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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
Gender: 
Location: decentralized
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 Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 5:57 pm Post subject: Polling the electorate
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Hey, now that we've got all this spiffy new architecture working for us, whattya think about working on a way to update our procedure for picking quarterly books? I'm not thinking of overhauling the system altogether, but if there was a way to make it really easy to guage interest in any particular book that got suggested, that might help streamline the transition from suggestions to poll, and might ensure that we'd get more involvement once the book was actually chosen.
Can you put polls in replies? That might help. If we put a poll in every post that suggested a book, then people could just click "interested" or "not interested", and that would make it easy for Chris to just glance at the returns and see which books got the most interest. |
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indie 
Experienced
Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Posts: 104
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| Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 6:07 pm Post subject:
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I moved this one to development.
Some interesting ideas here from a coding angle, unfortunately polls in every post are not a real possibility with this script. Topics need to be started with polls for them to work right.
Things like multiple choice polls and even full surveys with multiple poll questions are possible... but would require additional modifications.
Similarly, polls with yes/no answers might be possible, though it would certainly be easier to phrase a normal poll to only vote affirmatively.
Please keep the ideas coming though, I may just be coding some of this site (and certainly not trying to play moderator or anything) but I'm very interested in ways to improve phpBB 
indie |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
Gender:
Location: decentralized
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 2:21 pm Post subject:
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Alternatively, I know that some bbs systems allow contributers to mark threads, such that, taken cumulatively, the marks form a kind of rating for each thread. Maybe we could layer some mod over just the suggestion thread so as to make it possible to mark replies that contain books you're interested in.
The problem, as I see it, is that we're constantly adding new suggestions. So you can't really assess interest by running a poll every now and then. Another suggestion is bound to pop up the next day, and we won't know how interest for the new suggestion compares with that of the already polled suggestions.
We could change the format so that new suggestions are their own thread -- that would allow us to make each suggestions a poll -- but there's something very convenient and secure about having all of the selections in the same thread. If nothing else, it keeps Chris from having to search the entire forum at the end of each quarter to find all of the selections. And he could always miss one if we cut them loose.
I don't know. Still thinking. |
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indie
Experienced
Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Posts: 104
Gender:
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| Posted: Sat Sep 22, 2007 3:10 pm Post subject:
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I'll give this some thought too. Obviously the polls built in are insufficient for this... but there must be a good solution around.
I thought of a mod to rate individual posts, but the potential problem with that is if someone casts their rating early, then rates another later, and other people do this too - the final tally will not reflect actual votes.
What about having the suggestion thread have a deadline for suggestions (for that upcoming month or whatever) and when that deadline is reached:
1. All suggestions in it become options in a poll in the first post.
2. The topic is locked, it's just a poll now.
3. A new thread is started for new suggestions.
I dunno, just thinking of ideas here. Maybe you guys can build on it, or come up with something better.
back to the code...
indie |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
Gender:
Location: decentralized
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| Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:12 pm Post subject:
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| indie wrote: |
| I thought of a mod to rate individual posts, but the potential problem with that is if someone casts their rating early, then rates another later, and other people do this too - the final tally will not reflect actual votes. |
Oh, I'm not talking about using that to actually vote on books. I'm not sure how familiar you are with the process that we've been using, so excuse me if this explanation is rehash for you. Basically, we go in three phases. The first phase is just a suggestion phase -- everyone looks around for books that might be of interest, and posts about them in a thread that Chris sets up at the beginning of the quarter. During the second phase, Chris takes a look at all of those suggestions and narrows them down to between three and five actual nominations. Then, during the final phase, he posts a thread containing that narrowed down list of nominations, and we vote on just those.
Which isn't at all a bad system, but there's always a chance that Chris, in narrowing down that list, will accidentally pick books that the rest of the forum is less interested in. Letting people mark suggestions that they're interested in would just give him a better guideline for assessing how interested people are in any particular book, which would hopefully help him make more informed choices when he narrows the list down for the actual voting. To that end, it would actually be a good thing for people to mark several books -- all that matters is that they're books they actually have an interest in reading. Chris wouldn't necessarily need (or even want) to pick only the books that had the highest rating in the first phase, but having that system there would hopefully ensure that we wasn't picking books that interested only one or two people.
Does that make sense?
| Quote: |
What about having the suggestion thread have a deadline for suggestions (for that upcoming month or whatever) and when that deadline is reached:
1. All suggestions in it become options in a poll in the first post.
2. The topic is locked, it's just a poll now.
3. A new thread is started for new suggestions.
I dunno, just thinking of ideas here. Maybe you guys can build on it, or come up with something better. |
That's something you're going to have to run by Chris. In the past, we haven't used the ezBoard poll function for voting -- it isn't sophisticated for the way we handle the voting. For one thing, there's are requirements that you have to fill before you're allowed to vote (minimum post requirement, for instance), and an automatic poll didn't really show us whether or not the people voting for certain books had met those requirements. The other reason is that Chris had worked out a system where each person had more than one vote -- that allowed them to indicate their preference for more than one book, but to still weight their votes for a particular book. In other words, I could vote for both "War and Peace" and "Ferdinand the Bull", but could give two votes to the latter and only one to the former. That way, if I was the only person who voted for "Ferdinand the Bull", effectively nullifying my vote on the book, I'd still have inclined my weight towards "War and Peace" rather than some third option (say, "The Oxford English Dictionary"); on the other hand, if previous votes were split between "War and Peace" and "Ferdinand the Bull", my having given two votes to the latter would settle the tie. I'm not sure that it's possible to use an automatic poll to introduce that sort of complexity into the voting system.
And I still say "Ferdinand the Bull" would have made for better discussion, you bunch of tools! |
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indie
Experienced
Joined: 20 Sep 2007
Posts: 104
Gender:
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| Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 2:36 pm Post subject:
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Thanks for taking the time to write all this and explain it to me.
I'll give it more thought. There's an awful lot that can be done with this board by modifying and adding to the code, perhaps a modification can be written specifically for booktalk that will fulfill all these requirements.
I can tell you that "off the shelf" modifications will allow for post count requirement to vote, and for allowing multiple choice voting. As for vote weighting - allowing more than one vote on the same option... I'm not sure how that could be done yet.
In any case, even if a viable plan is made for a modification it will take some time to implement. I'm doing so much with so many areas of this site right now that must be done first (unless Chris decides to fasttrack this). Still, I like this kind of challenge, especially if it allows a board to be made truly unique in it's functionality. I'll see what I can come up with in my spare time.
If you or anyone else reading this has other specific ideas for things that would be good additions to the board, please post them in the dev forum here and I'll offer any input I can. |
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riverc0il
Senior
Joined: 05 Dec 2005
Posts: 376
Gender:
Location: Ashland, NH
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| Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 6:38 pm Post subject:
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I am fairly certain that phpBB has functions (if not built in, then available in plugin format) that would allow for polls that allow users to vote any titles they are interested in. Not sure if the check boxes can be limited to only three picks though (I assume an advanced plugin of some sort might allow a top three choices only limitation on polls). So... the process could work like this:
Phase 1) Nomination Thread (Everyone posts recommendations)
Phase 2) All recommended books are added to a poll, people check books they are interested in (not voting).
Phase 3) Chris finalizes the selection process to three candidates using the "interest poll" as a guide
Phase 4) Poll for three final books (this would not allow more than one vote per title so would have to be done the old way.
I still advocate for a runoff voting system in which universal appeal outweighs a limited number of members using all three votes. Our most recent failed freethinker book suffered this fate receiving strong votes from a small amount of people while most people that spread their votes around, limited their votes' effectiveness, did not want to read the book that received the most votes. |
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MadArchitect
Joined: 14 Nov 2004
Posts: 2609
Gender:
Location: decentralized
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| Posted: Mon Sep 24, 2007 1:32 am Post subject:
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| indie wrote: |
| Thanks for taking the time to write all this and explain it to me. |
Oh, you'll tire of it eventually. I explain. It's what I do.
| Quote: |
| In any case, even if a viable plan is made for a modification it will take some time to implement. |
No prob. Chris was talking about running the poll for next quarter as soon as we get settled into the new forum space, so I doubt anyone expects us to alter the system before then. That gives you three months before the next time we'd even use the system. At this point, it probably should be low priority. I just brought it up because, what with all of these new options available, I figured we might as well start thinking on it.
| Quote: |
| If you or anyone else reading this has other specific ideas for things that would be good additions to the board, please post them in the dev forum here and I'll offer any input I can. |
You'll probably regret making that offer. I'm an opinionated little SOB. Especially when it's someone else doing the work. I'm bred for management, really.
| rivercoil wrote: |
| Phase 2) All recommended books are added to a poll, people check books they are interested in (not voting). |
The ideal, I think, would be to have it so that the interest guage was part of the initial thread. Any modification that adds to Chris' workload should probably be avoided. I'm sure he'd like to spend more of his time posting. |
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