Getting more people to vote during demoparties
category: parties [glöplog]
Regarding live voting: interesting fact: this was actually used during The Party 1994. Though they had caching issues and such, it's still 20 fucking years since it was first tried. :)
I actually like the passive aggressive approach of just showing how many people haven't voted, for the different compos.
I actually like the passive aggressive approach of just showing how many people haven't voted, for the different compos.
Punqtured: a bad solution is worse than no solution - might as well raffle (beer) prizes between voters.
The realtime compo voting is problematic from two standpoints: it monopolizes the screen for a long period of time unless there's only a brief window for voting, in which case you'll end up with the wifi issues and whatnot. Technical problems can of course always be solved, but the other aspect cannot: doing voting like this would influence the outcome of the compo a lot. It would encourage buddy voting, silly politics ("oh God, that group is doing that well, I'm gonna vote for someone else so they won't win") and all kinds of general mob mentality.
Of course, some people might not see that as an issue, but I'd rather like to see the rankings somehow reflect the demos themselves, removed as far from the social context as possible. All this can't be eliminated, of course, but it can be minimized.
Of course, some people might not see that as an issue, but I'd rather like to see the rankings somehow reflect the demos themselves, removed as far from the social context as possible. All this can't be eliminated, of course, but it can be minimized.
Quote:
I'll get the cheerleader outfit then, shall I? :)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 ;)
Have one big prize, and say that the prize goes to the compo with the most votes. Everyone has friends at the party, so that should motivate them to vote in the compos they care about at least. :)
Quote:
Of course, some people might not see that as an issue, but I'd rather like to see the rankings somehow reflect the demos themselves, removed as far from the social context as possible. All this can't be eliminated, of course, but it can be minimized.
That's what pouet is for.
I agree with others: if the general party situation holds me back from voting (which is: too nice weather, too much socializing, voting not opened yet) nothing can help.
however, if I do vote (and except for revision where I usually simply forget it, I always do) then having as much information as possible motivates me the most.
that means: having screenshots for demos/intros/etc, previews for GFX. no matter how small the image is, it brings back the memory what it was and I know how many points I want to give it.
so it could help to make previews/screenshots mandatory in the upload process (or, as already suggested, autogenerate it where possible) and a 15s snippet for music compos. for music* I don't know how much of an effort it is for non-streaming formats (oldskool, exe-music etc.) for the author to create them, but depending on the compo-pipeline also here the snippets maybe could be autogenerated (with no influence on whether the "right" part is hit though)
my 2c.
* after all, as you can read everywhere in the press: I'M TOTALLY NOT INTO MUSIC!
however, if I do vote (and except for revision where I usually simply forget it, I always do) then having as much information as possible motivates me the most.
that means: having screenshots for demos/intros/etc, previews for GFX. no matter how small the image is, it brings back the memory what it was and I know how many points I want to give it.
so it could help to make previews/screenshots mandatory in the upload process (or, as already suggested, autogenerate it where possible) and a 15s snippet for music compos. for music* I don't know how much of an effort it is for non-streaming formats (oldskool, exe-music etc.) for the author to create them, but depending on the compo-pipeline also here the snippets maybe could be autogenerated (with no influence on whether the "right" part is hit though)
my 2c.
* after all, as you can read everywhere in the press: I'M TOTALLY NOT INTO MUSIC!
Quote:
a bad solution is worse than no solution
I guess that depends: getting ONLY one beer instead of no beer at all? :)
I think that making voting accessible in a timely manner is key here. Accessibility, as in: "Where and how quickly can I vote?". Too often, it ends up as a last minute scramble after all the compos have ended (being the reason people need reminding through screenshots and stuff as well).
How about just opening the vote during/after each compo and say that the next screening will start when the previous compo reaches 80% of attendee voting? :)
How about just opening the vote during/after each compo and say that the next screening will start when the previous compo reaches 80% of attendee voting? :)
Gamification FTW: "Achievement unlocked: Graphics Compo Up Next!"
elsewhere: many (if not all) parties tend to have a bunch of different info screens showing a lot of the time. Just insert the current voting stats into there, and it won't disturb anything.
About the social side: well, maybe the voting at the party should reflect the reality of the party, and not be some separate thing? We get crappy joke demos winning anyway, and why not? They get voted because in the middle of the party when everyone is drinking and laughing, it *is* the best demo. We can vote for the actual best demo here the week after as dfox says :D
About the social side: well, maybe the voting at the party should reflect the reality of the party, and not be some separate thing? We get crappy joke demos winning anyway, and why not? They get voted because in the middle of the party when everyone is drinking and laughing, it *is* the best demo. We can vote for the actual best demo here the week after as dfox says :D
Well I guess we can just shut down all the demo related stuff and just meet up to drink until unconsciousness. Would save lots of preparation time as well. And we could vote on who's drunk the most - but then we would just be like "Nah, DDT will win anyway so why bother drinking at all?".
-- The End
Sheesh gargaj, loosen up. It can't hurt to try and if people still don't vote - well then we'll try something else.
I'm not even sure if voting participation has gone down at all. I can remember me voting/not voting for the last 15 years.
-- The End
Sheesh gargaj, loosen up. It can't hurt to try and if people still don't vote - well then we'll try something else.
I'm not even sure if voting participation has gone down at all. I can remember me voting/not voting for the last 15 years.
D.Fox: Can you vote easily using a smartphone? Could PartyMeister have some nice mobile CSS for such a thing? </le idea>
Quote:
D.Fox: Can you vote easily using a smartphone? Could PartyMeister have some nice mobile CSS for such a thing? </le idea>
It uses a responsive design but it's not lightweight right now. So it should be usable on a phone. Maybe when I have time i'll do a separate one for tUM or Revision.
Quote:
well, maybe the voting at the party should reflect the reality of the party, and not be some separate thing?
It does, of course, but I think that this is an aspect that should really be minimized. Your opinion might different, but I'd rather be judged on the basis of the work that I've done on my stuff than the amount of drunk friends or enemies that I happen to have. Considering how popular Traction and Brainstorm really are even if I'm not one of the truly big names, and how many friends I have in the scene, I'd probably be on the "winning" side with a voting metohd like this. I still don't like it at all. I don't think making voting tactical instead of supportive would do anything good to a spirit of the party.
Quote:
We can vote for the actual best demo here the week after as dfox says :D
Except that people will see a bunch of suck get the first places and won't even watch the rest. Take any party with a decent amount of entries and you'll see at least an average production by a bunch of people without that much scene fame or friends that has like fifteen comments max on pouet even if the demo would deserve more.
dfox: I think it might be time to make a mobile app then. Just pick the party you're at, enter the PIN-code you've been given and boom, there comes all compos ready for voting. Once a new compo opens for voting, a push-notification lets you know and opens the app for you. Can be done insanely easy in PhoneGap or whatnot, but will need a server component of course.
Many good points have already been made, so I guess I won't have to reiterate all my thoughts in full length.
- Screenshots / audio clips: Absolutely necessary to lower the vote barrier. It might be possible to automatically generate sceenshots for normal graphics compos (Demozoo already tries to do this so that we don't have to generate screenshots of gfx entries on our own) and extract mp3s / oggs / modules / etc. from music compo entries (and auto-convert them to mp3 for online preview)
- Provide party FTP instead of having to download all entries one by one (especially if the previous point was not taken into account by prod uploaders)
Fun fact: I tried downloading the mp3 music compo entries one by one at Evoke and half of the downloads failed because http://party/ suddenly resolved to www.party.com instead.
- Live voting - availability of entries in the vote system could be triggered automatically by switching beam slides. As you can adjust your votes during the whole compo and afterwards, I don't see a problem with context. But as Gargaj said, it's not good if people get distracted from the actual compo viewing experience. One would probably have to show the beam slides for a little bit longer for this to work, so that people do it between entries, not during.
- Regarding the login barrier that dfox mentioned, Maybe allow authentication via SceneID.
- Screenshots / audio clips: Absolutely necessary to lower the vote barrier. It might be possible to automatically generate sceenshots for normal graphics compos (Demozoo already tries to do this so that we don't have to generate screenshots of gfx entries on our own) and extract mp3s / oggs / modules / etc. from music compo entries (and auto-convert them to mp3 for online preview)
- Provide party FTP instead of having to download all entries one by one (especially if the previous point was not taken into account by prod uploaders)
Fun fact: I tried downloading the mp3 music compo entries one by one at Evoke and half of the downloads failed because http://party/ suddenly resolved to www.party.com instead.
- Live voting - availability of entries in the vote system could be triggered automatically by switching beam slides. As you can adjust your votes during the whole compo and afterwards, I don't see a problem with context. But as Gargaj said, it's not good if people get distracted from the actual compo viewing experience. One would probably have to show the beam slides for a little bit longer for this to work, so that people do it between entries, not during.
- Regarding the login barrier that dfox mentioned, Maybe allow authentication via SceneID.
Quote:
Except that people will see a bunch of suck get the first places and won't even watch the rest. Take any party with a decent amount of entries and you'll see at least an average production by a bunch of people without that much scene fame or friends that has like fifteen comments max on pouet even if the demo would deserve more.
I doubt that that'll change. Maybe at parties where there are no friends, nothing to drink and no fun.
And I don't agree in general. I have been at plenty of parties and saw people vote even with their head spinning from all the drugs they were taking and alcohol they were drinking while still being able to make informed decisions about the quality of the releases and vote accordingly. But still, most of the time, the best stuff really wins. Sure, there's some examples of party-voting - but not as much as you think. Also don't underestimate that opinions differ from person to person :)
And the fact that some releases have less comments on pouet doesn't mean that the party where the entry didn't win at is at fault :)
Quote:
dfox: I think it might be time to make a mobile app then. Just pick the party you're at, enter the PIN-code you've been given and boom, there comes all compos ready for voting. Once a new compo opens for voting, a push-notification lets you know and opens the app for you. Can be done insanely easy in PhoneGap or whatnot, but will need a server component of course.
I am thinking about a server-hosted pm solution anyway. It would be quite cool if we can work out a standard data format to submit entries to a hosted service (including screenshots etc.) so people are able to vote with that. But it could also be done locally - you just have to tell the app if there's a "compatible voting server" nearby. Maybe bonjour could be used for some kind of automatic discovery - and if nothing local is available - fall back to the internet solution.
Quote:
while still being able to make informed decisions about the quality of the releases and vote accordingly
That is kind of my point. Having the vote tally visible while the voting is still in progress will emphasize the social aspect, not the quality of the release itself. That's why a lot of countries have election silence.
Quote:
Regarding the login barrier that dfox mentioned, Maybe allow authentication via SceneID.
That's implying that every party has a good working and stable internet connection. If that would be the case, we'd have that up and running for a couple of years now.
An encoded local sceneid database would be nice to have though. But then, that doesn't help if non-sceneid-people want to access it and it might be difficult to retrieve passwords if people forget them.
elsewhere: to be honest, I doubt it would actually change much. That already happens, and if it's publicly seen to be happening it's possible people might fight against it a bit./
And there's the flip side: if I see one of those prods that ends up underrated for some reason, but there are some prods that are definitely better, I'll vote for the better prods. That underrated prod ends up way down the results table, and gets forgotten. But if I see the live results and it's way down past where it should be I'll probably send some points in that direction. People usually do vote tactically for a good reason :)
And there's the flip side: if I see one of those prods that ends up underrated for some reason, but there are some prods that are definitely better, I'll vote for the better prods. That underrated prod ends up way down the results table, and gets forgotten. But if I see the live results and it's way down past where it should be I'll probably send some points in that direction. People usually do vote tactically for a good reason :)
Quote:
I'm not even sure if voting participation has gone down at all.
That was kindof my point, really: I just think it's a non-issue - 89 votes at a party of ~130 is more than acceptable.
I'm not sure scene-id linked voting is a good idea anyway.. there's plenty of reasons why voting should be anonymous (like stabbing that group you're best friends with in the back by voting for somebody else ;)
I know, sceneid wouldn't necessarily mean your name and address gets published along with your votes, but still - the voting key wins on this point.
I know, sceneid wouldn't necessarily mean your name and address gets published along with your votes, but still - the voting key wins on this point.
dfox: Yeah, I was thinking of some kind of local backup. While it might not help everyone, it will at least help a lot frequent partygoers, I imagine.