David Artman writes: > > From: Doug Orleans <dougorleans@xxxxxxxxx> > > my Tivo knows that!) was recommending "range voting", where each voter > > rates every candidate on a scale (e.g., 0 to 10). The winner is then > > the candidate who gets the highest average rating. I'm not convinced > > Highest average, or highest total? Seems to me that either could work. Highest average, so as not to penalize candidates that don't get mentioned on all ballots. I should have emphasized that partial ballots are fine in this system. (Consider Boardgamegeek: no one has rated every single game, and many have only rated a small fraction.) > What's I'd also like to consider/discuss is how to get complete ballots, > short of requiring them (i.e. all games ranked somewhere). We nominally > only want rankings based on actual play, but when folks submit ballots > that are clearly the result of brief, hurried play is that giving us any > real value? The Procedures ask that only played games be ranked... but > maybe that should get the kabosh in favor of a "rank all games for your > ballot to be counted" rule. I mean, heck--last time around, we had six > ballots with three or fewer games ranked, and a whole MESS of ballots > with only four or five. > > That HAD to hurt some folks--in as much as "Winning" these comps should > be an actual goal. Leaving a game off a ballot absolutely does not hurt (or help) a game. That's the whole point of partial ballots-- no opinion means no opinion, not a negative opinion. I would much rather allow partial ballots than encourage people to judge a game based on not enough information, which is much more likely to hurt (or unfairly help) a game. If you want to encourage more complete ballots without requiring them, you would need to either increase the playtesting time or decrease the number of candidates (perhaps with some sort of nomination process, like the Oscars). But why do you care about complete ballots? What we want is more total votes (to increase the statistical significance of the results), and I'd rather do this by getting more ballots (partial or complete) than worry about the percentage of ballots that are complete. --dougorleans@xxxxxxxxx