this post was submitted on 18 Nov 2024
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[Buena Vista Wetshaving Social Club Meta] Voting discussion (self.wetshaving)
submitted 4 days ago by PorkButtsNTaters666 to c/wetshaving
28 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Now that everybody has digested somewhat their voting trauma, it is time to reopen the wounds. 😱

The voting procedure for the BVWSC consisted up to now in me simply winging it, but last month, I didn't wing it correctly, and dukkha ensued. First, I got trigger happy and announced a winner when some important members (ahem @walden@sub.wetshaving.social ahem) had not yet voted. In order to prevent this from ever happening again, what I would like to propose is that we formalize a bit more the process, in the sense that there should be some fixed amount of time (48 hours?) for each of the soap nomination thread and the voting thread, and that a winner can be announced only after this time.

Second, there is potentially an issue with the voting procedure and count. What I have done so far is to allot a number of points which is inverse to the rank you proposed. That is, assuming three proposed soaps, the soap ranked first gets 3 points, the soap ranked 2nd get 2 points, and the soap ranked 3rd gets 1 point. Then, I simply add up these points, and announce the winner. This is similar to a Borda count (which I didn't know, but you can read up here and more in detail here. Borda counts are unproblematic as long as every voter ranks every soap - which has not been the case in the last vote, and which may have cost Westman Shaving's Noir the victory. @DaveWave94@sub.wetshaving.social suggested that someone who did not rank all soaps should be counted as attributing some points to the soaps he did not vote for. That is, assuming our example with 3 soaps, someone who ranked only one soap (which therefore gets 3 points) should also be counted as attributing in the end some points to the other two soaps. I see Dave's point, and am sympathetic to it, but I don't know exactly what would be the best formula.

The easiest method in that spirit would be that the unranked soaps get to share the points that could have been, but have not been, attributed (which would make 1.5 points for each remaining soap - which could also be rounded down to 1 point?). Alternatively, we could also require that any voter provide a full ranking. Any opinion on these proposals, or idea or other proposals how to better implement something similar, but better?

I don't have any intrinsic preference, other than I would like to have a method that can be easily implemented in a spreadsheet (by me, without much knowledge of spreadsheets).

Thank you in advance for your input, and if you have any other complaints/proposals/questions about the process or BVWSC more in general, please feel free to do so.

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[–] gcgallant 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I'm happy to go along with whatever is easiest here. I'm in favor of a solution that is simple and that offloads work from PBnT666, who has been more than gracious in keeping this going.

[–] djundjila 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

PBnT

Instantly translates to peanut butter and telly in my brain

[–] gcgallant 2 points 2 days ago

πŸ˜€

[–] walden 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (3 children)

It sounds like using a 3rd party website is a popular idea and will reduce workload for @porkbuttsntaters666@sub.wetshaving.social, but there are some concerns about spoofing votes.

As ridiculous as fake votes for soap sounds, I wouldn't put it past some loser from another instance seeing a voting thread and clicking on it.

Instead of requiring some sort of sign-in, here's my proposition:

  1. We create another community especially for BVWSC Voting. The community will be set to "local only" so users from other instances can not see it.
  2. The announcement posts will still be made in c/wetshaving, but with a link to c/bvwsc so the voting link will be hidden from other users.
  3. We can require usernames for voting and nobody needs to create any new accounts (including whoever makes the poll).
  4. If @djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social decides to vote under my name, I will publicly shame him and remove him as moderator!
[–] djundjila 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If @djundjila@sub.wetshaving.social decides to vote under my name, I will publicly shame him and remove him as moderator!

Harsh but fair. I'll have to impersonate some less powerful member to get lavanille elected.

Otherwise great pragmatic proposal. +1

[–] PorkButtsNTaters666 3 points 2 days ago

I'll have to impersonate some less powerful member to get lavanille elected.

You should try corruption first (in exchange for your BΓΆker 14, I would definitely consider voting for Lavanille)

[–] PorkButtsNTaters666 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sounds good to me!

[–] walden 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Here is the new community. https://sub.wetshaving.social/c/bvwsc

I tried to get our own version of that website up and running in docker, but it's above my skill level at this point. Nothing wrong with using their instance of it, though.

[–] PorkButtsNTaters666 2 points 2 days ago

Ok! Thanks!

[–] snooting 2 points 3 days ago

+1, sounds like a great plan

[–] enndeegee 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sorry everyone, my voting skills messed up a usually smooth running system.

[–] walden 1 points 2 days ago

At least you voted, unlike someone.

[–] walden 5 points 3 days ago

I have no opinions, but we could look into using something like this for voting: https://rankedchoices.com/

We can even self host it - https://github.com/davidmoritz/rcv

It requires that everyone (who votes) ranks everything due to the drag-and-drop nature of it.

Here's a little test I made https://rankedchoices.com/vote#fx8h

[–] djundjila 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I was going to suggest instant runoff ranked voting, but it looks like @walden@sub.wetshaving.social's linked thingy does that.

The advantage of that is that we don't have work, the downside is that if someone wants shenanigans, they can participate and skew the vote, even impersonate us.

We can probably consider this my professional paranoia going amok and give it a try until we run into actual problems?

[–] walden 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There's a setting to require inputting a username, so that would help a lot.

[–] djundjila@wetshaving.social 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

But what's holding me back from voting using your username?

[–] walden 2 points 3 days ago

I thought of a solution which I'll post under the main thread.

[–] PorkButtsNTaters666 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

There's a requirement for signing in with your google or facebook id - which should be safe enough, but will require new mail addresses (unless you're happy to doxx yourself)

[–] djundjila 4 points 3 days ago

Google or Facebook logins? Let's not

[–] snooting 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I would be fine with creating a burner gmail address for this purpose.

Though this is perhaps more friction than we want for the voting process?

It also wouldn't be too difficult to self-host this and throw it on an authenticated route. I'm not very familiar with the architecture of lemmy, but in theory we could leverage our existing username/password to access the RCV app.

[–] snooting 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

After thinking about this for a few minutes, this is almost certainly over-complicating things.

Why don't we try disabling anonymous voting and have folks input their usernames? I think we can trust that people won't try to game the system.

[–] DaveWave94 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Thanks for the thread! Now to elaborate on my points so other members of BVWSC can weigh in:

  1. I completely agree with an 48 hour/2 day limit for both soap nomination and soap voting. Additionally, I'd propose a limit of one soap nomination per member. We'll usually get more than 3, since we're more than 3 members and usually at least 4 suggest a soap
  2. As for the voting process, we could do something akin to strongman sport: the first 3 places get 2 points and everyone else gets your ranked inverse voting - e.g., 10 soaps in total; 1st gets 10 points, 2nd 8 points, 3rd 6 points; 4th 5 pts, 5th 4 pts and so on.
  3. Everyone who only bothers to rate their top 3 - which should be mandatory IMHO, at least 3 votes or your vote doesn't count - should be assumed to just give every other soap an amount of token points of 2 (1 could also work if we ever have fewer than 5 nominations)

Basically I am for a bare minimum amount of rules to ensure a smooth operation. We should also see it as somewhat of a gentlemen's codex to remind everyone to vote in the 48 hour window. I truly enjoy BVWSC and it's great to see that we could get a few new members introduced; let's make sure everyone can enjoy it equally! ✌🏻

[–] djundjila 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think your point 2 is essentially what we're doing. Borda voting.

other than that, I fully agree, 48h, minimal rules, don't be a dick rule, and having fun should be the priorities πŸ‘

[–] DaveWave94 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Yup, I think it's not such a bad system - this variation only puts more emphasis on the first 3/podium placements. However, I also fully support the application @walden@sub.wetshaving.social linked; even though I hold the same doubts as you (e.g. no requirements to log in/post your vote under a username), but the less work for @PorkButtsNTaters666@sub.wetshaving.social , the better IMHO πŸ‘πŸ» It would also declutter the voting thread since we don't need to do our votes as single line comments anymore.

Agreed, everyone having fun should be/is the ultimate goal. We just need a few rules that are necessary, but overall this is a group event , not a challenge or competition. Comparatively, BVWSC is kinda like a book club for shaving soap and I really enjoy it this way πŸ˜„

[–] walden 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

There's a setting to disable anonymous voting.

[–] DaveWave94 2 points 3 days ago

Then it's perfect IMO πŸ‘πŸ»

[–] djundjila 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

A book club was exactly what inspired this 😊

[–] DaveWave94 2 points 3 days ago

It's a really chill & nice idea. Truly cool and good.