THE INDETERMINATE SEASON 2012-13 "ANNUAL" MSPAFA AWARDS (NOMS SUBMISSIONS CLOSED)

[Crowstone]

http://i580.photobucket.com/albums/s.../malkytop1.png
a dachsudng

[Zombiitwo]

Will there be a list of all nominated adventures? So we can know that people nominated our adventure if we weren't in the top 5?

[MalkyTop]

Maybe later.

[Eversor]

Will there be a list of all nominated adventures? So we can know that people nominated our adventure if we weren't in the top 5?

Don't worry buddy!

Now update for me! *cracks whip*

[simon.clarkstone]

Will there be a list of all nominated adventures? So we can know that people nominated our adventure if we weren't in the top 5?

ISTR that they leaked last time. A pastebin page containing a list of many adventures categorised by number of nominations kept turning up in Google™ results for my adventure name for months.

[Zombiitwo]

Don't worry buddy!

Now update for me! *cracks whip*

Your wish is my command.

[Eversor]

Your wish is my command.

Wait...it was that easy?

Now send $40 to my paypal! "cracks whip*

[Wheeeeeeatthins]

ISTR that they leaked last time. A pastebin page containing a list of many adventures categorised by number of nominations kept turning up in Google™ results for my adventure name for months.

It was unintentional. Some of us were using mibbit's built-in pastebin which is automatically public so that was our mistake. But still, people kept on going like WHAT IS THINGS LET ME SEE THINGS and we even had people barge into the irc channel of #awards which was set to 'not seeable in channel list' so keep that in mind judges when doing things that people will try very tenaciously to nod up and peek at the head-tappers before the magic words of 'heads up seven up' are called.

Perhaps consider use of padlocks, badlocks, boondocks and copious chastity belts.

[mysticCharlatan]

It was unintentional. Some of us were using mibbit's built-in pastebin which is automatically public so that was our mistake. But still, people kept on going like WHAT IS THINGS LET ME SEE THINGS and we even had people barge into the irc channel of #awards which was set to 'not seeable in channel list' so keep that in mind judges when doing things that people will try very tenaciously to nod up and peek at the head-tappers before the magic words of 'heads up seven up' are called.

Perhaps consider use of padlocks, badlocks, boondocks and copious chastity belts.

It has literally been years since I have even thought about that old game. You sir/madam/gender neutral honorific of your choice have made me very happy today.

On topic, can't wait for when this gets started. Crossing fingers that my nominations will make it.

[Jovian]

It was unintentional. Some of us were using mibbit's built-in pastebin which is automatically public so that was our mistake. But still, people kept on going like WHAT IS THINGS LET ME SEE THINGS and we even had people barge into the irc channel of #awards which was set to 'not seeable in channel list' so keep that in mind judges when doing things that people will try very tenaciously to nod up and peek at the head-tappers before the magic words of 'heads up seven up' are called.

Perhaps consider use of padlocks, badlocks, boondocks and copious chastity belts.

wow, I had no idea.

looks like using Skype/Google Docs was a great choice.

I don't think we're going to show the list, because then that sort of becomes a popularity contest, and it could hurt if one discovers one's adventure wasn't in ("why didn't you nominate my thing! you are the worst readers ever!"). Awards are to recognize adventures that have excelled in storytelling, not adventures that have readers that nominate!

EDIT: OH YEAH WOW ONE MORE THING

If you're an art volunteer, you should have gotten a PM with some preliminary questions, so we know what kind of work you're willing to do! If you haven't received a PM from the Awards account, please let me know!

[Wheeeeeeatthins]

Oh I remembered another problem we had with judging last time that you guys should probably take into mind. This probably wouldn't come up until you're judging the final nominations to see who wins, but still better sooner than later.

For a few categories, there were deadlocks between two or three nominees for who should win. We were going "whoever gets majority wins," so this resulted in some people changing their votes strategically for 'second best choice' or sometimes 'well, no one else is voting for the one I think should win so I will vote for the one out of the two that have the most votes I like more, even if there are other nominees I like more than those two and the one I wish would win.' It also resulted in at least one tense standoff where one faction holed themselves up in a room with a staple gun and our judging mascot, Gerbilly (the Guinea Pig) and the other tried to smoke them out by burning some eggs and wafting the horrid burned egg fumes into the room with fans due to each side not wanting to switch votes. Eventually, a compromise was reached with only one minor staple injury incurred, but we all felt the aftermath for the rest of time. The die had been cast, and team spirit flagged in the wake of that terrible episode of brinksmanship. Nothing could be more damaging than to live with knowing the personal failing that, though in the sunlight, we could proudly carry ourselves as high diplomats--when the shit hit the fan, we were the type of person to drop our civility like a wormy apple as we saw ourselves revert to the baser parts of man.

It turns out that the whole holdup caused by vote deadlock and strategic voting was entirely preventable! I would learn long after the awards were over about different voting systems, and that our unpleasantness happened because we were using the worst kind of voting system, First Past The Post (or Winner Take All). This kind of voting system is the kind the US uses for elections (and it is the reason why there are only two major parties) as well as Canadian and UK Houses of Commonses and it should really be called WORST past the BLOW-st!!!!!!!!

Some animals will explain it more:


When voting for winners in awards, you should try using the Alternative Vote to prevent deadlock.


We did something similar to that with Best Active because that one was a humdinger and hard to decide and after a while we got tired of smashing rocks together so we voted for three with something like a gold vote, a silver vote and a bronze vote with each getting a certain point amount. It turns out this is a borda count, which has an advantage over Alternative Vote in that it is less likely to produce a disproportional winner (In close three-way races the "most generally acceptable” choice could be defeated in the first round--if it's everyone's second choice, but only has 30% of the vote vs. the other two having 34% and 36%, it would lose in AV but not in borda count) but has a disadvantage in that it encourages tactical voting more than AV.

Here's more voting systems!
Also, a the Nanson method combines Borda and Alternative Vote to reduce the chance of eliminating the 'most generally acceptable' candidate that AV has. """Have fun""" deciding which way to vote! (Hopefully you don't get into a deadlock on voting which way to vote then you will have to draw lots to decide)


(this post is public and not a PM because voting information is RELEVANT and HELPFUL to everyone)

[Kocel232]

Why don't you just vote with a dartboard? That's how our Founding Fathers did it.

And yes, I know not everyone lives in America. Every founding father of any nation ever used dartboards for voting. Proven fact.

[Adrian Stanalovskiatos]

Wait...it was that easy?

Now send $40 to my paypal! "cracks whip*

I don't have $40 to give, but I do have a shiny penny!

And as an optional bonus, if you give me $40, you get the off chance of getting nothing back!

[snuffysam]

I would suggest Borda for categories that have a small number of nominees, and Nanson for the large ones.
Just because Borda encourages more strategic voting when you have more candidates.

[Jovian]

Oooh, I do like the Borda system. Always seemed more fair to me.

As vote-manager and nagging secretary, I will definitely keep it in mind. Thanks Wheat!

[Wheeeeeeatthins]

Just because Borda encourages more strategic voting when you have more candidates.

It also encourages it when there are few categories. Take a three-way competition where you strongly prefer your first choice and only mildly prefer your second choice over your third choice. You know it would be honest to say that your second choice is your second choice, but at the same time, you also believe based on other people's opinions that the second choice will be neck-and-neck with the first. Therefore, you might say, "Oh no what if my second place vote for my second favorite is what it takes to bump it over my favorite? Maybe I should vote it third instead just to make my favorite more likely to win..."

Like imagine if there was a borda on a ballet in the US with three candidates: a Republican candidate, a Democratic candidate, and a Prohibition Party candidate. The Prohibition Party probably would probably be your last choice, and you would probably vote Republican or Democratic. However, considering that other people will vote either Republican or Democratic, you might actually put Prohibition in second to give your first choice more of a chance.

e: though if you really prefer the first one so much, you can always cast a ballot with only one choice listed (or only a few if you don't care about the last ones). There are different ways of dealing with that (copied straight from wiki):

show spoiler

hide spoiler

-The simplest method is to allow voters to rank as many or as few candidates as they wish, but simply give every unranked candidate the minimum number of points. For example, if there are 10 candidates, and a voter votes for candidate A first and candidate B second, leaving everyone else unranked, candidate A receives 9 or 10 points (depending on the formula used), candidate B receives 8 or 9 points, and all other candidates receive either zero or 1. However, this method allows strategic voting in the form of bullet voting: voting for only one candidate and leaving every other candidate unranked. This variant makes a bullet vote more effective than a fully ranked ballot.
-Voters can simply be obliged to rank all candidates. This is the method used in Nauru.
-Voters can be permitted to rank only a subset of the total number of candidates but obliged to rank all of those, with all unranked candidates being given zero points. This is the system used in Kiribati. This was what we did with the Gold Silver and Bronze with the best active except I just checked logs and it was only gold and silver with gold getting five points and silver getting three
-In Slovenia legislation does not mention the truncated ballots. Consequently, in the past election bodies dealt with them differently from district to district and from election to election. In 2004 parliamentary election, for instance, in one district unranked candidates received one point while in the other district they received zero points. In 2008, unranked candidates in both districts that use Borda Count received one point.

While they're nowhere near as bad as FPTP, even ranked voting systems have flaws! With ranked voting systems specifically, this is because of (Arrow's Impossibility theorem, simplified to a point of mangling it, says there are certain criteria that different ranked voting methods cannot share, resulting in there always being a chance that some bad-luck math might happen, or due to strategic voting, the winner ends up being something that isn't actually what the most people wanted. ARROW'S IMPOSSIBILITY THEOREM is also a new extreme adventure coming to your computervision screens THIS SUMMER.)

[snuffysam]

True.
I guess the best option is to not tell anyone what you think of any adventure.
That or lie about who you voted for.

In any case, my argument still stands. There's less strategic voting when you have less candidates, and more when you have more.

[OrangeAipom]

What if you voted for the Best Thing and the Worst thing?

[snuffysam]

So, you'd give 1 point to your favorite nomination, and -1 point to your least favorite nomination?
That's pretty much just Borda, but ignoring all the middle nominations.

It's also worth mentioning that the judges in this ceremony were selected partially because of their honesty and integrity. Meaning strategic voting is less likely.

[Jacquerel]

They weren't just picked out of a hat last time either, I'd think a little carefully about what you say there.

[snuffysam]

I didn't say anything about the judges last time.
I don't know how the voting process went down last time. If there were problems with strategic voting, then the judges who strategically voted weren't all that fair. If there weren't, then they were. The same goes for this time.
If the system of voting says to rank the adventures from best to worst, then rank the adventures from best to worst. Don't manipulate your results to make someone win, because that's biased and unfair.

[Jacquerel]

I didn't say anything about the judges last time.
I don't know how the voting process went down last time. If there were problems with strategic voting, then the judges who strategically voted weren't all that fair. If there weren't, then they were. The same goes for this time.
If the system of voting says to rank the adventures from best to worst, then rank the adventures from best to worst. Don't manipulate your results to make someone win, because that's biased and unfair.

If you don't know how the judging went last time perhaps you should take care to read the posts of the person you are attempting to disagree with before entering into a debate with them.

Oh I remembered another problem we had with judging last time that you guys should probably take into mind. This probably wouldn't come up until you're judging the final nominations to see who wins, but still better sooner than later.

For a few categories, there were deadlocks between two or three nominees for who should win. We were going "whoever gets majority wins," so this resulted in some people changing their votes strategically for 'second best choice' or sometimes 'well, no one else is voting for the one I think should win so I will vote for the one out of the two that have the most votes I like more, even if there are other nominees I like more than those two and the one I wish would win.' It also resulted in at least one tense standoff where one faction holed themselves up in a room with a staple gun and our judging mascot, Gerbilly (the Guinea Pig) and the other tried to smoke them out by burning some eggs and wafting the horrid burned egg fumes into the room with fans due to each side not wanting to switch votes. Eventually, a compromise was reached with only one minor staple injury incurred, but we all felt the aftermath for the rest of time. The die had been cast, and team spirit flagged in the wake of that terrible episode of brinksmanship. Nothing could be more damaging than to live with knowing the personal failing that, though in the sunlight, we could proudly carry ourselves as high diplomats--when the shit hit the fan, we were the type of person to drop our civility like a wormy apple as we saw ourselves revert to the baser parts of man.

When you tell someone who was judging last time and has already said that he is telling people this as a result of his experience as a judge that "judges this year are known for being reliable and objective" that really sounds like a bit of a slight.

[Zombiitwo]

If you don't know how the judging went last time perhaps you should take care to read the posts of the person you are attempting to disagree with before entering into a debate with them.



When you tell someone who was judging last time and has already said that he is telling people this as a result of his experience as a judge that "judges this year are known for being reliable and objective" that really sounds like a bit of a slight.

I hate to jump in like this but I'd just like to say that it doesn't really look like he's trying to "enter a debate" with Wheatthins, more provide suggestions about possible ways to improve the voting. I also think that he meant no harm by his remark, as when I read it I didn't think of it as an insult, merely a remark about these particular judges in this particular ceremony, although I do see your point.. I would suggest that we all take a step back. If he meant no harm then there's no harm done, if Wheatthins did take offense (or any of the other judges from last year) then an apology would be made and the matter dropped, there's no point in making a large argument out of this, it was just one comment after all.

Sorry if this comes off as presumptuous or anything, I just don't want to see an argument break out!

[snuffysam]

It says that their problem was that they couldn't get a majority. He offered up another voting system, but said it might cause problems if the judges strategically vote.
I said that judges shouldn't be strategically voting anyway, so that shouldn't be a problem.
And that's it.

[Jovian]

Hey volunteer artists! There are three of you that haven't responded to the PM we sent out yet! Those are preliminary questions so we can get a good feel of who wants to do what, so we can be better organized for the future, so we would really prefer to have those answers sooner rather than later!

You know who you are!

If you're being shy because you're worried you can't do this anymore, that's totally fine. We have more artists than categories; you wouldn't hold us up if something came up or you're just too busy. We can all share that sentiment.