pouët.net

i remember when we had to print the votekeys at nordlicht we ran out of paper before the printjob was done. but before we got into paper-panic-mode we figured that we had more than enough keys already printed and the list was like 500 long ;p

having that said i think its a good idea to offer the crowd the possibility of voting or taking notes during the compo. sure it distracts sometimes but thats and individual problem with an individual solution. the slow march to the bigscreen once the jingle starts shows me that most sceners dont really give a fuck if they miss a few seconds of the show.

im more for going ahead and suggest an app or mobile css for the phone/tablet instead of turning backwards to paper, tho.

and what is that shit of organizers removing "crap" votes? than you can stop voting all together and let them decide which prods win...

calling for urs here! he is a scientist and knows about rocket science!

wysiwtf: that basically points towards live voting in partymeister. BTW. that would be really awesome. the point why i don't vote for music compos is that i can't do it live and later i can't remember the the entries. or to put it the other way around: because i'm lazy as shit and don't take notes during the compos. ahh yeah, and there are no screenshots. having to listen to all entries again would mean spending a lot of time that i could use for boozing and socializing.

Somehow writing a note list of 3-40 lines of text per compo: prod y by group x is incomparably more time-consuming than filling a voting system with all those prods and their screenshots, setting up some VPN or intranet and handing out password, setting up vote stations.

If you want more votes and better votes, give voters easy-to-use votematerial in time for the compos. That's all I'm after, and the topic of this thread.

If you want to avoid paper, just make the voting system (or manually or with a simple PHP script) send out email vote forms before the compos, so that people can note down the votes and press send. Email is inexpensive (roaming charges for foreign visitors), always works, no votes are lost, and a simple script can count them. Don't use an app or webpage.



If you have problems with THIS I'm accusing you of not wanting votes, and refusing to see the problems and complexities with what you use today, when in fact it could be easy and reliable for voters and orgas alike.

Can we PLEASE limit the discussion to people who actually DO organize demoparties and know how the world works?

What t... I don't even... wow.

Well, what I did for a long time (when I had some kind of electronic device available) was to simply open a text editor and put the song names in there, along with some kind of rating. Better than nothing...

We have had paper votesheets at End of the World parties 2011 and 2012. We got circa 20-30 entries combined (gfx/wild/music/demo), and roughly 50-60 visitors with about 40-50 voters in them.

I dont ever want to go back to that again. It takes effort and cursing just to go into that room and start cracking. It is slow manual labor and very error prone, especially after midnight and massive ammounts of beer. Luckly I was wise enough to make the excelsheet ready the night before.

In 2012 it took us over 2 hours from the point when went in to the room to the point we came out of the room with final results.

In 2013 we used PMS. It took us 2 minutes, and we didnt lose people from the partyplace who got tired of waiting for results. We took a risk by not having a votekey at all, all that was required to entry/vote, was to enter basic infoes and go. Almost all there voted and compos were opened for vote when the last entry was playing.

In short, votesheets: Fuck off

oh, and dont get me started on PayBack

Almost every single day? Seriously, don't make a fool out of yourself.


No. That's an insanely shitty idea, sorry.

Also: after reading the rest of your suggestions in this thread, I would (kindly) suggest that you stop helping, because you're seriously not.

eh, sorry, but... what? why do you expect that people check and use their mails during a demoparty?

I propose that the reason you get bad or too few votes is a very clear and simple one: the audience is absorbed by watching the compo, do not remember who made what or how good it was until 2-3 hours later, when they go to some voting computer. Or don't, because there's another guy at each one and they're shit tired at 2AM so all they want to do is sleep.

I claim this is the problem defined.

I don't see any contenders either denying that with arguments, proposing that the problem is a different one, or suggesting better solutions. Until that happens, I guess you're just stuck with me and my correct analysis and constructive suggestions.

Replace "how good it was until 2-3 hours later, when" with -> "how good it was, 2-3 hours later when..."

Aaaah, gotcha. Thought you were serious there for a moment. *wink*

Well, that's my claim. In the sentence just before it, I write what you must do in order for this to not be a "No, YOU'RE wrong!!" shouting match.

Say that my analysis is wrong, then. Say that everyone memorizes the 40 music compo entries and can replay them in their mind, when they queue up for the voting computers and are half asleep and even more drunk than they were 2-6 hours earlier when the compo was held. Tell me how everyone doesn't just vote for 3-4 prods in each category and leave the rest blank. Tell me how nobody could get two prods mixed up at 2AM.

Or tell me that this is true, but is in no way responsible for the poor voting numbers, or if they are, there's a much greater reason: tell me what it is.

Or tell me that this is true, but you have a solution far greater than voting during compos with your mobile.

Or tell me that it's impossible to vote with mobiles due to technical impossibilities (list them) and how setting up voting computers is much easier and never caused a problem ever.

And E-Mail fixes all that? Cool - I never knew...

Sigh. So you WERE serious. Okay.

Your "analysis" is fundamentally and insultingly wrong because people are not idiots and...
1) ...have discovered notepad.exe and can take notes. Even on paper, if they so insist. Or on their mobile device.
2) ...can vote immediately after the compo because the network is up 24/7.
3) ...can distinguish between prods because of screenshots and downloads, which they WILL NOT HAVE on a paper votesheet.

But okay, you can argue you can print screenshots, so here's a fun little experiment: Your party has ~200 visitors. You have ~50 compoentries (which for 200 people isn't that much). 50 compoentries with (distinguishable) screenshots is about 2-3 pages of (A4) paper, so your votesheet is at this point a survey that needs to be stapled together. Now you're printing ~600 pages of paper, which is basically a small book. Now, assume you want screenshots IN COLOR, and you got yourself basically an hour of printing time for something that is gonna be TURNED INTO LANDFILL IN MINUTES. There's enough trash at parties already.

But let's continue:

NOTHING. Gloom already noted that voting numbers (70%-ish) are VERY GOOD - actually much better than the 58% that was the last US presidential election, which one might argue had a more substantial stake than ultimately who gets a plastic bag full of onions and a flash drive.

What we were discussing previously before you brainfarted all over the thread (and got shot down in unison by TENURED PARTY ORGANIZERS) is how to possibly improve / incentivize voting without making it more tedious to the organizers. None of the good suggestions involved a massive overhaul of the current, already well-proven system.

But yeah, you go girl, use a PHP script (you know what it's also good for? WEBSITES) to email out voting forms (through the same network that could be used for WEBSITES) to people for their mobile devices (which can also view - wait for it - WEBSITES) so that they can send it back for some ridiculous text-parsing (instead of, you know, HTML forms) provided that they got the email, because "email always works", except when the spamfilter kills it or postfix says the (local) domain name isn't qualified, or the other billion fucking reasons email can fail as opposed to a webform that can send a red or a green to the user light depending on whether there was an error or not.

Again, I'd love to be proven wrong, and I'm sure Gloom and Dfox will concede their defeat as well, if you manage to bring along a party that uses your "system" and is successful while doing so. But honestly, I'm not particularly worried about that.

I thought pretty much everyone already agreed that mobile voting is a nice idea for an alternate way of voting :v

I've never taken notes of a compo but will definitely try it out at the next party - there could be pens and sheets of paper next to the bigscreen with a sign or someone handing them out to make more people consider doing so. That wouldn't be much of a pain for the orgas and could raise the 'quality' of votes - though no matter what you do you'll get somehow 'skewed' (or at least different-than-pouët) results, I think it's not about the system and amount of people voting, it's how people vote at parties. It's not a science, it's about moods and opinions and shit.

But ever since mainstream mobile phones started having desktop-caliber web-browsers, what exactly is the bottleneck? Sure, you can tune it up with a mobile CSS, but I've already done most of my intranet fiddling at Revision with my phone.

@D.Fox: I'm used to discussion, even with harsh words, but usually opponents bring something to the table except terse ridicule. This leaves only for me to detail my suggestions until someone actually proposes something. Here it is then.

You seem innocent to the internet problems some parties have? Therefore, apps are out (because some visitors might not have them, and can't download them in time), and webpages can lose connection, losing the POSTed form.

However, I would say that most mobile phone users can open an email and enter numbers into it. Even drunk, and even during compos. Also, the email app is built-in. Also, they can be sent and received even over flaky party WAN connections. Also, should there be no internet, they can be sent and received cheaply over 3G, even with high roaming charges. Unlike apps or webpages.

Do you see now how this could REALLY work during compos and solve the problem?

Nothing, I was referring to how Photon suggested that someone said it was somehow impossible to do. Someone brought up the possible connection problems, but I don't know if they're actually relevant.

photon: why would an app (or even a lightweight webpage) use more data than an email? All an app needs to do is connect to the server, authenticate, get a list of entries and send a few numbers back for the votes.

Besides, an app can tell you if it can't communicate. A webpage will show an error too. What if the email goes into your junk folder or whatever, does it tell you that it didn't get received or delivered? No, it doesn't.

You're proposing solutions that are worse than what we've already got, that's why you're being bashed instead of taken seriously :D

@Gargaj: Better.

1) Not all visitors bring laptops or want to sit with them in their lap during compos. They would have to write down prodname and group in the time it takes to show it on the big screen. They talk to their neighbor and applaud. For real, you want this to be super easy. A prefilled email works better, because you just put the cursor and enter a number.

2) You also seem to deny there are ever any network problems on parties. Parties are arranged in all manner of rentable properties, and I have been on more than one party where the orgas have announced technical difficulties. It's at the other end, too: some technical difficulty with your device accessing Wifi. Have you tested your voting system with 120 people voting simultaneously during compos? No.

3) With voting during compos, there would be no forgetting and so no need for screenshots, so I have no idea why you bring this up.

With a website based voting system during compos, you not only rule out those who don't want to pay ridiculous roaming charges (or sign into some bespoke network which will result in problems on device connecting, handing out fucking ip numbers and the usual shit we've all experienced), but unless you make a really usable responsive mobile design (which will look like the "prodtitle - vote number box" list in the email solution anyway), people will have to navigate some large webpage and zooming in and out on small screens during compo.

If you can guarantee voting on mobiles during compos for your party, that's fine and dandy, providing you eliminate roaming charges, I don't care how you do it.

But there are more parties, and most of the ones I've seen seem to go for the russian voting computer queues 5 hours later solution. Email is suggested as a universal, simple to implement and completely reliable alternative to the paper forms you got hung up on for some reason.

If 70% is fine (source? unvoted prods counted as voted 5/10 on?) to all orgas, then just say that and there's no reason at all for this thread. Forgive me for assuming the problem thread with the problem in the title actually was a problem for some.

@psonice: Webpages depend on connections to the webserver and database server never getting lost or overloaded. I don't know, but maybe you have 100% uptime on your webhost. Lucky you. Also, the connection to the device can be lost. With email, it's just sent later.

If the orgas announce that voting emails have been sent, you're assuming people are idiots and won't complain or look in their junk folder. For real, this is a non problem.

Whereas everyone in the world is experienced with form submit fails - even on computers with RJ45 network connections connected to a big company website with excellent hosting. If an email send fails, you never lose it. Even if you never get a connection again, it's in Drafts.

There is absolutely no way a website can compete in size with an email in bytesize, and there's no reloading for emails, ever. And: as if it would ever happen that someone would optimize their voting system html output.

These are the reasons why I suggested it. Because it's better and works at every party without a hitch.

Everything has been said about the whole voting thing, so I won't weigh in on that. But I just thought that it might be nice to work with volunteer jury voting.

So in advance of a party, or in the start, people sign up for jury duty. First come first served. After the compos ran (after all it's not just the prod. itself, seeing what it does to it's viewers seems valuable to me) they assemble in a quiet place and discuss the competitions and eventually come up with, hopefully fair rankings.

This requires a) willingness to invest time, b) not being completely wasted and c) a serious attitude. None of which are things I'd like to put myself through, but that's besides the point :)

Now this concept scales to fit, but you'll have to split up in teams when compos become too numerous. Anyway to all of these problems there's an acceptable solution.

I could live with it being like that.

Also, about the whole voting from home thing: call me old fashioned but if you're not there you don't get to vote. It's that simple.

I never had problems with voting till last evoke. Voted completely mobile on local partymeister's as well as on laptops or or other bigger machines. Voted via cable or wifi. what's the point if you complain about unstable party networks? the server which would send out the email is also located at the party and the next thing is now for proper mail: you need reverse dns, i.e. a static IP, otherwise the mail will directly go to junk. next thing: if the partynet is as fucked up as you assume, the mail server would still have to rely on that network. if you propose remote party servers, it still has to rely on the internet connectivity of the party. where is the damn point? next is that visitors have to open an email, i.e. pretty much actively polling the vote sheet, then fill some data by hand. now parse "this prod was nuts" or "yeah" and map it to numbers where a web form does that right away. man, i still can't understand that you don't understand: IT'S A SHIT SYSTEM! next you propose that visitors carve their votes in stone tablets because they are happy when they get rid of it and finally submitted the votes...