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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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And if you wonder,
What I am doing,
As I am heading for the sink.
I am spitting out all the bitterness,
Along with half of my last drink.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by starcraftsicko on Wednesday April 23 2014, @10:54PM
I voted. And that's all that counts. You can close the polls now -- I'm done.
Others have mentioned some of this, but this is my feeling:
Everyone 'knows' that 'Soylentnews' is going to win. There were a couple of names on the list that I thought might have been abstractly better... but not better than changing a name/brand this long after launch and without compelling reason.
I think "There's nothing more permanent than a temporary solution" applies here.
That said,
1 - since you of the back end have final veto and/or discretion, the list should have been much shorter. Five, or at most, ten names should have been the max and all of them should have been pre-vetted and approved by administration.
2 - a list this long, if needed, could have been subjected to the scrutiny of a slash-poll. Yes, the AC's would have voted, but better here than in the last round.
3 - Voting by email sucks.
4 - before becoming concerned, see how the quantity of voters compares with the quantity of 'active moderators' in the last week. If the number of voters is close to the number of people who participate (however peripherally) in administering the site, you're probably doing OK.
5 - Don't re-vote. Revoting sucks worse than voting by email.
My $.02
This post was created with recycled electrons.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:09AM
starcraftsicko says...
"4 - before becoming concerned, see how the quantity of voters compares with the quantity of 'active moderators' in the last week. If the number of voters is close to the number of people who participate (however peripherally) in administering the site, you're probably doing OK."
I think that's a good observation.
starcraftsicko says...
"5 - Don't re-vote. Revoting sucks worse than voting by email."
My thought (which I muttered somewhere upstream) was that an easy workaround for the confused-by-the-instructions is to let people vote as often as they like until the deadline, but only count the last ballot from any given VoterID. Since the VoterID thing is in place as a dupe check anyway, seems to me they could just add timestamp checking and only count the last of however many ballots from each person.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by AudioGuy on Thursday April 24 2014, @04:49AM
The answer to this can be found here:
http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=1177&cid=35 354 [soylentnews.org] (just added)
And many others in threads there, where as many answers as we can come up with are kept.
I will go through this thread and try to answer more of them tomorrow, however MANY are actually already answered if you read there.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:15AM
Thanks, I hadn't seen that, but I'm not surprised that you've got it covered already. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday April 24 2014, @07:42AM
The problem is that the vote has no legitimacy now, so really should be abandoned. Re-running the whole thing properly would be preferable. Nothing wrong with admitting your mistakes and doing it right the second time.
The site name is a pretty major aspect of it, and if the goal really is to be powered by the users (submitting stories, commenting) then it really needs to respect the users.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday April 24 2014, @03:33PM
Why? Some people haven't fully understood various instructions, but it's not like we're voting for a political representative or anything on that level of seriousness.
Furthermore, anyone who voted wrongly can re-do it [soylentnews.org].
Admittedly, people who didn't select the "Willing to Vote" option before the deadline have missed out. Ideally they would be accommodated now (without extending the voting period). But if that's not convenient for the administrators, then too bad.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Thursday April 24 2014, @04:47PM
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? The "willing to vote" option was silently added, and the call for suggestions was easy to miss. The suggestions aren't brilliant and I would have added mine if I had even known it was happening.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday April 24 2014, @04:58PM
It was announced by the 2nd sentence of the Call for Suggestions for Site Name Vote [soylentnews.org] submission.
(Score: 2) by xlefay on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:09PM
That post was "at the top" of the list, for maybe 24 hours, hardly enough time for a lot of people to see it, unfortunately.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:33PM
It may not have been at the top of the front page for long, but it was still available in amongst all the other stories, with an easily distinguishable headline. The fundamental usage scenario for this site is for people to look through the list of stories.
You could complain that it was only 3 days (approx) between that story being posted and the first voting email. But there has to be some time limit, and there will always be someone inconvenienced by the limit. Other people are complaining about the process being too slow and making the incumbent name into the inevitable winner.
It's not like we're voting for a political representative or anything on that level of seriousness.
(Score: 2) by Open4D on Thursday April 24 2014, @05:37PM
Might as well post them here. If you get lots of positive comments, maybe your suggestion will get in through the back door (via the staff vote?).
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday April 25 2014, @03:50AM
For what it's worth, we did at the users that spoke up in the week after the deadline passed back into the voting pool. We've learned a lot from this process, and I assure you, we'll improve this process in the future.
(Score:1^½, Radical)