ENnies discussion thread

[Michael Morris]

I hadn't mentioned this before but I guess I should now - I erased the old system off the hard server once I realized how dangerous it was to the security of the site. It accessed the db by the root account and to make matters worse it was a prime candidate for sql injection attacks that, if conducted properly, could literally erase the entire site.

Recovering the prior system exactly will therefore be a problem. However, as no one has ever complimented it (that I know of) or shown anything but disdain for it, why keep it. Also, fungasite brings up some very valid points on how results could be skewed. While in the past the ENnies system has been one based on honestly in the voting, the more voters there are the less likely this honestly will be maintained. And it only takes one person to royally mess things up.

 

[Crothian]

The author of the original system used an UNSECURED admin panel. Being the master of security he is, he conveniently named the file to access it admin.php. Gaming Report put the results out one or two days early, and I have no reason not to believe that's how they learned the results early.

I don't think the results themselves where comprimised though.

They had it the morning of I thought. They didn't give specific results they just had some general information that any one could have predicted. They just had like Green Ronin sweeps which they actually didn't. While it is possible that that could have happened based on what was said it didn't seem like it.

 

[Rasyr]

Great description of the Borda system. Can you do a similar explanation of how the AV system works?

Yes, please do a more in-depth explaination of the AV system, fungasite.

 

[Barak]

I think stating that dishonest voters would skew the process makes it seem as if the old system is good, and voters -can- be bad, which is wrong.

It doesn't take dishonest voters to skew the voting with the old system, it takes only voters with different agendas, or different "views".

Take voter A, B, and C.

Voter A is knowledgeable on all products nominated, rates them "fairly". To him, an excellent product is a "9", a decent product is a "5", and a bad product is a "2". See, nobody's perfect, and with the judges selecting the nominees, no product should be abysmal enough to warrant a "1".

Voter B is a rabid "company B" fanboy. He might or might not know the other products. Doesn't matter. Company B products get a 10, everything else get a 1. (note that he isn't dishonest. He just loves Company B, and has probably stated so many times on the boards, which he has a right to do.)

Voter C knows of 2 product nominated. He likes one fine enough, and sort of dislike the other. He doesn't feel strongly about either. He votes 10 for the product he sorta likes, and 1 for the product he sorta dislike, and 5 for all others, thinking that that's pretyy fair.

And so on, and so forth. Multiply that by a big number. See how it skews everything?

 

[francisca]

I have a very simple way to handle the Ennies.

Have one award.

Put all of the authors in a fighting pit.

Last man standing wins.

It could be a GenCon event: "True Fighting Pit".

 

[DaveMage]

Last man standing wins.

Whoa! Man?

Heck - for that comeptition, I'm putting $5 on Nikchick...

 

[francisca]

Whoa! Man?

Fine. Human.

Sorry if I offended anybody. Well not really. It was all toungue in cheek anyway.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, please do a more in-depth explaination of the AV system, fungasite.

Give him a bit of time. The way the AV system counts votes is simple in concept, but it's a bit of a pain to put into words, because vote-counting is an iterative process.

 

[Conaill]

Oh... I'm sorry. I thought we were talking about how the judges were selected. I hadn't even got the the question of how the judges ranked things.

Actually, we're talking about how the voters pick the winner (and runner-up) out of the 5 nominees pre-selected by the judges, since that has been the most problematic phase of the process.

Also, instant runoff voting (which I would agree is the best for choosing a single victor in a large field) is AV (Alternative Vote). STV chooses multiple winners in a large field.

In the single-winner case (which is what we are talking about here), STV is essentially equivalent to Instant Runoff / Alternative Vote, which is why I didn't bother making a distinction.

Also, approval voting is not a system but a class of system and I cannot tell how you're proposing to run it simply by noting the presence of checkboxes. Do you mean it's a multi-member plurality system?

I'm talking about standard single-winner Approval Voting (see e.g. Brams and Fishburn, l983, Citizens for Approval Voting, or the Approval Voting Home Page)

Implementation is dead easy: just put a checkbox next to each candidate, each voter can check off as many candidate as he/she likes, and the candidate with the highest number of votes wins.

Approval Voting shares many of the beneficial properties of Alternative Vote (IRV, Preferential Voting, single-winner STV, whatever ) and has some additional nice features, but is much easier to implement and therefore often more readily accepted by voters. In our particular case, it also has an easier time dealing with the many "don't know" votes.

Nice illustration of what's wrong with Borda Count, Fusangite, except for the fact that we weren't using Borda Count last year (and the few people suggesting it in the voting discussion thread last year got rapidly shouted down ).

PS: Just discovered that Wikipedia has a truly awesome set of pages on voting methods. Check them out! For your convenience: last year's voting method for trhe Ennies was Range Voting, with a range of 1-10 (0-10?). The main proposed alternatives have been Borda Count (boo, hiss), Instant Runoff Voting, and Approval Voting. Either of the latter two would be a big improvement over Range Voting.

 

[Conaill]

Great description of the Borda system. Can you do a similar explanation of how the AV system works?

Allow me...

Alternative Vote, aka Instant Runoff Voting or Preferential Voting essentially simulates a series of runoff elections, without needing to get the voters to the ballot box over and over.

Let's consider for a moment a simple winner-takes-all election, with the stipulation that the winner has to achieve more than 50% of the votes.

If any of the candidates get 50% or more of the vote in the 1st round, he wins. Otherwise, you hold a runoff election in which the candidate with the least votes is removed from the running. Problem is, you'd have to get all those voters to vote again (and again, and again, until you've kicked out enough low-scoring candidates that the top candidates gets 50% of the vote).

An easy way around having to have several actual rounds of voting is to assume that only those voters who originally voted for the least popular candidate will change their votes. More specifically, since their favorite candidate is out of the race, they will vote for their second choice in the runoff election. And if that candidate gets kicked out in the next round, they'll vote for their third choice etc.

The upshot is that if you ask the voters to give a full *ranking* of all the candidates, you can do these runoff elections without ever having to ask the votesr to return to the ballot box. Hence the term "Instant Runoff".

In Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), if any candidate gets more than 50% of 1st-choice votes, he wins. Otherwise, you remove the candidate with the least 1st-choice votes. For all those voters who picked this worst candidate as 1st choice, you now simply count their second choice as 1st choice. Check if any candidate now gets 50% of 1st-choice votes. If not, you remove the candidate with the least 1st-choice votes, update the rankings, etcetera.