Getting more people to vote during demoparties
category: parties [glöplog]
So let me bring the unpopular opinion here - here's why I don't vote: (apart from the whole being-an-organizer thing)
1. Voting systems - You can throw anything at me, snippets, screenshots, videos, animated GIFs; sure as hell if the next compo is starting in 10 minutes I will not have the time to go through any of it. And while the immediate voting is a cute idea, the two downsides I have is a) it's distracting people from watching the entry (which frankly is a cardinal sin) and b) it forces people to judge early because all entries are worth 5 stars - until you've seen the next one which is even better. We all enjoy the entries in the middle of the compo until we see the ones at the end.
2. Voting methods - I know that the scene more or less adopted range voting as the de facto voting method and that's good as it is, but that essentially requires you to vote on 20 entries, most of which you really don't care about, instead of the top 3 in preferential voting. And yes, it's a more fair method but tell me how REALLY fair it is if "no vote" counts exactly as much as "this was really bad". From a competitor's perspective, sure, it works really well. But from a voter's perspective, it's gonna be five stars and no stars only.
3. (and this is the biggest one, boys and girls) Irrelevance - why bother? People who vote will bring out the median popular taste against which a minority opinion will not matter much. Compos usually have clear winners, and buddy-voting is still rampant anyway (which, btw, is a lot worse than name voting) so what exactly should make me feel that my vote matters the slightest?
1. Voting systems - You can throw anything at me, snippets, screenshots, videos, animated GIFs; sure as hell if the next compo is starting in 10 minutes I will not have the time to go through any of it. And while the immediate voting is a cute idea, the two downsides I have is a) it's distracting people from watching the entry (which frankly is a cardinal sin) and b) it forces people to judge early because all entries are worth 5 stars - until you've seen the next one which is even better. We all enjoy the entries in the middle of the compo until we see the ones at the end.
2. Voting methods - I know that the scene more or less adopted range voting as the de facto voting method and that's good as it is, but that essentially requires you to vote on 20 entries, most of which you really don't care about, instead of the top 3 in preferential voting. And yes, it's a more fair method but tell me how REALLY fair it is if "no vote" counts exactly as much as "this was really bad". From a competitor's perspective, sure, it works really well. But from a voter's perspective, it's gonna be five stars and no stars only.
3. (and this is the biggest one, boys and girls) Irrelevance - why bother? People who vote will bring out the median popular taste against which a minority opinion will not matter much. Compos usually have clear winners, and buddy-voting is still rampant anyway (which, btw, is a lot worse than name voting) so what exactly should make me feel that my vote matters the slightest?
Quote:
Perhaps doing a simple "The More You Know"-infomercial spoof before each compo will remind people how the voting works and where to do it. :)
"If you don't vote for this compo - Gloom and D.Fox will kill innocent kittens... and maybe a panda!"
Yeah, displaying a VOTE NOW FOR COMPO XYZ screen might boost votes a little. Same goes for microphone announcements.
dfox: just for the sake of argument, is there such a thing as a guilty kitten? :)
Maybe put a vote counter on the big screen, to raise attention?
Or what about using a ranked voting systems instead? (with the option to rank entries on the same level)
Also, one thing I don't like about the current voting system: someone who just draws a hard line between "rules!" and "sucks!" will have more impact than one who carefully judges for each entry or even never casts a vote below "average" because all entries are good.
Also, one thing I don't like about the current voting system: someone who just draws a hard line between "rules!" and "sucks!" will have more impact than one who carefully judges for each entry or even never casts a vote below "average" because all entries are good.
Quote:
2. Voting methods - I know that the scene more or less adopted range voting as the de facto voting method and that's good as it is, but that essentially requires you to vote on 20 entries, most of which you really don't care about, instead of the top 3 in preferential voting. And yes, it's a more fair method but tell me how REALLY fair it is if "no vote" counts exactly as much as "this was really bad". From a competitor's perspective, sure, it works really well. But from a voter's perspective, it's gonna be five stars and no stars only.
If I vote I usually vote throughout the spectrum. I could run some stats over the last couple of years and I'm pretty sure people don't vote as black/white as you think they do.
Quote:
3. (and this is the biggest one, boys and girls) Irrelevance - why bother? People who vote will bring out the median popular taste against which a minority opinion will not matter much. Compos usually have clear winners, and buddy-voting is still rampant anyway (which, btw, is a lot worse than name voting) so what exactly should make me feel that my vote matters the slightest?
Well, that's the same for politics isn't it? Still, voting is important and it matters. I've seen enough head-to-head entries which tell me that individual voting can make quite a difference. If you don't bother voting - then don't vote - it's your decision.
Quote:
dfox: just for the sake of argument, is there such a thing as a guilty kitten? :)
I hate cats - so for me, they're all guilty... of being stupid cats :)
Quote:
I could run some stats over the last couple of years and I'm pretty sure people don't vote as black/white as you think they do.
This would actually be quite interesting.
You asked for it.
Apart from that: Yeah, voting isn't really fun when you either only have the 10 minutes until the next compo or it's after the last compo and you really, really want to drink and socialize instead of first making your way back to your computer just to find out somebody stole your chair for watching the compo, then trying to convince the WiFi to cooperate in spite of everyone else doing the same, then realizing the compo hasn't been opened for voting yet, swearing, procrastinating on Pouet or Facebook for a few minutes, then trying again, then actually hacking in some votes just to be greeted by some network or http error when finally pressing submit (or realizing that the greatest joy of Ajax is that it fails silently), and then doing it all over again.
What we'd need is some peace, and actual time to make an informed decision, and yes, having screenshots and/or videos (even if it's only a snippet) and/or music players directly on the same page does help.
Apart from that: Yeah, voting isn't really fun when you either only have the 10 minutes until the next compo or it's after the last compo and you really, really want to drink and socialize instead of first making your way back to your computer just to find out somebody stole your chair for watching the compo, then trying to convince the WiFi to cooperate in spite of everyone else doing the same, then realizing the compo hasn't been opened for voting yet, swearing, procrastinating on Pouet or Facebook for a few minutes, then trying again, then actually hacking in some votes just to be greeted by some network or http error when finally pressing submit (or realizing that the greatest joy of Ajax is that it fails silently), and then doing it all over again.
What we'd need is some peace, and actual time to make an informed decision, and yes, having screenshots and/or videos (even if it's only a snippet) and/or music players directly on the same page does help.
Solskogen 2013:
Code:
0 - 2453
1 - 262
2 - 390
3 - 646
4 - 643
5 - 716
My wife Savannah went to Revision for the first time this year and was really into watching the compos and voting. A lot of the time we would review a compo afterwards using the party system to download the entries and check them out. This works really well for things like the MP3 and graphics / photo compos as your standard windows laptop can easily view or play them. Things get a bit trickier when trying to review the old school entries as we're unlikely to have the required emulators to check out the releases (let alone the correct settings to run them!).
I know at Revision the old school demos and intros are pre-recorded from real hardware into video, so having these available to view would be really helpful. Same with the old school music compos, however some people have the foresight to include an MP3 render with their entry.
Maybe also auto adding thumbnails for the graphics and photo compos would be really helpful.
I seem to remember someone saying that adding notes to a compo while it's running might be added to party meister? This would be a good solution too as I tend to use a text file just to jot things down on. People with tablets and the like can then make notes while being at the front.
I know at Revision the old school demos and intros are pre-recorded from real hardware into video, so having these available to view would be really helpful. Same with the old school music compos, however some people have the foresight to include an MP3 render with their entry.
Maybe also auto adding thumbnails for the graphics and photo compos would be really helpful.
I seem to remember someone saying that adding notes to a compo while it's running might be added to party meister? This would be a good solution too as I tend to use a text file just to jot things down on. People with tablets and the like can then make notes while being at the front.
Let's not take Revision with 800-1000 visitors as a basis of argument - the OP was about smaller parties like Solskogen (~100-150 people) where there's no recordings and no capacity to make video versions.
I think also the thing about revision is that it runs for some many days that you have a good chance between being hungover and being drunk that you can get some time to vote. A lot of other parties have a massive compo Saturday by the end of which you're usually totally wasted and can't even remember your laptop password, let alone vote.
...and of course where ~50 people not voting makes a much larger difference in the end result.
What would be really cool: not live-during-the-compo voting, but live-afterwards-vote-counting. As people vote, the server keeps track of the number of votes, and generates screens for the beamer showing the current rankings of various entries, *plus how many % of people have voted*.
It'd be shaming to see only 20% have voted and remind people to get their ass in gear, and seeing the results updating live would make it nice + exciting compared to the current "watch compo, vote, wait 12 hours..." Could be really cool to see two demos battle it out in the votes :D
It'd be shaming to see only 20% have voted and remind people to get their ass in gear, and seeing the results updating live would make it nice + exciting compared to the current "watch compo, vote, wait 12 hours..." Could be really cool to see two demos battle it out in the votes :D
As gloom said, the base problem is to convince people to actually GO VOTE. Once they're logged in, it doesn't matter that much if you have shiny screenshots and mp3 snippets - even though they help make an informed decision - that's for sure.
I guess it boils down to:
- Mobile version of the voting page with simple login mechanism
- Voting terminal (can be a raspberry pi with a small screen somewhere)
- Nag visitors to vote Vote VOTE
I guess it boils down to:
- Mobile version of the voting page with simple login mechanism
- Voting terminal (can be a raspberry pi with a small screen somewhere)
- Nag visitors to vote Vote VOTE
Bring back scene points!
Quote:
What would be really cool: not live-during-the-compo voting, but live-afterwards-vote-counting. As people vote, the server keeps track of the number of votes, and generates screens for the beamer showing the current rankings of various entries, *plus how many % of people have voted*.
It would be fun do to the "current vote participation" thing - just to play with the guilty conscience of people. Although it's difficult to determine how much 20% are. Since there usually is no necessity to register in the partynet and orgas are also usually reluctant to give their REAL visitor numbers (hello Evoke ;)) this might be a bit difficult to express in percents.
But yeah, something like "75 people voted for competition xyz" is good enough I think.
I'll run the experiment during next weekends Demodays and compare the participation with the last three years or so.
I actually like party of psonice's idea. Instead of showing the actual results as they progress, displaying a realtime counter of the number of voters for that particular compo (and previous) as simple bars or pie charts with a new compo with 0 votes starting as all red, then gradually increasing green as more and more people vote. Allowing for the beamteam to add on the fly text like "Go vote the fuck on the GFX compo" would further increase awareness and feeling of people actually caring about getting more people to vote. Of course, this too will require the organizers to pay more attention to voting, but as already stated, I actually do think the root of the problem starts with the organizers not paying enough attention to visibility and availability of voting. Being in charge of executing the compos and running under an often all too tight schedule, it's of course understandable, but then think about assigning the role of vote-cheerleader to somebody else ;)
"Oh, 50 people already voted, that should be enough - fuck it, let's go have a beer instead."
"Fuck, kewlers are still in 2nd? Round up the groupies!"
Gargaj: You're right, of course. However, I think that not trying anything is worse than at least trying only to fail misserably. Unless the initial question is considered to not really be a problem that needs attention at all ;)
Quote:
not trying anything is worse than at least trying only to fail misserably
I guess that depends on the alternative, as e.g. drinking beer? :)
