Should public voting be taken out of the online competitons?

[BalinorNZ]

I have been thinking, now that the competitions are so huge, is voting really worth it?

I know for me, it takes a long time to get the voting pages working and even longer to get everyones votes into my database, especially when I end up with about 100 votes over all the events. It adds up to be about half the time spent organising comps is spent on the voting system.

For the comunity, many people find it hard to rank the players, and a lot of people don't know how to do it properly and personal bias comes into the situation. I think a lot of the people that vote would be just as happy to write some feedback about the entrys that stood out to them, and not have to rank every single player, now that we have 60 entrys it is quite a demanding task.

On the flipside, these competitions are aimed at enriching the comunity, taking away the comunitys right to decide the placings could have adverse effects on the competitions.

Anyway, here is what i'm proposing:
A series of experianced Judges who frequent the forum but don't enter very often (Ken Soliminos, Jeremy O'Wheel for example) would be selected as official judges, I would talk to them privately after the events are released and they would work together to decide a ranking for each event which would then be posted a few days after the event. Ofcourse the ranking would be subject to discussion and the commuity would be encouraged to give as much feedback to the compeditors as possible (as it is now) but we would be without the hastle and controversey of voting and we may end up with a more accurate ranking.

If the motion as passed to do away with voting it will take effect as of next month (december competitons).
What does everybody think

[HG]

it sounds good, it would speed up the voting process immensely. Im fine with that, as long as we can ARGUE

[BalinorNZ]

Just so everybody knows, the poll is only there for novelty, the decision will be made based upon the discussion that occurs in this thread. So if you want to keep your right to vote, then you should speak up.

[shredzilla]

Oh, you mean like a REPRESENTATIVE Democracy instead of the DIRECT democracy that we have now. Nah, the US is getting more and more corrupt because of that system. Not to say that modified judges would, but I think it's neat that both Ken and I have a vote. I may not be as qualified as Ken at judging, but that's when presentation can play a big part. If the voting pages are too tough to make, then people could PM or email their text votes instead. That's a pretty simple solution to that problem.

[slapdash21]

i say yes. voting is a pain, and some people dont exactly know the difficulty of moves that are way beyond stuff they have landed.

[BalinorNZ]

Thanks for input guys, I am still undecided, there are good arguements on both sides. Will have to see what everyone else has to say?

The good thing about the voting pages, is that people don't have to get the names right, they just pick the names and an email is sent to me with their vote, I copy and paste that vote into a text docuemnt with all the other votes and then import that into and excell sheet, which I import into an access database, then I write a few querys and bang, I have automated calculation of the overall ranking.
However, all the names have to be exactly the same, and just about everyone makes a spelling or case mistake, so reading through a few thousand lines to make sure 1,kevinregamy is not 1,KevinRegamy or 1,kivinRegimy or even 1.kevinregamy, takes ages. It's annoying enough proof reading the votes posted in the thread, but I don't mind because those are the one's that give the players feedback .

[jon]

I say go for the new system. Normally I don't vote in the comps because it takes so long and is so hard. This time I voted for every category but only because I felt I should as I was part of the comp. Doing the judging was very difficult and I spend a fair bit of time trying to decide where everything should be placed. It is so objective and difficult to rank some entries it almost makes it painful. I would much rather just leave comments next to each entry as I see fit.

I like your new idea but think it might also be a good idea to cycle in a novice judge every round so that player could learn from the more experienced judges what to look for and gain some experience judging. This would be a purely volunteer position I would think.

Thanks for all the hard work nic. The online comps are awesome.

[mosher]

If the system was just selecting a name from a drop down selection thing then I bet you'd have WAY more people voting. Is something like that really so hard to set up?

[Senor Grommet]

I think the new system would be absurd. If I hit vortex>gyro mirage>fear, Ken would blow his lid! He can't hit any of those moves! But really, having everyone vote is a system of checks and balances. Without lots of votes, we are left to the extremes, with too few votes to cancel out the "extreme" votes. The more voting there is, the better the results will be.

Now, if voting for 50 people is too tough, then why not let the voters only publicly state their top 5 for each category?

[shreddaily]

How about no voting???? Just put out the vids and say "enjoy!!" Leave the viewer to their own interpertation of difficulty.,

[shredzilla]

Eh, I kinda like the competitve aspect of it personally. It's kinda neat that technology even enables us to do this. I think the voting is fair, and if someone is too scared of not getting first place, or having a few critiques then obviously they shouldn't compete. But we don't wanna completely eliminate voting. Cut that hair hippie!

[Bander87]

I havn't voted only because its way to hard to vote for some things. Novice is so simular (besides me, I had the only sick 1 clipper to clipper trick ) Voting for top 5 would be a lot easier. Thanks for all the effort you put into this Nic so far!

[BalinorNZ]

Ok, having a top 5 is pretty much just as bad as the old old old system of having a poll for top1: More than just the top 5 want to know where they were ranked!!! I don't think it's a viable option.

The problem we face is, the more entrys there are, the less people will want to rank all of them, nobody is obliged to(like if there were judges) so eventually when there are over 100 entrys (i'm crossing my fingers for next month!) nobody at all will rank all compeditors, and many people will be left at last equal .

Jeremy, you say there wouldn't be enough diversity with set judges, but if we had 10 judges with different views on footbag I think it would be enough.

The voting pages make this whole thing a lot easier (Tom, the system you just mentioned has been happening for several months now :p), but they are always plagued with problems, they are the only part of the competition that I don't have full control over (I don't control the webspace that hosts them or the .php file that makes them function).
Even when the voting pages do work perfectly, sure we get alot of votes, but people don't give feedback of the entrys in the thread! They just vote! I believe that the feedback gained is vastly more importnat then the end ranking, players get much more out of it. I know I got heaps out of reading Ken's vote for sick15, and I don't even remember what place he ranked me.

[Senor Grommet]

Here's the thing:

Nic is trying to enocurage more voting, but at the same time, he is shooting himself in the foot. He actually expects that each modified will take an hour out of his/her life to watch the vids, rank the people, and leave good feedback for each participant. That wont happen. If you want more votes, change something that makes it easier/quicker for people to cast their votes.
As I see it, there are several viable options for easing up the voting:
1) Modifiers choose the top 5 to vote for
2) Rank all but dont be expected to leave feedback
3) Modifiers choose the top 7 to vote for
4) Modifiers choose the top 10 to vote for
5) Rank some/most but dont be expected to leave feedback
6) Create a system that enables voting to be easier and quicker than it is.
7) Create a formula using human input (decisions we make) that ranks entries without human input by taking into account adds, link difficulty, samesidedness vs. ambidexterity, the regularity of the moves being hit, style, and form. Let's say 10 points can be earned in each category mentioned above.


blurry whirl>ps whirl>fog VS. mobius>symp whirling swirl>grifter

e.g.: blurry whirl>ps whirl>fog receives 29 (+form) total points.
-a 5>5>5 is worth 6 points in the "adds" domain
-this combo is worth 6 points in the "link difficulty" domain
-this combo is worth 10 points in the "sameside/ambi dex." domain
because both feet/legs are used fairly equally
-this combo is worth 2 points in the "regularity of the moves being hit"
domain
-this combo is worth 5 points in the "style" domain
-this combo is worth (insert # based on cleanliness and execution) points in the "form" domain


e.g. mobius>symp whirling swirl>grifter receives 33 (+form) total points

-a 5>5>3 is worth 4 points in the "adds" domain
-this combo is worth 8 points in the "link difficulty" domain
-this combo is worth 8 points in the "sameside/ambi dex." domain
(because one leg does most of the work)
because both feet/legs are used fairly equally
-this combo is worth 7 points in the "regularity of the moves being hit"
domain (symp wh. sw. and grifter are less often used)
-this combo is worth 7 points in the "style" domain
-this combo is worth (insert # based on cleanliness and execution) points in the "form" domain

As you can see, mobius>symp whirling swirl>grifter beats blurry whirl>ps whirl>fog. I think this would be the desired outcome . . . not that this IS the system we should employ, but if we make initial judgments on what factors go into a sick Sick 3, we can have a formula perform computations impartially.

[BalinorNZ]

Thank you Jeremy Your exactly right, I do want everybody to give feedback and vote for the competitions, in my perfect world there would be 10 pages of feedback for the compeditors to read through!

However I do realise that it takes everyone an hour or two to do at the moment, so that is why I made this thread .

Your on the right track with your ideas, but I should let you know, I don't really give a crap about the votes, it's the feedback which is important to me.

That is why I sugest the idea of judges, we can get a board of judges that WILL do an accurate job or ranking the players and the overall rankings I can garentee will end up similar to if everyone voted.
On top of that there will be the oportunity for the comunity to state their agreement/disagreement with the ranking the judges decide upon, and it will be subject to change as a result of such discuession.

I just recieved this PM from an experianced judge and I think he is 100% correct:

Having fewer judges per event is a good idea, especially since it saves time. I would say that you should use a crossection of player levels to judge, dont just use the most experienced guiltless playing people. Many people who arent guiltless spend so much time studying the game they know every move and concept in and out.
I have judged worlds open player a few times and Im not that great of a player, you just have to be able to get the big picture. If you let some intermediate and novice judges then they will be less biased towards what footbag styles are good- freestylers always get caught up in trying harder and harder moves instead of doing the moves that look and feel cool.

The thing is, if we have the rankings decided stright away, everyone will be inclined to state their opinion on them and the reasons for those opinions. By doing this they are giving feedback, which is what I really want, and in the end, after all opinions are made, the players get a bus load of feedback, and the ranking ends up being exactly what it would be if there everyone voted .

[james_dean]

Nic, I think this is a fantastic idea!

[Bander87]

After seeing the novice sick 1 results, maybe we do need a panel of judges. There were some moves that were CLEARLY better than me that placed a few spots lower than I. I was very suprised to see the place I came in.

[BalinorNZ]

After seeing the novice sick 1 results, maybe we do need a panel of judges. There were some moves that were CLEARLY better than me that placed a few spots lower than I. I was very suprised to see the place I came in.

The main reason the votes were a bit inaccurate, is that there were so patheticaly few of them. There will definatly be more than 10 experianced judges examining the competitions if we have judges.

Weather we will have judges or just improve the voting system (better voting pages that update themselves courtesy of Mike Hansen) is yet to be seen.

[max]

A bit of googling and I found this:

http://www.masquilier.org/libre/phpbb/

It is a mod for pdpBB forums that allows different types of polls. Not just majority voting as is the case with the polls today. This could solve a lot of problems:

- ease of voting
- poll on the modified page etc.

This should be checked out by mods here.

[BalinorNZ]

A bit of googling and I found this:

http://www.masquilier.org/libre/phpbb/

It is a mod for pdpBB forums that allows different types of polls. Not just majority voting as is the case with the polls today. This could solve a lot of problems:

- ease of voting
- poll on the modified page etc.

This should be checked out by mods here.

Thanks Max I will certainly discuss with with Mike and Brad.