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I wanted to get feedback on how the community feels about our current name vote. There have been some concerns that we've had relatively small percentage (~10 percent) of members register to vote, and wanted to see if there was something more fundamental going on. As it is currently setup, here's how things are
- You had to be registered by April 12th to have been included in the name vote; if you received a ballot for submission, you should have gotten ranking ballot
- We haven't retroactively added in additional users, though it hasn't been clear that there was a hard cutoff
- The submission phase went until the 19th, and the vote for the name will continue until the 27th
- The current system is email only (but we are looking at getting something integrated into the website implemented for future votes)
I want to hear your feedback below from everyone. Based on what we get back, we'll roll improvements into future votes, or if need be, reset the vote and do it again; I know a lot of you are active here or at least more involved, so the relatively low turnout is a warning canary for me. Leave your comments below, and expect another story in a few days to see how we're using your comments.
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This life is yours. Some of it was given to you; the rest, you made yourself.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday April 23 2014, @10:32PM
It was also a sincere pain in the ass.
One super long list of domain names, and many were quite frankly complete crap. It looked a domain squatter/speculator's list. It was quite long. You guys said yourself you have complete veto rights, which kind of dilutes our vote quite a bit doesn't it? It's clear that there is a "board" for this new community based news site that has more influence and actually maintains the site. Perfectly fine with me, but that does mean you could have pared down a lot more of the ridiculous sites.
li694-22.com?
nerdgloss.com?
pipebeard.com?
I'm not disrespecting the contributors, but those were noticeably less preferable to the average person when compared against the rest of the list. The list could have been reduced by half easily by removing those.
While we are very technical here, a numbering system with 9 as the highest instead of 1 as the best was counter intuitive. That's a terrible system as it is entirely possible you may want to change a value from 8 to 7.5 because it is better than the existing 7 and not as good as the 8. You don't want them equal. It's also the worst system to use when you have a high number of selections, and can't easily see your previous ones. I'm not sure you got the best data you could get.
As silly as it sounds, text based is a little hard for me to read. HTML is actually easier for me to read at this point. Consider having both text/HTML content in the email.
So it was difficult to read and difficult to use. I went all the way through it, but I'm not surprised the majority of the recipients did not.
I know coding efforts may be tight on resources, but you couldn't implement this as a form on the site tied to our identity as suggested by Frojack? It would be a lot more user friendly. Processing inbound email and piping it to another process actually seemed harder to me as the input wasn't strongly structured and errors would be present. A form with radio boxes could allow the selections, and a subsequent form could have columns of radio boxes representing 1-9 similar to satisfaction surveys.
Easier to use and I'm willing to bet you would get better data.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Horse With Stripes on Wednesday April 23 2014, @10:45PM
The li694-22.com comes from the internal name of the Linode server we were running on (li694-22.members.linode.com).
(Score: 2) by xlefay on Wednesday April 23 2014, @10:48PM
Internally, we still use the 'li694-22' name. ;-)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by pe1rxq on Wednesday April 23 2014, @11:39PM
Nice for an internal name, but you really thought it would be a good external name for the site?
I was not in time to vote, but I am guessing 127.0.0.1 was also on the list?
(Score: 2) by xlefay on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:42AM
Eh, no, I don't. I haven't even submitted or voted any names..
Personally, I've read the instructions and all, but I really can't be bothered to go through these hoops.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:41PM
In case it's of use, I've created a journal entry called "Site name suggestion manifestos" [soylentnews.org] and added this information.
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Wednesday April 23 2014, @10:54PM
Huh? 9 was the highest? I thought 1 was, and voted in that manner.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Wednesday April 23 2014, @11:08PM
A little bit hard to understand, even after the 10th reading.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 23 2014, @11:15PM
How dare you be critical of such GENIUS
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Wednesday April 23 2014, @11:28PM
I didn't parse the "higher number" thing at all. Awesome, now my choices are inverted. What a mess.
(Score: 3, Funny) by frojack on Thursday April 24 2014, @01:03AM
In that case, your use name is quite apt. ;-)
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2, Funny) by ramloss on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:41AM
Are you, by any chance from Florida?
(Score: 2) by umafuckitt on Thursday April 24 2014, @02:43AM
Who, me? No. Not from Florida.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @01:08AM
we should change your name to hangingChad
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:59AM
See http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=1177&cid=35 354 [soylentnews.org]
just vote again
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday April 23 2014, @11:30PM
I only voted for the one name, soylent news, and put a 9 in the spot....
if i'd put a one in that spot, would they have thought that I thought that that was the worst name?
I'm thinking that they're thinking that they would have thought that i'd thought that that
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. I have always been here. ---Gaaark 2.0 --
(Score: 2) by edIII on Wednesday April 23 2014, @11:33PM
If you see any of my IQ points on the ground will you tell them to come home please?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Doctor on Wednesday April 23 2014, @11:32PM
Crap. I did the same thing.
I don't know what all the technical issues on doing the vote were, but I don't know why you could not use registered users on some sort of poll. The email format was definitely clunky and the list was really long with a *lot* of lame names. (And no, I'm not real fond of Soylent News as is basically just a non-sequitur.)
"Anybody remotely interesting is mad in some way." - The Doctor
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:53AM
see: http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=1177&cid=35 354 [soylentnews.org]
you can cast your vote again
(Score: 3, Insightful) by randmcnatt on Wednesday April 23 2014, @11:45PM
Then, a looong way down the page
A bit confusing.
The Wright brothers were not the first to fly: they were the first to land.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday April 24 2014, @07:33AM
So if your second choice was given an '8', does that carry more weight than if you gave it a '5'?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 1) by Iskender on Thursday April 24 2014, @01:21AM
I voted for one of the entries you mentioned. The other two are not very good, in my opinion.
We're having a vote because we don't all have the same opinion. I don't think you're disrespecting the people who made those suggestions. But you might just be disrespecting the vote. You can't determine what "the average person" thinks before we've voted.
The fact that you're dissatisfied with some of the options means democracy is much more likely to be at work.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:08AM
No, I'm not trying to be disrespectful at all.
I just think the list was way too long and if they have an overriding vote anyways... why not just make the list shorter? The staff should be providing us with a list that is acceptable to all the people making code contributions at the moment. I hardly think that was the whole list.
If it's an absolute requirement that every possible value be present than a different system is required that can deal with a higher number of possible selections and values.
This was far from the ideal way to do it.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by black6host on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:47AM
Actually I fail to see the need for a vote at all. I don't come to this site because of the name. I come because of what the site is, and with hope for what it can become.
That being said, just pick a name that is easy to remember and somewhat descriptive. No need to be cute. Get rid of all the angst and uncertainty, assign the site its permanent name and let's move forward doing what's really important (submitting, commenting, reading and learning.)
Not to mention just look at how successful Facebook has become. And it has quite a stupid name, IMO :) Also, I don't think I've ever heard anyone say: Hey, check out this cool site, the name alone makes spending your time there quite worthwhile...
Honestly I think we got all caught up in the BS of Dice's attitude and had a slight knee jerk reaction by trying to be all inclusive regarding naming the site. Let's keep the community aspect rocking and rolling and never forget how we ended up here. At the same time, let's not bog ourselves down, either.
I'm sure the powers that be here can come up with something decent and then we all can move on to more important stuff.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Thursday April 24 2014, @08:22AM
This is the primary election. We're currently voting on which candidates will be in the general election later.
The list WILL get shorter, probably to about 10 possibilities. Then, there will be a final vote.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 24 2014, @01:26AM
text based is a little hard for me to read. HTML is actually easier for me to read at this point.
I sounds like you are talking about *fonts*.
Have you considered using something other than Courier [google.com] as your monospaced font?
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by tibman on Thursday April 24 2014, @01:53AM
I agree that it was more pain than needed. Just a series of checkboxes somewhere would be perfect : ) However! I enjoyed the list. Some just made me laugh out loud. I won't list them because at least one is still for sale.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by watusimoto on Thursday April 24 2014, @09:36AM
Go pipebeard!!!
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:02AM
I had the same thoughts... "This overly-long list could have been pruned of the obvious" and "WTF? Higher means better? Usually #1 is one's FIRST choice!"
To deal with the "Crap, I voted wrong, I thought 1 meant #1" issues (which from the comments here were common enough -- I read the thing 3 or 4 times before I was sure I got it) -- just let people vote again, and have the later ballot overwrite the earlier one (with the voterID number, that should be easy enough -- obviously you have dupe checking in place already, so just add timestamp checking to know which ballot to use). That way it's still one ballot per voter, but no vote is borked by misunderstanding the instructions.
Email really is not suited for working with long lists. *sigh*
[I did read the entire list, just in case. And gave SoylentNews a 9 and didn't vote for anything else. There were one or two others I kinda liked, but not as well as SN.]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:12PM
http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=1177&cid=35 354 [soylentnews.org]
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Thursday April 24 2014, @06:37AM
Apparently I am reading-challenged. I thought the process was fine. A web-form would have been easier, but it's early days...
Then I read above that "9" was the number to use for the best name, and "1" for the least-preferred? Perhaps I am reading challenged, but I used "1" for my first choice and "9" for my ninth choice. I expect many, many other people did as well.
Hmmm...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:12PM
http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=1177&cid=35 354 [soylentnews.org]
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:17PM
I think the contents of comment 35354 should be paraphrased and added to the "Name Voting News" slashbox thingy that I see on the left of my screen.