Vote Now! bonsaiTALK Styling Contest

dbz12fan

Here's an idea. Add up all of the votes for every entrant. The top 5 with the highest totals advance into the finalists.

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Charles Bevan
Vero Beach, Fl

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Jay

If I am correct, at this point in the voting all trees have at least a few votes, therefore it would be difficult for one new vote to change a lower rated entry into the top group.

In general the trees that seem to be the getting the higher marks are also getting more votes, those with lesser scores have fewer votes. A tree with a 5 average score and three votes is not going to jump into the top group even if it gets 2 last minute 10's.......3 x 5 plus 2 x 10 divided by 5 comes up with a score of 7.....

OK in the future we should have a rule in contests that to qualify for the top honors the tree must receive votes from at least 1/3 of the voters, or any other number you like. PLEASE do not make us have to vote for all entries......

my 2 cents
Jay

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TreeBay

Thank you for your comments and concerns.

1. Concerning the possibility of snipe voting influencing the result:

This is the first round of voting. With a membership in excess of 3200 individuals, we can reasonably expect there will be dozens of votes on every tree (there is nearly a dozen on each one as of this writing, only 14 hours into the voting). The likelihood of a single vote influencing the outcome by moving a low ranked tree into the top five is extremely small: As of this moment, a single "10" snipe vote will not move for a 2.36 average (accumulated on 11 votes) any higher than 3.0 average.

The lowest ranked trees in the top 5 are currently rated in excess of 7, so it would take approximately TWENTY votes of "TEN" to put the same tree as high as the bottom of the top five. It could happen, but would it happen?

That is at this moment, with only 11 votes, on day 1 of the voting. A week from now the influence of any single vote will be much more dilute.

2. Concerning the public vote:

The voting is public primarily because that's the Gallery is the only tool we have available at the moment. If I have learned anything about the forum membership, particularly in the past few weeks, it has been that this is not a group of conformists. A public vote does have some interesting benefits, too. It makes the voting more interesting and forces people to be accountable for their votes.

3. Concerning the display sequence of images

The concern about the RANDOM display of images is actually more pressing to me. I also noticed that while the randomization was accurate, moving from page to page generated more RANDOM results, not necessarily DIFFERENT random results. SO, to make it easier to vote, I will be reordering the photographs manually, showing them alphabetically, by title, by post order, etc. At least once a day.

So, the bottom line is that we'll definitely take all suggestions under consideration for the next contest. The contest response was overwhelming, and the poll system we used in past contests simply wasn't up to the task of presenting 35 possible options would be technically possible - or if it were it would be very difficult to compare the entries in such a way that voting would be practical for the voters.

Regards,

Matt

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TreeBay

UPDATE: As expected, the vote counts continue to increase. At the moment, I think the least voted photo has 18 ratings. I have just updated the default display order to first show the photos that haven't been commented recently. Then they will drop to the bottom of the list in rotation.

Makes good sense if you think about it.

You can still try other sort orders if you're curious.

Regards,

Matt

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CD one

If you're like me and realitively new to the forum, voting on everyones entry is a great way to increase your posting numbers

Colin

mkonig

I have to disagree with Jay on this one.
Everyone who made an effort to enter the contest deserves to have their tree rated.
if nothing else it will acknowledge their effort, encourage them to enter future contests and maybe give them a little guidance.
It does not involve a lot of effort and with a voting period of one week it does not have to be done all at once.

Mike

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Treebeard

Matt, I wasn't seriously suggesting that a single vote could win the popular vote. I was trying to get my point across to Will that averages can be misleading. It is possible for 5th place to poll less total points that 6th place, but for 5th place to have a higher average if the number of votes vary. But as long as we are certain that averages are the way to proceed then no problem.

I notice that the trees have varying numbers of votes on them... people are not voting on ALL entries.

Regards,

Chris.

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TreeBay

Let's look:

If Pootsie's entry currently ranking sixth (avg of 7.33 in 46 votes) received five more ratings of 10, it would reach (7.44 in 51 votes). This would put it still slightly behind bonsaial's entry #5 (avg of 7.46 in 52 votes) if al didn't get any more. It's going to be tough for the cat to pass al without getting more votes than al.

But it's possible: it would take something like al getting three more ones and the pootsie receiving three votes of ten, to push entry #6 past #5 while maintaining a lower vote count.

Of course I don't mean to suggest that it wouldn't be possible for the feline team to get out front of al, or even for them to win the contest. I am just at a loss to figure out how they could do it while simultaneously maintaining a lower vote count unless the voters go dodgy.

Apologies to the poots and al for using their names in this practical example.

Regards,

Matt

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pootsie

No offense, ringmaster!

I'm pootsie, and I approved this mess

pootsie

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