CIR - Term 1

[xlBlackhawklx]

If we want to use the american voting system lets just prove how flawed that is real quick and prove that POPULAR VOTE is the best way to go. Right now we have an Electoral vote system which can be rigged and force some states to be skipped in campaigning like here http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-a...chines-illinois-and-maryland-rigged-democrats and here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_United_States_election_voting_controversies.

Now if we use the STV method (Which might I add is a terrible method as it does not display the correct proportions of who people really wanted to vote for if they are knocked out.) We find that yes it allows more choice and gives more votes per player. I'll let this video do the talking about "More choices" psychology
Ultimately, Popular Vote is the only real way to see ACCURATE voting statistics otherwise the voting stats can be altered, rigged, or unfairly projected. If you look at megacrafters chart you will see clearly Keptick should have won. I dont know about you but the bigger number always wins 25>19 simple mathematics.

Want less controversy? Switch to popular vote like america needs to do.

 

[Master_Artificer]

you have to understand that in this case, Tomatoes was the Turtle, and lots of people who voted for someone who was eliminated had their 2nd, 3rd, 4th or even 5th vote used that ended up with tomatoes, while people who voted for keptick also voted for dalmont, skylord, and mega, and his proportion of the votes had already been "tapped" by those people, because he was put farther down on the list.

1. 3:26 PM - keptick:
   The thing is that a lot of people probably thought that they were voting for all 5 people they selected. In reality you only vote for 1 person

Keptick couldn't of said it better himself!
Most of us are satisfied with the results, have learned from it, and want to use the same system again next time, now that we understand what we are actually doing...

 

[MrFURB]

If you look at megacrafters chart you will see clearly Keptick should have won. I dont know about you but the bigger number always wins 25>19 simple mathematics.

Heyyo, I'd just like to clarify some things since there's been quite a number of misunderstandings, and it's clear that folks aren't quite getting what the video is trying to explain.

The five percentages you saw is not the actual votes that counted, but the percentage of people who put that as their preference. Using the Tomino and Keptick example, more people had put down Keptick as a preference but the majority of people who put him down as their second, third, fourth, or fifth preference instead had their more prominent preferences take their vote.
Tomino received less overall preferences, but the majority of the people who had him as their second, third, fourth, or fifth preference had their more prominent preferences not take the vote due to either already having enough votes to take the seat, not having enough votes to take the seat, or withdrawing from the ballot altogether.

Hopefully this makes more sense to you now.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Heyyo, I'd just like to clarify some things since there's been quite a number of misunderstandings, and it's clear that folks aren't quite getting what the video is trying to explain.

The five percentages you saw is not the actual votes that counted, but the percentage of people who put that as their preference. Using the Tomino and Keptick example, more people had put down Keptick as a preference but the majority of people who put him down as their second, third, fourth, or fifth preference instead had their more prominent preferences take their vote.
Tomino received less overall preferences, but the majority of the people who had him as their second, third, fourth, or fifth preference had their more prominent preferences not take the vote due to either already having enough votes to take the seat, not having enough votes to take the seat, or withdrawing from the ballot altogether.

Hopefully this makes more sense to you now.

I think their would of been a lot less confusion if you released data on after the transferable votes did their magic. Maybe something to keep in mind next time...

 

[Lecic]

May I propose something like this for future elections:

1. People rank their choices from one to whatever
2. First votes counts for: ( amount of votes for that person ) x ( total amount of people that could be voted for). Second would be ( votes ) x (total - 1), etc.
3. The first so many people with the most voting points get onto the council.

What this mean for this election, for example, is that if a person had 10 people list him/her as first choice, 20 as second, 15 as third, 60 as fourth, and 5 a fifth, he/she would get 10 x 5 + 20 x 4 + 15 x 3 + 60 x 2 + 5 x 1 = 300 voting points. Say he/she has 7th most total voting pints, he/she would be on the council.

I would also like to empasize 'something like this'. There probably is something way better out there, or not. Either way, this is how I think it could be done.

This sounds like a good solution to me. You can still place multiple votes, and order your votes according to who you want in the most.

 

[CyberTao]

As the table within the spoiler is not in a very readable format, have a plot detailing the votes. The candidates are sorted by how many 1st choice votes they recieved:

When you look at it like that, doesn't seem like I did all that bad. Interesting. A lot of backvotes, like I suspected.

As for the voting system itself, it does have it's merits, but it does have really odd quirks about it. While every person voting only gets 1 vote, you can still clearly see that some people got a much larger approval rating than some, but not getting on regardless. Mayhaps there can be special seats next time for said people? 7 from STV and 2 highly approved of Candidates, without saying who got in how? There is nothing saying that we need only use 1 system afterall.

 

[EtherEel]

I've expressed pretty clearly in several places that I don't like STV.

Regardless of that fact, however, Let's be clear that:
1. This is just a game.
2. The Council has no real power to do anything.
3. If you have an influential voice in the community, your voice will not be diminished simply because you bear no "Councilor" badge.
4. We will see yet if these councilors and the council as a whole can fulfill their/it's intended purpose.
5. There exists no perfect system of voting by simple virtue that all human endeavors are inherently imperfect.

Lastly, I'm glad that at least 1 person for whom I voted actually won a seat.

~ee

 

[Ithirahad]

Looking at that graph again, I feel kinda sad that I beat Linwe and Korke apparently...

...Anyway, I don't think that STV works very well here. STV is awesome when there are several bases of voters, all with their own, very diverse interests... Here, most people have the same main interest (The wellbeing and continued growth of the game and all of its aspects) but a different way of furthering that goal. The result is that instead of interest groups, the vote will generally get divided into fanbases... which is mostly counterproductive.

 

[linwe talion]

The voting system worked pretty well, quite as Artificer noted in his 1st post, showing the deep structure of the community, and, what is even more important, letting more layers of the community to stay significant and visible.
Though I'd advise to make a visualisation video of the voting results' calculation, this could explain much more for those, who just add numbers.
Many gratz to the 1st Council, as there will be many others (I hope so), but the 1st will remain the 1st forever.

And yes, thank you a lot to everyone who put their voice for me, I really appreciate your support.

PS
I assume the total number of voters was about 440 persons. This is not a lot for a community like this one, I wish next time we have a larger quorum.

 

[DraconisDomini]

I'll chime in here as well. While Megacrafter's chart is nice it is somewhat misleading because you can't add the percentages of 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice, etc votes like that.

Think of it this way, you were not voting for 5 people you wanted to be on the council, you were voting for one person you wanted to be on the council, and then who you wanted as 2nd choice if they didn't get selected, and then who you wanted if your 2nd choice didn't get selected, etc. If you voted for SkylordLuke, Dalmont, Sven or any of the others who were elected then your 2nd and later choices have no effect, because your first choice has already been elected. If (for example) Keptick had a lot of 2nd, 3rd, etc choice votes from people who really wanted Luke, Dalmont, Sven, etc then those don't count because your first choice has already been elected (i.e. you got what you said you wanted most, you can't have what you said you wanted 2nd too, that would unfair on everyone else). On the other hand if (for example) Tomino got a lot of 2nd, 3rd, etc choice votes from people who voted for FlyingDebris, Jath, anyone else who was not elected, then he was elected because otherwise those people would have no representation at all, which would also not be fair.

What you can get from the distribution of voting choices is things like:
Not many people love CyberTao (sorry Cyber), but a significant number of people think Cyber would be ok if they couldn't have their 1st/2nd choice.
People either love or hate Kikaha (or have no idea who they are), but very few people are indifferent toward them.

That said:
a) I agree with EtherEel in that 1) It's a game, and 2) The council have no real power, so there is no point getting too hot under the collar about it.
b) I agree with linwe that it might be beneficial from an explaining the system perspective to do a blow-by-blow animation of the number of votes each remaining candidate has as those with the fewest votes are eliminated. I don't think this would jeopardise voter anonymity - you would obviously be able to recognise your own vote, but I don't think you would be able to pick apart anyone elses.

I'm not entirely sure whether I would agree with Ithirahad about a lack of distinct voter bases. While, yes, everyone wants the game to succeed and move forward, different groups want to emphasise different aspects - e.g. creative/sandbox building, combat, exploration, and may not really care about some of the other aspects at all.

 

[Ithirahad]

I'm not entirely sure whether I would agree with Ithirahad about a lack of distinct voter bases. While, yes, everyone wants the game to succeed and move forward, different groups want to emphasise different aspects - e.g. creative/sandbox building, combat, exploration, and may not really care about some of the other aspects at all.

...Yes, so people can just vote for whoever they think supports their vision best. There aren't political parties or very specific-interest groups in this community; everything's sort of blurred around the edges, so the issue that STV solves (that is, lack of representation for certain groups) is more or less nonexistent. While some people may have a preference for some specific part of the game, I don't think there's anyone who wants the development of one thing at the complete expense of all else... it's usually more of a matter of priority.

 

[DraconisDomini]

...Yes, so people can just vote for whoever they think supports their vision best. There aren't political parties or very specific-interest groups in this community; everything's sort of blurred around the edges, so the issue that STV solves (that is, lack of representation for certain groups) is more or less nonexistent. While some people may have a preference for some specific part of the game, I don't think there's anyone who wants the development of one thing at the complete expense of all else... it's usually more of a matter of priority.

I get what you mean (also of course real world political party affiliations are also fuzzy), it's more that, while yes its more a matter of priority, if some people feel their priorities are being ignored they might abandon the game entirely. It's more making sure that the vocalisation of relative priorities are set properly.

 

[Winterhome]

STV is still, combined, a better choice than most of the other systems we could have used. The other option is giving players multiple votes and working from there, and that's still problematic because it screws minority opinion groups.

Right now, all of the complaints are stemming from the visible portion of players on the forums not approving of a certain Youtuber getting in over other candidates despite not getting the popular vote. I'm certain that other players elsewhere are perfectly happy with how it worked out - they're just not on the forums. STV worked, and it worked as intended, but some of us are dissatisfied because we felt like we were betrayed by the voting preferences. Keptick earned more total votes in any individual category than Tomino, but lost out because most of the people who put him as something other than first preference also voted for people who managed to get in anyway.

Basically, it worked fine and we're annoyed by it because it gave what is viewed as an insufferable fringe group a representative.

 

[idiotplaysgames]

LET IT BE KNOWN THAT THE COMMON PERSON/PEOPLES IN THE STARMADE DOCK WOULD PREFER A POPULAR VOTE SYSTEM (at least thats the vibe i'm getting)

 

[Ithirahad]

STV is still, combined, a better choice than most of the other systems we could have used. The other option is giving players multiple votes and working from there, and that's still problematic because it screws minority opinion groups.

Right now, all of the complaints are stemming from the visible portion of players on the forums not approving of a certain Youtuber getting in over other candidates despite not getting the popular vote. I'm certain that other players elsewhere are perfectly happy with how it worked out - they're just not on the forums. STV worked, and it worked as intended, but some of us are dissatisfied because we felt like we were betrayed by the voting preferences. Keptick earned more total votes in any individual category than Tomino, but lost out because most of the people who put him as something other than first preference also voted for people who managed to get in anyway.

Basically, it worked fine and we're annoyed by it because it gave what is viewed as an insufferable fringe group a representative.

I, for one, don't mind Tom being on the council... I just don't like the implications of the method in general.

 

[Winterhome]

LET IT BE KNOWN THAT THE COMMON PERSON/PEOPLES IN THE STARMADE DOCK WOULD PREFER A POPULAR VOTE SYSTEM (at least thats the vibe i'm getting)

It's a case of a vocal minority.

 

[idiotplaysgames]

Also, we need to outright ban YouTube Campaigning. It just gives some candidates a "popularity" edge that isn't really fair, and isn't always the best choice for the community.

 

[Ithirahad]

Also, we need to outright ban YouTube Campaigning. It just gives some candidates a "popularity" edge that isn't really fair, and isn't always the best choice for the community.

No. I say, if someone can get a voter base that way (or, in Tom's case, already had one, I guess) it's fair game... We're not preventing anything else, so why this? Just because you don't like the person/people using it?

 

[Winterhome]

Also, we need to outright ban YouTube Campaigning. It just gives some candidates a "popularity" edge that isn't really fair, and isn't always the best choice for the community.

How about server-owner campaigning? Or asking your friends to vote for you? Or talking to chat about the voting system and who you think will get in?

You see, doing that will ensure that more people are angered. It's really, really easy to screw something up by trying to fix a non-issue that's painted as an issue by general grumpiness.

 

[CyberTao]

I get what you mean (also of course real world political party affiliations are also fuzzy), it's more that, while yes its more a matter of priority, if some people feel their priorities are being ignored they might abandon the game entirely. It's more making sure that the vocalisation of relative priorities are set properly.

Council does not get a whole lot of influence over Schine. Saying it like you did implies that a council of mostly PvE'ers could influence the game into focusing on more PvE aspects, which they could not. They just have to represent the views of the community, "How X should be done to satisfy the most people" is the question I expect the council to be faced with most. Schine wants to know what people want, and if the council ends up ignoring a certain part there are many very vocal people here that can kick up a storm to get the attention of Schine itself.

To put it bluntly, The council should not get any control over Schine's priorities, they can give proper feedback that might alter their choice of feature to focus on, but such an effect would probably involve a public discussion between the Council and Community as well. There is not so much a need for people who support pvp or pve, as it is a need to have people who understand the desires for them.

Right now, all of the complaints are stemming from the visible portion of players on the forums not approving of a certain Youtuber getting in over other candidates despite not getting the popular vote

As the first person to bring this up, let me say that I don't give a flying frog's legs that Tom got in. I had already long accepted that he would. What happened was when the stats were released, we started poking around, and found that Tom had the lowest approval (what I call combined votes) of the council people, and then when looking through again, I saw the difference between his and Kep's.

Honestly, my bleh comes from Person A getting in despite having lower approval than Person B. If Tom wasn't in last place relative to everyone else, I would have used the name that was last, because that is where what I was talking about is most obvious. In hindsight, I should have used less Names in my posts.