[Vile]

Originally Posted by quintin3265

Public voting increased the amount of traffic to the site by a factor of 10. These weren't bots; these were visitors who were using real browsers and clicking between pages to download other songs. For example, amongst other filters, "people" who voted without passing a valid referring page were not counted in the results. I hate revealing these things here because then people can defeat them next time, but I feel I need to address people's concerns without giving too much away. It is true that many people voted for only one song, but I am confident that these were valid votes and that there was generally one vote per person.

Well even if we counted real people with valid referral pages, I could still get quite a large number of votes any song (not that I'm going to ever, just saying that it is a possibility). I didn't presume that there was multiple votes on the same track per person (I automatically presumed that was impossible, and that further votes would only change your previous rating).

While the number of visitors definitely increased to the site, are they still around? If it increased visitors permanently, then I understand why you are hesitant to change the system. If, however, the visitor spike was only during voting, and then was only a small permanent increase, then I'd say the public voting isn't quite worth it, and that a small bit more advertising and word of mouth would get more visitors and members.

Originally Posted by quintin3265

KiddCabbage and I had a discussion and he mentioned how Dwelling of Duels requires registration for voting. While not as strict as DoD, what do people think about requiring registration without any time limit on creation? Such a system, while it seems simple to defeat, would cut down the number of casual "click 7" votes by 90%, even if no other changes were made to the voting process.

Alternatively, we could require people to vote on all entries, and to rank entries using the "toplists" idea we talked about in a previous thread. Now, I have more time, so I could create invisible voting lists that the voters are required to fill out, and every song must be listed on the list in order for their votes to count. If there are x entrants, the number of points given to each entrant would be x-p, where p is the position in the voter's list. Comments on this idea?

I do think that registration would be a good idea. People wouldn't be as inclined to just click a 7, then navigate away and never return. Those with accounts might listen to a couple of the songs and rate. Also, if you have an account, you're more likely to actually post and get involved with the community.

I also like the idea of voting on all entries. In my opinion, that would be extremely beneficial in deterring any "cheating" or "rigging" of votes. Someone who votes 7 on one track, and 1-2 on all others is probably *slightly* biased. If this was not implemented, then creating a "competition" page with the ability to listen to and vote on all the tracks in the competition would be a great idea, as WarpToken suggested.

Toplists are also quite fair in my experience (hence why I suggested it with the judges idea). Everyone listing their favourites in order again removes a bit of the bias, as people would have to listen to several of the songs.

Originally Posted by quintin3265

I understand your viewpoint, but I'm not hot on creating a judges panel. While it might be possible to get people who like different types of music, how could it possibly be fairly decided who, out of all the possible choices, is to be on the panel? And how could anyone interact with the panel members in the same way after they judged the results? Even if the judged competition runs flawlessly, that's how cliques form, and I believe that we should avoid the possibility of one being created at all costs.

From my experience with this system, the best way was to have the competition creator decide the 4 judges. I'm quite sure that everyone in the competition feels that you'd choose fairly. You do not have to disclose these toplists, but each judge can disclose their own after the competition ends.

One of the places where I experienced this system was working on an AMV Hell project. I somewhat rushed the end of my entry (due to confusion about the deadline, and being busy IRL), and so didn't place in the top 3. While being a bit disappointed, I went in the IRC channel and discussed my entry with a few of the judges. They were all willing to give helpful pointers, and I found that two had actually placed me in their top 3. I felt that I had learned a lot more from that system than I would have from public voting, and felt that the system was very fair.

That's just my experience, and I'm just suggesting alternatives and giving my opinion