Posted: 1/2/2008 9:27 AM
Post subject: A better voting system idea
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Voting system idea: The problem with being able to vote for only one entry is that it results in an unbalanced result. IMO it's a rather harsh way of voting. If it were possible to submit a list of favorites (ie. most favorite, second most favorite, etc) this could create a much more balanced voting system. Even having just a list of two votes would be much better than having just one. Basically you would vote for "this is my favorite entry" and "this is my second favorite entry". In practice it means "if my favorite entry does not win, then from the rest I would prefer this entry to win". Counting the votes would be as simple as giving 2 points to the most favorite and 1 point to the second most favorite. The entry which gets most points wins. This way voters can possibly affect the result even if their favorite entry doesn't win. If there were more than two votes, how to give them points is a matter of discussion, but one possibility is to give each more favorite entry twice the points as the previous one. So, for example, if the list of votes is 4 entries, the fourth most favorite entry would get 1 point, the third most favorite 2 points, the second most favorite 4 points and the most favorite 8 points. The downside of this is, of course, that someone would have to actually implement this voting system.
Posted: 1/2/2008 9:58 AM
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nitsujrehtona
Joined: 3/17/2007
Posts: 97
Location: Berkeley, CA
It sounds like you're proposing a "Borda count" method, and also thinking about the best theoretical way to elect a winner according to voters' preferences. If that's true, you might prefer reading about well-researched systems (e.g. the Schulze method or other Condorcet systems) rather than reinventing them. There are lots of interesting concerns that they address... Luckily, the voting is over whom to give a pat on the back for TASing excellence in the past year... voters probably aren't losing sleep over how much they can influence the outcome. :) The most important feature of this voting system is that anyone can post supportive or congratulatory messages along with the vote.
IRC nick: UncombedCoconut