pouët.net

Getting more people to vote during demoparties

category: parties [glöplog]
Wall of text warning. Short version is:

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Make it easy to note votes in a form during compos that can be submitted at any time after compo end with 100% reliability, or you risk losing votes by "oh, do I have to type in the notes into the voting system...and there's a guy before me who hasn't finished yet.. hey, there's that guy, I always wanted to talk to him" and "fuck this, I'll just vote for a few, the ones I happen to remember. Unless I get too tired."


Let's establish a few things. Either you are taking notes during compos, or you a) say that you have a brain capable of memorizing every entry and how good you thought it was, for later. Or, b) that you vote passively for only a few prods in each compo, the ones you remember, and fuck the rest, who cares if they were abysmal or 6/10?

Now, you could take notes on paper, or type notes on your phone or computer. Perhaps later you must leave, or you have a great discussion with a friend and forget the time, or anything. They are left as notes, unless you use the browser based system to feed them all in, and perhaps if there are 40 entries in a music compo, you won't feel to bother to feed them all in.

In whatever way you submit your votes, you of course do it between compos, simply because you haven't seen or heard all the entries until then. Or, on some parties, you do it after all the compos, because the schedule is tight or the voting system isn't open yet.

Naturally, the definition of “voting during compos” is identical to “taking notes during compos”, and they are not mutually exclusive. You would hit Send or Submit after you are happy with your votes and the system is open for voting, just as you would click or type in your votes into the voting system after you are happy with your votes and the system is open for voting.

The reason I think allowing a reliable method of “digital note-taking” would yield more and better votes is that a) those who have a device that can Send/Submit can just do so and not have to copy their votes from phone/notepad.exe/paper to the voting system (i.e. distractions can't convince them to not be bothered with that), and b) don't have to sit in the dark with a piece of paper and a pencil. Usually you want to sit in front of the bigscreen for the demo compos, so that your laptop with notepad.exe must be left behind.

(Again, if you don't take notes during compos you're admitting that you're voting for just a few in a compo with many entries, and that you could forget how good an entry was.)

If we then use digital vote forms, what is expected to work best in the minute after the last entry is shown and the voters all hit Send/Submit?

For browser based forms, I would welcome voting systems that can handle disallowed cookies, unread HTTP headers, 500 and 501 errors without losing the votes. I dunno. Do they? And for hopefully 100% stable internal network voting, the voter with “a computer or mobile device with a stupid OS that can't see the network, let alone connect to it” would know that he must spend the night taking notes and then copying them into the voting system at some working terminal.

Are these systems already in place on all parties? That's not my experience.

What option is left? My suggestion for a more reliable submission of votes is email. All that is needed is a device that can get Internet access sometime during the evening before voting closes, and off the email goes.

Regardless of whether you use a webmail service on your computer or the built-in email client in your mobile device, your know your votes will reach the voting system.

Those who are unable to use webmail, don't trust any-email web services, or are unable to set their SMTP to Google's to send their email have to take notes on their laptop, that's true.

And, as mentioned, if there are voting systems in place at all parties that are open for voters to note their votes directly during compos with 0% chance of losing a single vote when they hit Submit, then all that is needed is a CSS theme that works great for those who don't want to lug their laptop to the bigscreen seats.

I just think paper-and-pencil note-taking belongs in a distant age and not at demoparties in 2013. Go digital?
added on the 2013-08-23 00:14:49 by Photon Photon
Just to stave off the ones who will accuse me of suggesting such paper-and-pencil note-taking before, what I mean in my last detailing (as if it shouldn't spell it out clearly enough) is what the ones who want to hand in good votes have to do now: Sit in the bigscreen seats with some scrap of paper and a pencil they found (unless they bring a pad and tested pencil as I do) and write down prodname/groups/vote (before knowing if the scale is 1..10 or some other scale).

Proper paper vote forms are superior even to some email or browser form, because the prodnames are pre-filled, the scale is there and you put an x in a box, and they're physical, so there are zero votes potentially getting lost on the way to the voting system; the only way they can get lost is by physically throwing them away.

Again, I recognize orgas would have to do more work, as I've done in all my posts, but as I wrote in my blog post, it's irrelevant when the only concern is making sure voting is dead easy and votes arrive without fail.

In other words, the only process I focus and that is relevant to raising the quality and quantity is the one from the moment the voter decides his vote to when it's successfully received for counting.

Preparations, the actual counting, and which systems to use outside this process is completely disregarded, since they don't affect the quality or quantity of the votes.
added on the 2013-08-23 00:35:56 by Photon Photon
pen-and-pencil note-taking belongs in the distant age of two pages ago?
added on the 2013-08-23 00:46:16 by msqrt msqrt
ha, should always refresh.
added on the 2013-08-23 00:47:09 by msqrt msqrt
Photon: let me ask you two questions:

1) How many parties have you attended?
2) How many parties have you organized?

Answer both, honestly. And feel free to to answer in length.

I will help you by answering myself:

1) 42
2) 5

I will ellaborate: First party Assembly 1995, latest Assembly 2013. Symmetry, I know. Two weeks earlier my latest would have been Solskogen 2013.

Now, we have established that I am a minorleague player here, and even still I feel that you have utterly lost contact with how demoparties _actually_ work.

No no, feel free to post whatever whitepaper at the scoopex site, no one takes it seriously. We have had a good laugh at it in here and irc.

But dont let it pull you down. Just do your thing, organize a party. It shouldnt be too hard in Sweden. Do your thing. But please: let us know how it worked out. We want to know!

As for myself - I have voted and I have not voted. It is because I chose to do or not do. It was never a technical obstacle. It was more like a choice "I choose to vote/unvote here". And I know for a fact that some people who dont vote, never vote. Period. Not a technical issue, but more of a mindset one.

I will take the "pencil and paper" as a joke, as I am sure you meant it as such.

Email is so 90's, grow up. Take it from a guy who does NOT code for a living.
added on the 2013-08-23 01:59:23 by T-101 T-101
Guys, I've just done a count, and according to the rules of Arguing On The Internet, if Photon claims "email is more reliable" three more times, it will become a true fact. After that, all your arguments are invalid. Sorry.
added on the 2013-08-23 02:41:31 by gasman gasman
Time to whip out ye olde hitler-card, soon!
added on the 2013-08-23 02:47:03 by D.Fox D.Fox
*intalls godwin filter*
added on the 2013-08-23 02:58:01 by wysiwtf wysiwtf
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Get more quote during demoparties
added on the 2013-08-23 04:19:13 by RbR RbR
BB Image
added on the 2013-08-23 04:23:01 by Tomoya Tomoya
without at ALL suggesting that pen and paper is in any way a good way to vote (I am a party organizer myself, and that is not going to happen), I do like the idea of making pens and paper AVAILABLE for those who wants to take notes during the compo that they can then later use to plot stuff into partymeister or whatever. Maybe even with a sensible layout (Compo name, prod name, group name, score colums or so) - i think the best we can do is try to eliminate as many of the little barriers as possible, as well as appealing to people's sense of participating.

I will personally visit IKEA soon and STEAL ALL THE PENS as well as PRINT ALL THE NOTESHEETS at a friendly university soon. For great justice as well as for TRSAC.
added on the 2013-08-23 10:04:55 by nic0 nic0
there are prolly sponsors who can be found for pen paper. companies love to give away that stuff, you see the logo every time you look at the note sheet, so that's fine with many companies i guess.
added on the 2013-08-23 10:23:30 by skomp skomp
I'd personally like to have pens and paper available, just in case, as i never have (at least own) computer at parties with me and it's impossible to remember all the entries. Phone is still harder to use than good ol' pencil and paper, just blank one is good enough, no need for any layouts or shit. But that's just me.

That email idea is indeed so confusing i ehh... well, never mind :)
added on the 2013-08-23 10:26:11 by Serpent Serpent
garg, now that we have pouet 2.0, can we haz a photon filter pls?
added on the 2013-08-23 10:28:24 by skomp skomp
I don't like where this thread ended up.

Making sure that people have pen and paper to take notes during compos is not going to get more people to vote, because people who can't figure this shit out BY THEMSELVES, and bring their own pen and paper if they need it, AREN'T going to vote, period. (And feel free to generalize this point to other ideas by yourself, it's just an example.)

The 'problem' with voting isn't external circumstances, it's the fact that people have to be proactive enough to form their own actual opinions about productions. THIS IS WORK, and not that fun. You cannot force people to care enough to do this mental work, because it is work, and it is non-trivial, and who the hell wants to do that on their weekend off?

Once people have actually FORMED their own opinions, there's a good chance that they're going to tell other people what they think (i.e. vote), external circumstances be damned.

All of this fixing up to make voting 'easier' will maybe get you a few extra votes, but you'll be into diminishing returns real quick, because it doesn't fix the underlying problem. Please stop trying to hold my hand, it's offensive.
added on the 2013-08-23 11:24:56 by revival revival
lmao, i love how photon keeps on posting even though a bunch of hardcore party organizers are chewing him out. What are you expecting man? People going "Oh SHIT!? YOU ARE ToTALLY RIGHT MAN! We will bring paper and pens and e-mail servers and internet to our next party and everyone can vote like an old man with alzheimers!"

^__^
added on the 2013-08-23 11:58:29 by okkie okkie
yeah, i will provide a crate of interwebz as well, though the newschool stuff is only sold in kegs.
added on the 2013-08-23 12:00:43 by skomp skomp
I agree on the deeperlying issues Revival, but I was going on the premise that most people actually do want to vote, and you are right that nothing I ever do will make them vote if they dont care at all. So why do people, who do want to vote, not vote, and can we get them to vote?

I have formed opinions on a lot of the compos usually (except stuff like ASCII and oldschool music because sorry - I have no clue about those), and usually vote. But I have missed it a few times because voting was well, problematic (couldnt remember the crap-ton of compos, late, beer, voting system down, forgot login, thrown away votekey etc) - all things that are my own fault of course.

The question for party organizers then becomes, do we want people like me to vote in cases like that? do we want to make an effort to do so? if so, do we try to change the mentality of people like me (to make me more prone to overcome logical issues)? or do we try to remove logistical issues?

None of the above questions are exclusive and can be solved in a lot of ways - I just wanted to (re-)open the idea of removing logistical problems as well, even though of course I agree that the mentality and real desire to vote are way more important than just having an easy way to do so :)
added on the 2013-08-23 12:14:42 by nic0 nic0
Holy shit! This thread is 12 pages long? It roughly correlates with my own voting behavior: I get the point. I understand its importance, but then again, at the end of a party I'm totally drunk and exhausted from working on a release and just want to get outside and dance.

Some things that might change that:
1. Some incentive: Free stuff lottery for people who voted (t-shirts, free entrance next year, etc)
2. Status on the wall (e.g. a long list/tag-cloud of all the people who voted)
3. Instant visual representation of all releases (e.g. animated GIFs taken during the competition)
4. Some App/Mobile-Site that allows me to vote during the competition (e.g. just giving stars).

Just my two cents. Does somebody have a pen?
added on the 2013-08-23 13:13:13 by pixtur pixtur
I got one from DICE in my goodie bag.
added on the 2013-08-23 13:23:51 by Gargaj Gargaj
If you want something to improve - make it visible!
Have a slide showing on the first day, where people arrive, that they should register on the party network (most parties do this, but perhaps state, that people WILL loose their votekey when drunk, so better go register while they still can)
After each compo - show a slide, urging people to go vote. Oh - and not just the usual "Compo over - now go vote", but something a bit more original like "Compo over - if you appreciate the months of work you just had boiled down to a nice and one-bite-friendly size of 20 minutes - Do the creators the honor and state your vote NOW, as you'll be too drunk later!"
Well - I guess it could be put smarter, but I think you get my point. Everyone knows, when asked, that prods is the result of ALOT of work, but it's just as if a reminder will help bring this existing understanding to the surface, and perhaps make people accept the "work", that revival correctly categorizes voting as being. It IS work, but my work for 30-60 seconds to honor those who spent thousand times more, doesn't sound like an unfair request ;)
Visibility, visibility, visibility!
added on the 2013-08-23 13:39:53 by Punqtured Punqtured
The situation where I bet most people would vote is a tough one - two or more somewhat equally mind blowing productions ought to get people rooting for their favourites. So, preselect too obvious winners away? :)
added on the 2013-08-23 13:41:58 by msqrt msqrt
now its just getting sad :)
added on the 2013-08-23 14:11:13 by superplek superplek
you could introduce voting booths with fluffers/cunnilinguists ?
added on the 2013-08-23 17:15:07 by farfar farfar

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