I don't know what I'm going to do with this page, but I've been trying to wrack my brain around the admin nominations, and how to make sure that the voting is fair... There has already been significant evidence to suggest poll-packing in the preliminary round of the tribe contest, and all it takes is one user with a grudge against another to ruin their chances...
Voting Options[]
We have 3 basic means for voting.
(1) Third Party polls: This is our favorite means, more specifically strawpoll. It is completely anonymous, and it allows for us to vote without seeing the results. The biggest down-side is that it is also by far the easiest to cheat on. It bases votes by IP address, so using multiple devices allows for multiple votes is very easy.
(2) Wiki polls: Wikia has its own polls that you see from time to time, such as on my profile. These are the most convenient because they put the voting in one easy to find and easy to read place. One tragic flaw, though, is that it makes it incredibly easy to tell which point is the popular opinion, and it almost ensures that users will be swayed by others' opinions. It is more reliable than third party polls, and equally anonymous, although users with alts can still cheat, as it only keeps track of which user accounts have voted.
(3) Forum comments: This means is not anonymous. Users voice their vote or opinion on a forum thread. This method allows absolutely no cheating, because there is no anonymity, and should only be used when foul play is detected, or something big is going on. Most wikis use this method more than the others, and many established ones have special templates for users to voice their support. We've only used it once, and that was during the admin reviews when we needed to determine who got demoted (by users stating which users should keep their positions). Surprisingly, there were very few hard feelings towards specific people over their opinion, and it was quite effective. This method takes the most work, but it is usually worth it. Peoples' opinions become a jumble in the comments, and most users don't read the other comments anyway. There's no easily interpreted qualitative data until after the votes are tallied up.
What this means[]
After writing this out, it looks like our factors for choosing a voting system are:
- Anonymity
- Can users see what other users have voted?
- Displayed Results
- Are the results displayed before or while the vote is being cast? Could users be influenced by others' votes?
- Reliability
- Can users cheat on the voting? Find ways to vote more than once?
Organizing this Data[]
| Anonymity | Displayed Results | Reliability | |
| Third Party Polls | Totally Anonymous | Results are NOT displayed on voting screen | Cheating is VERY easy |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wiki Polls | Totally Anonymous | Results are displayed | Users may vote with Alts |
| Forum Comments | NOT Anonymous | Results are displayed | It is very difficult to cheat |
This is why we usually use Strawpoll for low-stakes voting, with little to no incentive for cheating, and forum comments when it's very important. Wiki Polls are reserved for low-stakes polls where the results don't really matter: usually for sillier polls or polls on pages or profiles.
Some Fixes[]
- Forum Comments
- There is some code to make user comments "disappear".. The votes are hidden, and the code can be removed when the votes need to be tallied up. That code is avaliable here.
.page-Thread_XXX ul.replies .msg-body {display:none;}- in which XXX is the thread number.
- The votes can be viewed by quoting the message or by adding the code
.page-Thread_XXX ul.replies .msg-body {display:block;}- to a personal CSS file.
- The code allows for editing comments and will display a comment once it's posted until the user refreshes.
- This code can ONLY be added by an admin
- Wiki Polls
- I am going to test for some code to try to hide the results from the wiki polls. If we can hide the results, this may be the most reliable method for our admin voting while still preserving anonymity.