Vote #1: Poll Choice Limits

[Jase]

Dark Pulse responded once, and ended it with a :P smiley. I'm not sure he was really trying to dissuade you, just being silly since you never actually answered his first question, other than "Well, I dunno, I just know I want MORE."

As for Cruor thing, I must've imagined it.

DP made a single argument, and it was sort of hand wavy and more in the interest of actually like, discussing to find the purpose of the change, and where it should be set to. He never said no to the idea, he just resisted implementing it without any actual dialogue or consideration of how.

And then you start speaking about him like some despot while you were talking to me. That's all, really. Dark Pulse's apparent reluctance to increase it is just your red-eye-raged delusion.

[Mike1984]

I wasn't talking about him as if he was a "despot", I was arguing with you, because the point you raised was entirely irrelevant. There's no reason why it shouldn't be increased just because there are, in some circumstances, hacks you can use to get around the issue.

[Jase]

Sorry, I just like playing Devil's Advocate, since y'know, it seemed like no one was speaking up in the interest deciding how much is enough, or if there's too much.

And still, you never really gave a compelling reason why the polls you're lobbying for aren't more than just a trinket for some passing entertainment, than something that's like, so fundamentally necessary that it requires such an aggressive appeal.

[Mike1984]

Well, is anything on this forum "fundamentally necessary"? Hell, is the forum itself really "fundamentally necessary"? Is the universe going to cease to exist if we can't discuss the Nasuverse?

The specific case I was actually asking on behalf of was actually a poll that Lantz is doing, to decide which route to write next (and there are more than 10 possibilites). So, he actually needs more than 10 options in the poll, and unlike with "best character" polls there isn't really a way around that.

[Jase]

I dunno, maybe it's the way you overuse italics, but to me you always sound like you're arguing for some fundamental human right.

[Mike1984]

Well, I am rather argumentative, highly opinionated and don't like authority much, so....

[Jase]

Well, I wouldn't sweat it.

All in all, I don't actually mind seeing the vote cap go up, and people seem pretty comfortable with either 20 or 30, most likely 30.

I think it'd just be helpful if you were more patient with Dark Pulse. If he seems to be unnecessarily dragging his feet to you, I think that's just him being reluctant to tinker so much on the executive level, or just a desire to do it right the first time.

Which isn't surprising, I think? The last time he took the initiative on something, was the mod/reputation idea, and that was met with a pretty vocal and large opposition, so y'know.

[Mike1984]

Well, it looks like it's going to end up being 30. And, whilst I'd rather it be higher, personally, I can't see there being any situation where it's likely to matter, because even the broadest poll isn't likely to have more than 30 options in it that couldn't be covered by a generic "other" option, so that's acceptable to me (20 I could live with too, even if it's a little on the low side).

As for DP, I don't think I was being anything like as aggressive as you seem to claim. My comments were just me pointing out that the existing number was (IMO) far too low in my usual manner. I wasn't trying to attack him or insult him.

[Cruor]

Mike argues to change rules if they seem to limit users in anyway. Whether it affects him or not. If it affects him he's even more adamant. I remember one time he got in an argument with F1 over the rules of a Fanfiction contest F1 was holding.

[Mike1984]

Mike argues to change rules if they seem to limit users in anyway. Whether it affects him or not. If it affects him he's even more adamant. I remember one time he got in an argument with F1 over the rules of a Fanfiction contest F1 was holding.

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up, actually. I despise arbitrary limitations, even if they don't directly affect me (and even if they're broadly popular, because tyranny by majority is still a tyranny...).

I mean, I usually won't even stand for it from the government (I just take no fucking notice of their bullshit rules), so the likelihood of me just accepting such rules when they're laid down by a forum admin or contest runner is practically nil....

[Jase]

I actually think "Other" options (such as the over nine-thousand option in this poll) to be kind of degenerate.

But it doesn't really matter. I'm just a stubborn grump who's stuck on trying to maximize the accuracy and utility in polling, lol. And by far the most useful polls are binary (votes can't be split, all votes are useful).

Like, if I had done this poll, I'd probably have started with the binary question of "Should polls have a cap on the number of choices that the author can insert?" or something.

Of course, that's if you wanted to go full democracy and literally hand the entire decision out to the masses, regardless of whether or not they have an informed opinion on the idea or not.

[Mike1984]

I actually think "Other" options (such as the over nine-thousand option in this poll) to be kind of degenerate.

Well, it depends what you're doing. In some cases, "other" options are very useful.

But it doesn't really matter. I'm just a stubborn grump who's stuck on trying to maximize the accuracy and utility in polling, lol. And by far the most useful polls are binary (votes can't be split, all votes are useful).

Well, that depends on what you're trying to find out. If you want to find out the most popular character then, yes, by far the best method of doing so is to have a series of one-on-one matches (I would actually like to see some such tournament at some point, but it's hard to organise it without cluttering up the board horribly). However, if you want to ask who is everyone's favourite character, or if you want to make a decision between a large number of unrelated possibilities, then you need the possibility to vote for more than one at a time.

Like, if I had done this poll, I'd probably have started with the binary question of "Should polls have a cap on the number of choices that the author can insert?" or something.

The problem is that a) I would guess that it is neither possible (due to the workings of the software) or adviseable to remove the cap entirely (because someone could then create a poll with a million choices and break the forum) and b) you'd never get an answer at that rate. I would agree that, for the question at hand, giving many options and then picking the one with the most votes isn't the best way to do it (because, in general, someone who votes for 50 would clearly rather 30 than 20, and yet if the vote is split enough 20 could win despite being clearly disfavoured by the majority of voters), but it's hard to see how he could have organised this better and still got a decision this side of Christmas....

Of course, that's if you wanted to go full democracy and literally hand the entire decision out to the masses, regardless of whether or not they have an informed opinion on the idea or not.

Well, that's another debate entirely, of course....

[SeiKeo]

I think we should just not get so worked up over the number of poll choices.

[Jase]

Yeah, I don't believe there's a way to get it to literally no cap, but then the solution would be to put it to as high as it can go. And you are right about multiple choices where each option is distinct enough to make vote splitting a non-issue.
Like, if people had said yes to the cap, I'd probably ask with options like:
0~10
10~100
100~1000
1000~10000
10000~100000

At which point, it probably goes beyond what the forum can handle, and doing it by powers would get people's sense of what's actually necessary pretty definitively. Whereas a poll with a large number of options, going at linear increments of 5 is vaguely problematic, from the vote splitting angle.

And yeah, round robin 1v1 is the best for deciding what something is best liked across a number of people. That touhou app where it put all touhou characters systematically into 1v1 matches (no repeats) to come up with a definitive list of your favourite characters. It's not even round robin, it just cycled you through every possible match up in the most efficient way.

[Mike1984]

Yeah, I don't believe there's a way to get it to literally no cap, but then the solution would be to put it to as high as it can go. And you are right about multiple choices where each option is distinct enough to make vote splitting a non-issue.

Well, vote-splitting is always an issue, but sometimes it's an unavoidable one (at least within the constraints of the existing forum software). A good example is if you were to hold an election. The ideal way to do that would be for each voter to rank every candidate and then apply an algorithm (e.g. the Concordat method, which is basically what you're advocating here) to decide who wins, but because of the way the forum software works that simply cannot be done, so the only way to vote for something in an individual thread is by the First Past the Post System. The only other option would be to make a poll for each pairing and pair them off one-on-one, but that is simply too unwieldy, and would clutter up the forum too much.

Like, if people had said yes to the cap, I'd probably ask with options like:
0~10
10~100
100~1000
1000~10000
10000~100000

At which point, it probably goes beyond what the forum can handle, and doing it by powers would get people's sense of what's actually necessary pretty definitively. Whereas a poll with a large number of options, going at linear increments of 5 is vaguely problematic, from the vote splitting angle.

Well, honestly, there's no point in going beyond 100, and anything below 10 would just be stupid, so your idea would just add a redundant level of voting that takes up more time without providing any useful information.

And yeah, round robin 1v1 is the best for deciding what something is best liked across a number of people. That touhou app where it put all touhou characters systematically into 1v1 matches (no repeats) to come up with a definitive list of your favourite characters. It's not even round robin, it just cycled you through every possible match up in the most efficient way.

Well, yeah, I agree with that entirely, but the problem is that it's pretty hard to organise such a tournament on a forum like this. It simply takes up too much space.

Also, note that, with a large group of people, to find a definitive order you actually need to play all the matches, because it is possible that you could have e.g. Sakura beats Saber, Saber beats Rin and Rin beats Sakura.

[Jase]

I actually prefer first-past-the-post for politics, exactly because it's inaccurate, with a heavy bias towards moderates and greatly disenfranchising radical elements. *shrug*

As for 100 being the highest logical value, that's simply your opinion, and you've basically shown how useful that model is, since you can't even fathom voting for the other options. ^_~ Because in my opinion, if you're fine with 10, then 50's not really that dramatic of an increase. If you can tolerate 200, I don't see how 700 should be an issue. But if you're advocating 40, then 400 is definitely outside what you'd advocate. Basically, voting determinism isn't diluted with cases where "Well, I like this option, but this other option is almost just as good!", and you can resolve that issue without multiple round voting.

It just seems redundant to you because the categorization works.

As for the last note, if people were voting consistently, that should be impossible, technically. Of course, that assumes 100% voter turn out, which is... lol. Which is why round robin becomes useful (and even lets you do 1v1v1 free for all for increased speed without a big issue). Then you do 1v1 or small elimination brackets to sort out the point ties.

And yeah, such things are beyond the scope of forums usually. But you know, who'd run them here in the first place?

[Cruor]

How'd you two go from insulting each other to a discussion like this?

[Mike1984]

I actually prefer first-past-the-post for politics, exactly because it's inaccurate, with a heavy bias towards moderates and greatly disenfranchising radical elements. *shrug*

Actually, that's not true. FPTP actually makes it more likely for radical elements to win (in a single-winner election), simply because of the issue of vote-splitting. If you have two central candidates and one radical one, then the radical one might win due to the central ones splitting the vote.

As for 100 being the highest logical value, that's simply your opinion, and you've basically shown how useful that model is, since you can't even fathom voting for the other options. ^_~ Because in my opinion, if you're fine with 10, then 50's not really that dramatic of an increase. If you can tolerate 200, I don't see how 700 should be an issue. But if you're advocating 40, then 400 is definitely outside what you'd advocate. Basically, voting determinism isn't diluted with cases where "Well, I like this option, but this other option is almost just as good!", and you can resolve that issue without multiple round voting.

Erm, what? I'm pretty sure that it's not that simple....

For instance, I would be fine with 50, but 10 is far too low for me.

It just seems redundant to you because the categorization works.

Well, the point I'm making is that, in this case, at least, the plausible set of values where it actually matters is small enough that dividing the options up into powers of ten is not worthwhile. I mean, no-one is going to advocate only 1 possible option, and anything over 100 is simply never going to be used.

As for the last note, if people were voting consistently, that should be impossible, technically. Of course, that assumes 100% voter turn out, which is... lol. Which is why round robin becomes useful (and even lets you do 1v1v1 free for all for increased speed without a big issue). Then you do 1v1 or small elimination brackets to sort out the point ties.

Actually, that's simply not true. It's a well-known paradox of voting. Just because every individual has a unique ranking, the group as a whole does not have to have one.

Suppose, for example, that you have 1 person that ranks the characters A > B > C, 1 that ranks them B > C > A and 1 that ranks them C > A > B. Then, A will beat B 2 - 1, B will beat C 2 - 1 and C will beat A 2 - 1. So, you end up with a loop.

And yeah, such things are beyond the scope of forums usually. But you know, who'd run them here in the first place?

Well, there aren't many other places you could run them, because most other fora are too heavily infested by anime-only fans to give an accurate picture of which is the "favourite" character for genuine TM game fans.

[SeiKeo]

Actually, that's not true. FPTP actually makes it more likely for radical elements to win (in a single-winner election), simply because of the issue of vote-splitting. If you have two central candidates and one radical one, then the radical one might win due to the central ones splitting the vote.

But FPTP reduces radical representation in parliamentary or congressional elections. People like the Pirate Party (and less constructive parties) can win seats because of non-FPTP systems. And in an open system where anybody can run for office, the national elections inevitably gravitate towards two centerist parties.

[Mike1984]

But FPTP reduces radical representation in parliamentary or congressional elections. People like the Pirate Party (and less constructive parties) can win seats because of non-FPTP systems. And in an open system where anybody can run for office, the national elections inevitably gravitate towards two centerist parties.

Well, it does relative to proportional systems, yes (not that that's a good thing, mind, because it allows a minority to dictate to the majority with little or no actual oversight). But, proportional systems don't exactly work when you can only have one winner....

In terms of single-winner elections, FPTP actually gives extremist candidates the best chance of winning, due to the fact that you only need to gain a plurality of votes, rather than an absolute majority. Hence why someone like Bush could end up as president of the US (and even Palin might have a shot, if Obama fucks up badly enough, simply because there's no alternative).

Also, no, FPTP doesn't necessarily gravitate towards two centrist parties (because no-one will dare challenge any of the major parties, so they can basically do whatever the fuck they like, and pander to corporate interests), and in so far as it does that simply leads to the electorate having no actual choice about how the country should be run.