections at all.

I am instead trying to get people to consider that we might get better results in other areas, with little loss, if we made more full use of the resources at hand. This is not something that an uncoordinated voter base could be expected to handle on their own, especially when their non-presence is perhaps the most troubling issue.

 

[Dextra]

Hmm...would another way to help get more votes be putting a Vote Here message up in the announcements thing that's currently saying "Ok, the server is now running the latest Apache & PHP packages. If you encounter problems & bugs, post them in Meta." ?

Working on it!

 

[Belen]

I'm apparently not making myself clear - this isn't about who does the better job of judging. I agree that the incumbent judges do a good job. I am also of the (apparently unpopular) opinion that there's a mess of people who vounteer every year who could do the job as well as the incumbents. No offense, guys, but if we thought you were indespensible, we'd not have elections at all.

I am instead trying to get people to consider that we might get better results in other areas, with little loss, if we made more full use of the resources at hand. This is not something that an uncoordinated voter base could be expected to handle on their own, especially when their non-presence is perhaps the most troubling issue.

Actually, I agree. I would like to see turnover. There does not seem to be a lot of it right now.

 

[Dextra]

As noted before - it is my understanding that active campaigning is not allowed on the site. We can make ourselves visible, but we aren't supposed to say, "Please go vote for me!" on the boards.

Please see my above post about Campaigning. Active campaigning is allowed and encouraged so long as it is not disruptive.

 

[Psion]

But for this year at least, we will have a judge SC, so I'm trying to alleviate some of the stress from that job by taking away some of the work.

Well, having a separate SC was something discussed last year. The biggest problem is that the moment you make a non-judge a SC, our biggest expense -- shipping -- goes up 20%.

 

[Conaill]

Speaking of incumbents... is there a way to find out which judge voted for which product? And if not, why not?

Seems like that might be a good tool to refine people's choices, beyond just "I think they probably did a good job last year". Voting records in congress are a useful tool to guide future elections. Might as well make them available to the voting public here too...