Voting in forums

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Voting in forums

Post by sjj1805 » Mon Oct 16, 2006 4:17 pm

From: MaryLou [mlwhite@pircnet.com]
Sent: 31 March 2006 03:31
To: Steve Jones
Subject: Re: Voting in Forums
HI Steve,

Actually, I installed Video Studio, then uninstalled it and never looked at it again. That's one of those programs where one needs a manual so they know where to start. If you've never used video editing software the terminology is way beyond one's grasp for the most part and pretty useless without the book to go with it. Win some, lose some! :)

There definitely was vote rigging in that contest. One person couldn't possibly have gotten all of those votes in a two hour period. I suspect he/she had every relative or people on other boards run over and vote. That kind of voting isn't really fair. Actually, voting in that contest for what is the best would be impossible. For example, I have never used video software so I wouldn't know if one of those tutorials was good or not. It wouldn't be fair to vote for something that I know nothing about. The same goes for graphics - if you've never done a computer graphic, you don't have a clue what goes into making one so you wouldn't know a good tutorial if you saw one. Contests are really difficult and it takes a whole lot of thought when setting one up.

What we do on PIRC is, we only allow those people who have entered the contest to vote. That means, you are getting a vote from your peers and you can't stack the deck by having a zillion people vote for you. Each person who enters gets a private entry number mailed to them and their name goes on a spreadsheet along with their email address. If they enter twice, they get two numbers, etc.

When it comes time to vote, each person gets maybe 10 points. They can use those points to vote for their favorites but they may not vote for their own. They might want to give 2 points to entry #12, 5 points to #8 and 3 points to #24. The number of points they give each entry are then put into the spread sheet which has been set up to automatically add up the votes. When the voting ends, I just have to look at the bottom line to see who won. I do give every entry one \"house vote\" because I don't want anyone to feel bad if they didn't get any votes. I give myself 10 points to distribute which I use to break a tie. A person cannot win more than one prize even if they have more than one entry.

If you know how to use a spreadsheet, I still have a copy of some from last year that you're welcome to look at. It sounds like a lot of work but it's really not - and it works. They have to use the same email address to cast their votes that they used when they sent in their entry. This keeps it fair for everyone. A few times, we gave them 20 points because we had around 300 entries and 10 points wasn't enough to cover that span. If they entered twice, then they got 40 voting points.

Anyway, that's how we do it and we've been doing it that way for about 3 years. Everyone loves it and it encourages them to enter because they love to vote.

Hope this will give you some ideas for the next time around.

MaryLou
-------Original Message-------

From: Steve Jones
Date: 03/30/06 18:09:44
To: mlwhite@pircnet.com
Subject: Voting in Forums

MaryLou,

How are you keeping? Hope you’re now getting to grips with VideoStudio.

I recall that after the Ulead Competition closed back in January and there were several complaints of vote rigging, you mentioned that the Photo Impact Resource Centre forum had held similar competitions in the past. You mentioned that they employed a system to prevent this from occurring.

For an upcoming project I shall be involved with I wonder if you could point me in the right direction regarding those voting issues as this project may well involve a vote.

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