h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well if this forum IS open for debates, All I'd like to say to get things going is that what I meant was that people should read off of the "official list" on the official voting page, and pick they're favs from that, instead of following like a bunch of lemmings, as seems to be the case. I didn't mean everyone vote for his/her/it's own original idea. That would be anarchy!

Well, I agree with you that there must be some limitation to the number of possibilities... TRUE!

But: you can see a trend coming very soon (in the votes already cast, I mean), and if your own choice from the list is not there, you may well be under the impression that your choice won't be a very popular one. In that case you can always switch to vote for one of the more popular choices. After all, that way you can at least do your best to make sure that the other options (which you seem to like even less) will have a little less chance of becoming a winner.

Seems like an acceptable strategy to me, and I've used it myself. Otherwise I would have gone for ACEs, but that would have served no purpose, because ACEs didn't seem to get that many votes anyway.

Simple logic (as capt. Kirk said to mr. Spock)

Don't give me your blasted Vulcan logic, Spock! Jim! He's Dead, Jim!

Sorry, you bring out Bones McCoy in me. ACE's is a pretty good one. But how do we know that, for instance, ACE's wouldn't have been the #1 most popular eventually if it hadn't been for everyone following the Towel Bearers or the Prefects (which are both wonderfull suggestions, in their own right). This is why I think we should have some sort of private, closed ballot voting... like in grade school when they used to make the class put their heads down while everybody voted so that it fair.

You weren't around at the moment I said that, Bones (see when Kirk and Spock get on the bus in "The Voyage Home")

I agree that ACE's is not too bad... and I even agree that everyone must follow their own gut. But we can't stop anyone from choosing something that has already been said, either, because that's also a matter of gut-instinct.

On the matter of a closed ballot voting: I agree that that would be a very good idea. However, it'll be VERY hard to accomplish, considering the nature of the newsgroup-like forums and the fact that we have people here from around the globe (very hard to time it right, since some of us may be in bed at the moment the others vote).

Also, before using such a system (if at all possible to do), it might be preferrable to narrow the list of options down a bit. As far as I can see there are about 50 options right now. That doesn't help much, does it?

As my defense I claim some sort of weird psycic phenomenon aftershock from when you did that weird thing to me right before you died (sorry, Haven't seen the movies in quite some time)

I agree, it'd be nice to narrow down the field. But I've seen poll type things on pages around here that weren't open ballot (see the one on the world wide jam page). True, we can't neccisarily keep people from voting twice, but it's still an option. And not too hard if we just give a set period of time. Now that I think of it, they elected the virtual mayor of london by eMail! That's possible, too!

You haven't seen the movies that long?? Shame on you! I watch all of them at least 6 times a year!

Let's ponder along on that line a bit... First we narrow it down to, say, five options. These are the five that get the most votes in the open ballot. Then a closed ballot can be run, where everyone can pick one of these five. The Poll-thingy you saw, looked like a fixed five-option poll to me

I think the email-thingy would then be the best option available for the second and final round. At least it would be more secure (against double votes) AND closed!

However: I think that there would be an even better way, although that involves creation of a special CGI-script (and I'm not capable of doing that ). The procedure would be that you enter your nickname or researcher-number, AND log-in password (to ensure that we don't try to enter a vote in someone elses name), and then you click one of 5 radio-buttons to make your vote. The script could then verify your password, and collect your name/number and the selected option, and put them in a database. If you returned to the booth later, you could still re-enter, and make a new choice, but that would only overwrite your previous choice. A script of such a kind is already in use at the SETI@home site for a poll they're running.

Making the script woould be a bit of a pain at first, but the burden of checking for cheats and counting the results could then be an automatic process.

And after the election, the script might eventually be easily customisable and made available for everyone to incorporate polls of their own, right here at H2G2 without having to import such stuff from other locations, as has been done in the WWJ-room.

I'm rambling on again!

Wow! An argument that actually solved a problem! Now all we need is someone who knows something about code...

~Irving

And I wasn't even awake yet, when I wrote that

But indeed, as you said: it would solve the problem, were it not that we first need someone to produce the code for such a thing. But when that's done, the thing could be used over and over again.

Hi Irving and Festival I just popped in to answer your question on t'other forum.
I hadn't seen the official page when I voted, (when did that appear anyway ?) so I was going by the forum lists, and actually it never occurred to me to vote for my own suggestion. Too much watching the Eurovision song contests I guess.(although you guys in the US may have thankfully been spared that).
Having had my flash of inspiration for the year and posted a couple of suggestions, now that I look back on them I rather wish I hadn't as after a couple of days they now look a bit trite.
Anyway, having read the full list I still think I would have picked 'Prefect' as to me it suggests old cars which I'm rather partial to, hence the name in use, rather than anything to do with schools.
BTW If anything I think the list is too long, There maybe more names than people voting. Maybe it would have been best if Peta had shortlisted the ones she liked and we voted on those.. No??
All the best A.M.

I think Peta will eventually find a way to sort it out with the votes and how to proceed from there

Most people didn't know about the other page. Neither did I until late yesterday. And because that new page seemed to be a more apropriate location for the votes to me, I thought "hey, why not carry over the subtotals, as in a multiplication"

Good idea, carrying it over. I noticed the other page because it was in Peta's Picks. Otherwise I wouldn't have known anything about the campaign whatsoever!

Indeed... I sometimes stumble upon such things by accident as well. I'm looking for someone, visit their intro, search for the forums they've been posting to recently, and find something interesting there... Then I get carried away, posting in that same forum myself.

It's a fun thing to do... but it's not always easy to find things that way. Which is why I'm glad that Peta started the Peta's picks thing.

I guess you're right. It isn't always easy to find the right things like that. Maybe I've just been lucky to find what I've found so far.

And yeah, it's great that there's somebody like Peta at that position to catch our attention and give us some pointers as to where we should go

yes. Peta is amazing. She's truly wonderful. She's a blessing. Out of curiosity, does flattery get you any closer to being an ACE/ Prefect/ Towel Bearer/ etc?

I wouldn't know, but I guess not. Maybe becoming one of those is more likely to happen if you have the right attitude towards greeting and helping newbies. But you're gonna havta WANT to do it before anything else

do you ever check your page festival?

HEY Osi, my mate!

Yeah, sometimes I do indeed... But I feel like you're tryin' to tell me that you wanted me to notice something that escaped me untill now Ok, I'll check it out now, right away and back at ya