Test poll

[kerravonsen]

This is a test poll to see possible ways I could set up the voting. Using "scale" polls could enable "preferential" voting, but only if people follow the directions exactly.

[Poll #1000080]

The way this is supposed to work is that the one with the highest average is the one that wins. Unfortunately it is possible with this one to give "3" more than once, and so on, whereas the one-person-one-vote setup is fairly foolproof.

So I'm asking y'all to try this out to see if it's too complicated to get to work.

Comments

[bucue.livejournal.com]

all options are indentical.. erm..?

[kerravonsen]

Er, no?

"Vote for thing 1" isn't the same as "Vote for thing 2" is it?

One reason for this test is if it's too difficult to explain how to do it, then I'll have to forget it. (sigh)

[bucue.livejournal.com]

but it' s all 3/2/1. Why not just 2 votes and 2/1 for example?


and isn't the standard 3/2/1 + special category?

[kerravonsen]

Obviously this isn't going to work.

Each poll item represents a hypothetical entry in the challenge. People who want preferential voting want to give their 1st, 2nd and 3rd preference.

Unfortunately LiveJournal does not have a method of creating polls that do preferential voting for you. So I am trying to use what they do have, to make something that will work, without me having to do any calculations whatsoever, something that will make LiveJournal do all the calculating for me.

Now, LiveJournal does have "scale" questions in their poll setup. So I thought I could use that. I needed something so that people could give 1st, 2nd, and 3rd preferences only, and "don't count this" for the items that don't fall into 1st, 2nd and 3rd. The easiest way of "don't count this" is to give something a score of zero, because then it won't "count" in the average.

So, the way to figure out which ones got more 1st, 2nd and 3rd-preference votes is to give 1st-preference a weighting of 3, 2nd-preference a weighting of 2 and 3rd-preference a weighting of 1. That way, the higher the score, the more people liked it.

But if it's too difficult for people to use, then there's no point in trying.

[bucue.livejournal.com]

It just seems like you're trying to re invent the wheel, why not just make a screened post and make people vote by comment, then add up the votes?

[kerravonsen]

Because I am NOT going to add up the votes by hand, I have better things to do with my time, darn it!

[bucue.livejournal.com]

So why bother at all if you're oh so busy to do anything but a half arsed job?

[kerravonsen]

(smiles sweetly and quotes Chesterton) Because if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing badly.

[bucue.livejournal.com]

No, that's just some cheap slag who failed a lot.

It's not exactly hard to add up votes once a week is it?

bit of paper, a pencil and a couple of minutes.

[kerravonsen]

Rule 1: Don't insult the moderator. Once you have fathomed Rule 1, we can talk further.

As for adding up votes by hand, I do have better things to do with my time, I only have a finite amount of free time, and I'm not going to change my mind about this.

[bucue.livejournal.com]

Better idea. Rule #1 Don't do shit if you can't be bothered.

I would of taken part each week but you know what, fuck it. If you can't be bothered to do your part I'm not going to do mine. You'll probably only give up on the community in a few weeks any way.

[kerravonsen]

You're perfectly free to start your own community, you know.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I think it's too easy for people to get confused and do it wrong, and also too hard for you to collate the results to work out the winner.

Simple is better. A radio button for each entry and one vote per community member.

[kerravonsen]

It looks that way, doesn't it. And here I thought I'd hit on a clever solution, where I wouldn't have to do any collating of results. Because there is NO WAY that I'm going to go to the amount of effort required to collate preferential-voting results by hand.

[jinxed-wood.livejournal.com]

Perhaps 3 straight up votes would be best - for example:

Question One: Which one would be your first choice (I,2,3, ticky box)

Question Two: Which one would be your ssecond choice (I,2,3, ticky box)

Question Three: Which one would be your third choice (I,2,3, ticky box)


A pretty straight up voting system, which would be hard to misunderstand, I think?

[jinxed-wood.livejournal.com]

Or, perhaps, eradicate preferential voting altogether, and just have everyone vote for their favourite - it's easier to figure out for both the voter and the moderator (no stubby pencil and copy book required) :-)

[kerravonsen]

Yep, looks like we're going for the Keep It Simple method...

[tesana.livejournal.com]

I understood what you were going for. ;-) Looks like keep it simple wins.

[kerravonsen]

I understood what you were going for.
Oh good, at least it wasn't a completely stupid idea to try...

Looks like keep it simple wins.
Looks that way.