On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:24:28 +0100 Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:

A simple majority vote is clearly inadequate for this vote, but I'm afraid that without assisting technology (instant and visual feedback), the voting process will more or less deteriorate to that due to the difficulty of creating quality input votes.

Even worse, the buttons for moving items up and down are buggy - at least on my browser (Firefox 3.1 beta 2 on Linux). They sometimes reorder my other votes! Even assuming that the list box code is not buggy (which I now doubt), not being able to use the buttons makes this form almost unusable! -- Robin

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:11:54 +0100 Thomas Davie wrote:

I have to agree that the UI for voting is not the best I've ever seen. On the other hand, it's pretty easy to select the few logos that you like, and push them all to the top, select the ones you'd accept, and push them up just below, and finally select the ones you absolutely don't like and push them all the way down.

That at least is what I did.

Did you check that code bugs hadn't reordered your votes? I am worried about this destroying the validity of the election. -- Robin

On 17 mrt 2009, at 16:33, Rick R wrote:

I just went through the logo page and wrote down my favorite 20 logos in one column, and gave them a rank in the other. Then translated that into the voting list using the combo boxes (not the buttons). The total process took 20 minutes.

Yeah, the combo boxes are terribly slow. I tried them with a smaller poll, and there seems to be a bit of exponential behavior. If you want to do it this way (pick x, rank them), I suggest you start with putting the ones you ranked lowest on top first, using the 'to top' button, and then move the up your list to put the next one on top until you reached the top one. -- Regards, Eelco Lempsink

On 17 mrt 2009, at 15:24, Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:

Eelco Lempsink wrote:

...

I updated a couple of logo versions and ungrouped and regrouped the (former) number 31. Other than that, there was nothing standing in the way of the voting to begin imho, so I started up the competition.

Thanks for organizing this, finally I can choose ... Oh my god! How am I supposed to make a vote?

I can barely remember 3 of the 113 logos, let alone memorize that #106 is the narwhal. There are lots of very good or just good candidates and I would like to order them all to my liking, but without instant visual feedback on the voting ballot, this is a hopeless task.

Since I have about 10 minutes to spare for voting, I'm just going to pick 5 candidates at random and order these? Actually, I think I prefer to be completely paralyzed by the overwhelming choice instead and not vote at all.

I can imagine that, it's a daunting and (optionally) time consuming task. The burden of democracy ;)

Alternatively, it seems that it's possible to upload rankings from a file. But which format?

Good question. I don't know and couldn't find it in the CIVS FAQ either.

And is there a zip file with the logo proposals so I can try to arrange them via drag&drop in some picture gallery application?

Well, actually, there is, since the files were moved to the main Haskell server after the community server couldn't bear the load anymore (Igloo saving the day! ;). You can get all the files from http://haskell.org/logos/logos.tar.gz . Note that there are probably a couple of files in there that are not in the competition, but artifacts from before (re)grouping some of the logos.

A simple majority vote is clearly inadequate for this vote, but I'm afraid that without assisting technology (instant and visual feedback), the voting process will more or less deteriorate to that due to the difficulty of creating quality input votes.

We'll see. Worst case: nobody votes (with 123 votes at this moment, I don't think that will be the problem). Second worst case: most people don't have/take the time to order a bit, so it turns into a majority vote. That said, you're absolutely right the visual feedback of the voting system is suboptimal. I'd be very interested in seeing a good UI for this sort of task. I imagine it'd be pretty close to printing everything on small pieces of paper and ordering them by hand ;) -- Regards, Eelco Lempsink

Am Dienstag, 17. März 2009 16:55 schrieb Eelco Lempsink:

We'll see. Worst case: nobody votes (with 123 votes at this moment, I don't think that will be the problem). Second worst case: most people don't have/take the time to order a bit, so it turns into a majority vote.

Or there are many people like me who won’t vote at all because the process is so difficult and time-consuming. :-(

That said, you're absolutely right the visual feedback of the voting system is suboptimal. I'd be very interested in seeing a good UI for this sort of task. I imagine it'd be pretty close to printing everything on small pieces of paper and ordering them by hand ;)

A good UI is what we need here. Maybe someone can write a simple app that does the following: * download the logos from the Haskell web server * present the user pairs of logos and let him decide which one of the two presented logos he likes better * shows a progress bar during voting * presents the voting result for easy entering into the webpage Best wishes, Wolfgang

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009 15:24:28 +0100, Heinrich Apfelmus wrote:

[...]

Thanks for organizing this, finally I can choose ... Oh my god! How am I supposed to make a vote?

Actually, I found the voting process to be fairly straightforward and trivial. Just go through the list, choose your top favorite, and assign rank 1 to it; then go through the rest of the list, choose your second favorite, and assign rank 2 to it; similarly, repeat until you don't see any more that you like. Each time you assign a rank to a choice, the choice gets sorted to the proper rank location from the top. Then, optionally, choose all the ones that you don't dislike, and give them rank 112 (I skipped this step because I didn't care about any of the ones that I didn't like, and because I was too tired from comparing all the ones that I did like). Finally, leave all the rest with rank 113. The process can take some time, especially at the beginning, since each remaining choice must be compared with all other remaining choices, but is quite thorough. I picked my choices in stages, over a series of time periods, because the entire list was too long to process in one sitting. -- Benjamin L. Russell -- Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/ Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725 "Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto." -- Matsuo Basho^

On Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:36:15 +0100, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:

Am Mittwoch, 18. Marz 2009 10:03 schrieb Benjamin L.Russell:

...

Just go through the list, choose your top favorite, and assign rank 1 to it;

Is rank 1 the best or the worst?

On your voting page referenced in a message, entitled "CIVS Poll now available for voting: Haskell Logo Competition" from Eelco Lempsink, the CIVS poll supervisor (which should have been sent to your e-mail address), the following paragraph describes the meaning of the ranks:

Give each of the following choices a rank, where a smaller-numbered rank means that you prefer that choice more. For example, it would make sense to give your top choice (or choices) the rank 1. You may give choices the same rank if you have no preference between them. You do not have to use all the possible ranks. All choices are initially given the lowest possible rank.

Therefore, rank 1 is the best. -- Benjamin L. Russell -- Benjamin L. Russell / DekuDekuplex at Yahoo dot com http://dekudekuplex.wordpress.com/ Translator/Interpreter / Mobile: +011 81 80-3603-6725 "Furuike ya, kawazu tobikomu mizu no oto." -- Matsuo Basho^

On Thu, Mar 19, 2009 at 04:42, Wolfgang Jeltsch wrote:

Am Donnerstag, 19. März 2009 03:53 schrieb Benjamin L.Russell:

...

Therefore, rank 1 is the best.

This is quite the opposite of what Denis Bueno said. :-(

Ugh, I'm sorry about this. I've participated in several condorcet elections; and a smaller number is always better. When I said higher was better, that's what I meant; but I realise that is just dumb. I typed the email quickly; sorry about that. I did, however, link to the page explaining things, I think; which ought to be considered over my word. Denis

On 17 mrt 2009, at 16:34, Gwern Branwen wrote:

Can we assume that the next round will be more like 10?

Depends a bit on the outcome. There will be one winner, and depending on the winner there might be a number of variations we want to vote about. Only if it's a really really close call multiple logos will win. We have to choose at one point ;)

Also, what is the plan if one of the joke logos (like the boobies one) makes it into the final round? Will it just be quietly removed?

We'll see. I expect the community is grown up enough and things will sort out itself. -- Regards, Eelco Lempsink

Sorry for newcomer silly question, but where is the voting page located? Thanks, Karel

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009, John Meacham wrote:

May I recommend 'approval voting' as an alternative? It doesn't require ordering, has nice theoretial properties, and is dead simple to implement. everyone just votes yes on the ones they approve of, you add up the numbers and the highest one wins. Voting yes on everything doesn't help since then all your votes cancel out.

That's similar to what I suggested. I also think it is superior to sorting both in usage and in evaluation.