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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 2057146" data-attributes="member: 7240">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.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. AV is used for the Australian parliament; STV, for the Irish. 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 read all six pages of the thread you recommended and what I saw was rather wooly discussions of voting systems. I don't think people "got" why it is problematic to give people multiple votes that correspond to points.So, just to briefly summarize, here is what is wrong with Borda systems and their ilk that do this:Let's say we have a competition in a fictional category called Game History amongst the five following books:The Gygax Memoirs: D&D's Early YearsThe Edwards Mission: Bringing Postmodernist Sociology to GamersMonte Cook: Black Sheep or Just Slate Grey?Platform Sandals Under the Battle Mat: Women's Gaming 1974-84What's New to Valar: Failed Attempts to Sexualize GamingNow let's suppose that the Gygax Memoirs and the Edwards Mission are the clear frontrunners; although ideologically opposed, they are both well-written and interesting books. (This is just a fictional example after all.) On the other hand, the Platform Sandals text is wildly inaccurate (after all, what female gamer ever wore shoes like that?) and terribly written. We therefore know it is the worst possible candidate.Those supporting the Gygax Memoirs do not have an incentive to give any score other than the worst possible one to the Edwards Mission. Their priority is to prevent the Gygax Memoirs from being overtaken by its closest competitor. Similarly, the Edwards Mission supporters will also be mainly concerned with preventing their text from being overtaken by its closest competitor, the Gygax Mission, and will therefore give it the lowest possible rating.So, if everyone who wants the Gygax Memoirs to win gives the Edwards Mission 1 out of 5 and everyone who wants the Edwards Mission to win gives the Gygax Memoirs 1 out of 5 and the two sides are fairly equally matched, both products will end up with scores of roughly 3 out of 5. However, if a small group of shoe fetishists vote for the Platform Sandals text and give it 4 out of 5, while others don't know enough to vote on the publication at all, it will beat the obvious two front-runners. While this problem can be solved by everyone giving all products except their favourite a 1 ranking and their favourite a 5 ranking, in a system with Borda ranking, even this will not be possible. The Platform Sandals will undoubtedly win under a Borda system because as the lowest-quality product, it will naturally attract all the second choice vote because it is not a threat. It is merely probable that Platform Sandals will win under a scoring system like last year's because a product that appears to have only a small cadre of supporters and therefore appears not to be a threat will only attract positive ratings whereas a product with a large group of supporters that appears, therefore, to be a threat, will attract negative ratings.For this reason, I recommend AV as our system for voting in the categories. If you're backing a front-runner, your favourite product is not hurt by you making the next best product your second choice because your vote will not transfer unless your product is eliminated in one of the rounds of counting.</blockquote>

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