Below is a *rough* summary of the discussion to date about the PW2004
selection process.
note: I intend to upload a web page soon with the proposed process for
this year - for further discussion and revision.
The use of polling software has been suggested. The benefit is
convenience. The objection is that the vote process *may* not be
transparent.
Is there any software that meets our needs?
Some software has been suggested but there has been no evaluation. Would
someone like to investigate further and report back to the group?
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this is the tentative timetable for the 2004 vote.
NOMINATIONS (2 weeks): November 3 - November 16, 2003
DISCUSSION (2 weeks): November 17 - November 30, 2003
VOTING (1 week): December 1 - December 7, 2003
POST-VOTE DISCUSSION (1 week): December 8 - December 14, 2003
FINAL LISTED POSTED: December 15, 2003
There have been concerns expressed in the past that the final discussion
runs too close to the year-end Holidays. If that is still a concern, we
could move the schedule up by 2 weeks.
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PRICELESSWARE CANDIDATES
it would be nice to have a way to find posts about the best new programs
- the ones people intend to nominate for Pricelessware. I suggest we
*flag* posts with information about such programs to make them easy to
search for. Then when someone wants to find this type of post they could
Google for "PL Candidate".
We haven't done that in the past. If people post program information
with the *flags* now others will have a chance to evaluate new program
*before* the nomination period starts.
=========
NOMINATIONS:
Nominations should only be for additions/deletions to the existing list.
I believe the consensus last year was in favor of automatic renomination
of Pricelessware programs - with a second required to get them on the
ballot.
Well, sorry to say this, but I don't like an 'automatic' renomination.
Each program has to 'earn' its place on the PL-list, and already being
on the PL-list isn't a garantuee for a new nomination. The PL-list is
about 'the best of the best' freeware programs, and when a already
mentioned program appears to have some bugs, a bad update or when a
better program is available, that program should have to be removed from
the PL-list.
PL2003 programs will fall off the PL2004 nominations list if they don't
have a second. IMO the poorer programs will not be seconded and/or
re-elected. Perhaps it would be better to require two seconds - that
would be equivalent to a nomination and a second. IMO 'Automatic'
renomination would make the nomination process better but it looks like
more discussion of this is needed.
Imo, it should be left the way it is, with programs on the current PL
automatically nominated but requiring a fresh second. One reason is
that automatically placing them on the ballot may lead to complacency
among regulars whose favorites are already on the list during the
nomination phase; imo the more attention we each pay during each phase
of the process, the better.
I see valid arguments both for automatically putting current PL apps on
the ballot and for starting completely from scratch. I think the
current system of automatic nomination requiring a second is a good
compromise between those two options. (And I think that's how we came
by the current system, though my memory is hazy here.)
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CATEGORIES:
no categories: find the most popular programs THEN put them into
categories. Stop adding to a category when it
already has two-three items in it.
have the category structure in place *before* nominations begin. review
and revise the PL 2003 categories before opening nominations - with
further revisions as needed during the nomination process.
In the past some programs have been nominated in more than one category.
I think a program should only appear once on the ballot. If a program is
nominated in more than one category the most suitable category can be
determined during the discussion period.
That would eliminate the problem of duplicate votes and make it easier
to determine the winning programs . . .
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DISCUSSION:
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VOTING
does anyone know of a good poll/survey script that could fit our needs
for the Pricelessware List? Namely, it has to allow for multiple
questions for each section. Ideally, it also would allow someone to make
up to 2 picks per category but no more. If there are no good scripts
available,
is there anyone here who could code something, or even improve on an
open-source code? The whole thing could be hosted on the pricelessware
site, so that is not a concern. It is just plain silly to do this
manually.
From: "-½cut" <halfcut@DIE_SPAMMERstalkingsheep.co.uk>
a trawl through
http://www.hotscripts.com/ should turn
several up in the language of your choice. Also, I don't know if it'd
help, but I have a forum not doing a great deal, that also has a poll
function. The poll function only allows 1 pick per category (using a
separate post for each poll). But you'd be
welcome to use it.
nabopoll is a complete voting/survey system written in PHP4 and MySQL.
It allows for quick polls integrated in the middle of a web page or for
longert survey with multiple questions.
http://www.wintips-inc.com/winpoll.htm
"WinPoll is a PHP script that enables you to add a poll to
your web site, where visitors can
vote on any question that you want to ask them.
It appears to be limited to one question, multiple choice?
A voting script would be nice, but the downside is that no evidence
trail is left in the newsgroup.
Doing it via the web will ensure that endless future threads will say
that voting wasn't transparent and that who ever supplied the web voting
made up the figures him/her self.
If voting is going to be done in the newsgroup as it was last year,
might I suggest having a standardised way to vote, as this could make it
practical to count the votes using a script - and it might aid human
counters anyway.
If a list of the programs was posted as a new thread as it was last
year, but people were asked to indicate their votes by inserting say an
asterisk as the First character in front of each program that they were
voting for, it would be a simple matter of extracting all the posts in
the thread and comparing all lines that start with an "*" (as first
non-space character) with a table of the original program names.
This would avoid problems with misspellings and where someone has quoted
the post of an earlier voter (as long as the quote included ">"s), or
left in program names that they were not voting for.
An entry with program name and the post's "From:" line could be output
to a file for each vote, this could then be sorted by "from:" so
accidental duplicate votes could be dropped and a count of votes and
list of who voted for what could be all generated pretty much
automatically I think.
However, as long as a list of who voted for what is published, I can't
see any good reason not to use a website based voting system instead.
An entry with program name and the post's "From:" line could be
output to a file for each vote, this could then be sorted by
"from:" so accidental duplicate votes could be dropped and a count
of votes and list of who voted for what could be all generated
pretty much automatically I think.
If such a file is created, it might as well also include the Message-
IDs. That way if needed, it would be easy to go back and verify the
post itself.
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POST-VOTE DISCUSSION
===========
I'll take whatever couple categories