Delete Vote Weight

RijettaRijetta Nowhere Important
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A low, sultry voice resounds within the depths of your mind, "I look forward to seeing your descent."
TetchtaArchelaus

Comments

  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    Yeah, I get the point of vote weight, but it seems like it'd be better to just have it be an on/off situation--if you're not active enough, you get no vote, period, and then do a really diligent job policing HELP SECONDS abuse for people that are making alts to swing elections.

    I was saving this for the future (and I'll IDEA it later I think), but this is as good a place as any to put it: Aetolia should switch to a Ranked Choice Voting System. I think this would be really good for the game for a number of reasons, pretty much all of which are ennumerated better by others than I could, but here are the benefits:
    • Completely eliminates salt caused by people who join elections just to be contrarian/make fun of people/as a meme.
    • Would make individual player votes matter more, because instead of just picking one candidate and whoever gets the most wins, you get to actually list your preferences.
    • Increases leader accountability to the players by making the risk of replacement much more feasible in multi-party races.
    CPG Grey does a good job explaining the flaws in First Past the Post System (what Aetolia currently has) and why Ranked Choice is superior. This would still mean the person with the majority wins, but what decides that majority would be vastly different to what we have now. It'd also actually ENCOURAGE a diverse range of people running for elections, which I can only imagine is a good thing.

  • TiurTiur Producer
    I'll have to go find the paper, but I prefer Approval to Ranked Choice. Prevents scenarios where a person on a line between two other people can ruin one of their chances. I do not mind the idea of coding different election processes for orgs to choose for in their democracy.

    To be clear on alt-abuse, though: we see a lot of information about votes automatically, including alts, shared computers, etc. It goes to discord, it goes to Gods channel, it does not sneak past us.
    TetchtaGavramel
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    edited November 2020
    What's your opinion on doing away with vote weight in favor of 1:1?

    edit: Just processed "I do not mind the idea of coding different election processes for orgs to choose for in their democracy" and its implications, which are...problematic, honestly. If you institute choices for voting systems for things that are important like guilds and cities, what's going to happen is that the people in charge are just going to pick the system that's most favorable to them. I think this really should be something mechanical mandated from upstairs, since it's a borerline OOC/meta issue as well.

  • RijettaRijetta Nowhere Important
    I just want vote weight gone. Stop rewarding idling.
    A low, sultry voice resounds within the depths of your mind, "I look forward to seeing your descent."
    TetchtaTeaniLinArchelaus
  • Why do we have a disembodied "fair-ish" voting system? It seems like ballot lines and voting (the actual act of it, not the writing of news posts/campaigning that goes on beforehand) are a great source of drama and conflict, if irl is anything to go by. Why not vote by writing on a slip of paper and dropping it in a ballot box? Of course only a trusted few would be able to see and count the votes, and we'd have to rely on them. Of course if we don't trust them, we'd have to make sure our own people were there. Spectacle! Drama! Intrigue!

    That's probably too much hassle though, tbh.
    image
    TetchtaBulrokHaven
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    edited November 2020
    That is the worst idea I've ever heard and I honestly don't know if I should spend the energy to explain why a disembodied fair voting system is the only way, but here goes:

    Elections in Aetolia are vitally important for the health of the playerbase. They are, of course, driven by Roleplay, but they aren't solely roleplay. Entire guilds have died and become uninteresting because a leader has become too entrenched. Voting really needs to be as equitable as possible and audited by tons of checks by the game staff (even if that's automated, it needs to be there), because a bad election/voting system can ruin entire chunks of the game for some people. Unlike in real life where you can have a popular uprising where people can enact their own systems, Aetolia is somewhat limited in what level of participation we have (think about how the war systems have all kinda been problematic because if one side wins, what might really happen IRL is the enemy org/city would be absorbed into an Empire or something, but that would literally ruin the game for dozens of people if that's how aet worked, so it operates within some sort of weirdly nebulous middle ground), and the people in charge of orgs have mechanical power over other people's play experience. Because of this, voting should be as fair as possible, controlled by the admin, and the thin OOC/IC tightrope it walks has to be carefully managed and looked over.

    Xarian
  • RijettaRijetta Nowhere Important
    hey just checking in did we do anything about vote weight yet
    A low, sultry voice resounds within the depths of your mind, "I look forward to seeing your descent."
    Tetchta
  • PhoeneciaPhoenecia The Merchant of Esterport Somewhere in Attica
    Unpopular opinion: considering the string of elections that just happened in Bloodloch, this thread appearing so soon after makes it seem like certain people are butthurt they didn't win.

    Also, I'm not entirely sure, but for some reason I thought vote weight got altered a while back so you COULDN'T simply idle to inflate your vote weight, and that it counted certain kinds of activity, not just simply being online. 
    TetchtaLinTeflin
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    edited November 2020
    I'm sure Rijetta is upset she didn't win, but there's highlightable problems with the current Aetolian voting system that could use tweaking and addressing, regardless of whether or not it would have made a difference in those races, to be entirely honest. Weighted voting really isn't fair, and there are also many other changs that could be made to the system that could make it even fairer and reduce acrimony.

    Also saying someone is "butthurt" is really disrespectful and unhelpful.

    Lin
  • edited November 2020
    I don't have a weigh-in on recent elections since I just started playing, but...

    I think both sides have their pros and cons. The current system allows the more active people to have a better say over ones who started playing again a week or two ago, which is a plus (saying as someone who falls into that very category). But leads into my next point... The con is that yeah it does 'reward' idling; just because someone plays a lot, doesn't mean they're 'active' in the org. From an RP perspective I think this is pretty bad.

    Going more towards a 1:1 vote makes the voting fair (from a baseline at least) which is obviously a plus. In a democracy, nobody's vote should inherently be worth more than someone else's... Unfortunately, having come from Achaea, I've had enough experience with how awful this system is as well. It's horrible losing an election because a guild/city coincidentally became more active in the 2-3 weeks leading up to someone deciding to contest. Only for those characters to conveniently go back to being barely active once the election's over.

    Both can be viewed as pretty terrible, both can be viewed as good. I think it's a hard thing to break from the admin side of things, though giving cities a choice on what system they use would probably be a good step.
  • Tweaking, but I don't like full 1:1 ratio. We are smaller now. We do that, someone could take over an org just by getting their friends to make alts for a day and vote for them. We can modify it, but going to 1:1 ratio opens up all other kinds of abuse, the kind the weighted voting system was put in to safe guard against in the first place. Trading one problem for another isn't a step in the right direction. Maybe reduce the weight of votes, or if you do go to 1:1 make stronger voted requirements. Minimum play time, or time in org, or something.
    Saltz
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    Tina said:

    Tweaking, but I don't like full 1:1 ratio. We are smaller now. We do that, someone could take over an org just by getting their friends to make alts for a day and vote for them. We can modify it, but going to 1:1 ratio opens up all other kinds of abuse, the kind the weighted voting system was put in to safe guard against in the first place. Trading one problem for another isn't a step in the right direction. Maybe reduce the weight of votes, or if you do go to 1:1 make stronger voted requirements. Minimum play time, or time in org, or something.

    I don't think anybody is suggesting a 1:1 with no requirements, rather that something similar to what we use currently, just without the weighting.

  • edited November 2020
    Tetchta said:

    That is the worst idea I've ever heard and I honestly don't know if I should spend the energy to explain why a disembodied fair voting system is the only way, but here goes:

    Elections in Aetolia are vitally important for the health of the playerbase. They are, of course, driven by Roleplay, but they aren't solely roleplay. Entire guilds have died and become uninteresting because a leader has become too entrenched. Voting really needs to be as equitable as possible and audited by tons of checks by the game staff (even if that's automated, it needs to be there), because a bad election/voting system can ruin entire chunks of the game for some people. Unlike in real life where you can have a popular uprising where people can enact their own systems, Aetolia is somewhat limited in what level of participation we have (think about how the war systems have all kinda been problematic because if one side wins, what might really happen IRL is the enemy org/city would be absorbed into an Empire or something, but that would literally ruin the game for dozens of people if that's how aet worked, so it operates within some sort of weirdly nebulous middle ground), and the people in charge of orgs have mechanical power over other people's play experience. Because of this, voting should be as fair as possible, controlled by the admin, and the thin OOC/IC tightrope it walks has to be carefully managed and looked over.

    I don't have much of an agenda in this thread, and it seems like I stumbled into some unknown-to-me drama. My post was more along the lines of "what if" so if this thread is a bad place to have flights of fancy about systems in Aet, you or @Rijetta lemme know and I'll pack my things :smile:

    That said, there's some interesting (to me) stuff to unpack here. Please treat this as more stream of consciousness and not me saying that anyone is wrong/right about anything.
    If anyone were to ask me "Are players more or less involved if their leader is a hereditary monarch or a democratically elected council" I'm not sure that'd have a clearcut answer. I'm not even sure that better roleplayers make better city heads, a lot of "good" org leadership is not "X is a strong and charismatic leader!" but "X seems to have an ability to handle tedious minutiae and doesn't have a history of unicornsing everyone and stealing org credits/gold"

    To me, what you're saying sounds like saying that cities and guilds are (partly/largely) OOC entities, and so should be treated "democratically" because they aren't character based but are systems that players interact with qua players and democracy is how we try to be fair to each other IRL.

    If so, on one hand elections/votes of no confidence are (wholly or in part) OOC statements that the player in that position isn't fulfilling their role as a steward of this OOC organization (holding back newbies, hoarding guild credits, idk what else goes here)
    But simultaneously, isn't wanting to be a strong city/guild/whatever leader a character aspect? Isn't wanting to have a hand in shaping the fabric of the Aetolian story every characters dream? And to do that with your closest friends and allies, fighting bravely against the forces of (red team/blue team)?


    The urge toward fairness feels right and good and destroys dreams. Or something like that.
    image
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    edited November 2020
    Xarian said:

    The urge toward fairness feels right and good and destroys dreams. Or something like that.

    Without addressing all the things you're saying, if you're thirsty for more despotism-style Roleplay, that's kinda why we have clans. We've had Dictatorships in player orgs before and it's been an absolute poop show. It's bad for a thousand different reasons. I get the desire to make the world feel like a living breathing fantasy world where all things are possible, but the reality is that it's meant to be a fun place where people can explore a broad themes at their own pace and intensity level while also having large scale story interactions. So that has to be taken into account. If we're gonna have orgs that are dictatorships, then they shouldn't be player run, and should just be run by NPCs.

    As far as drama goes, you're not missing anything and there really isn't any other than some bad faith posters trying to stir the pot and attach all criticisms of the current voting system to "drama/hurt feelings" so they can be summarily dismissed.

  • I will not comment as to which I think is a better system out of the various methods of voting, and there are a lot of them that could be used and coded into Aetolia.

    What I will comment upon, however, is that blanket statements regarding "remove x for y" is ignoring that y will have its own cons and requires a fair evaluation of the positives and negatives of both systems to see which outweigh the other or which can be mitigated to (hopefully) provide a more enriched system.

    At the end of the day, voting is intended to be as fair as possible. There are arguments to be made how vote weight is equitable in that it rewards those who are active over those who are new or play less, be it less hours per week or less time overall. There is also an argument that 1:1 voting is far more equitable as everyone has an equal voice, therefore the mechanics are less abusable in a general sense. And while ranked choice is appealing on the outside and I like the general principles of it, it can also produce odd results and what could be considered 'unfair' winners. Look at the Oscars.

    Bottom line being, every system of voting will be disadvantageous in the wrong situation. It sounds like in the recent elections that this may have been the case, but it may not have been. That does not mean we should not consider alternative methods, but it also doesn't mean that a system is immediately flawed based on the results, especially when we lack all the data - and we as players lack all the data.
    Saltz
  • edited November 2020
    I've played the game for over five years now, and I've seen players inactive for months come back for the sole purpose of voting in an election for their OOC friends.

    Getting rid of vote weight means this can be abused much more easily. Seeing players suddenly log in and idle to inflate their vote weight can be issued and countered by the admins, at least.

    Losing a weighted vote election might hurt, but it's much more preferable to alts/inactive players logging in suddenly or candidates ingratiating themselves to newbies. The players who are online more often presumably have more insight into the nature and qualifications of the candidates.

    I see more opportunity for abuse if weighted votes are discarded.
    SaltzStinePhoeneciaRouxSaidennSaritaXavin
  • RijettaRijetta Nowhere Important
    edited November 2020
    two weeks playtime = 1 vote no weight, different calculation than first past the post ez
    A low, sultry voice resounds within the depths of your mind, "I look forward to seeing your descent."
    Tetchta
  • Not really sure why we're discussing alternative voting systems when the problems that vote weight brings about as well as tries to solve are actually completely tangential to the voting system being used.

    Vote weight aims to reduce the influence individual players have even if they aren't actively engaged in the game, so people can't just call up all their friends who log in once a month to vote for them and win even if there is a smaller, but far more dedicated group who would prefer another candidate.

    The problem seems to be in how vote weight is calculated, as it just shifts the goal posts from logging in once a month to being logged in for X hours every day even if they aren't actively engaging.

    You'd have the same problems whether we have vote-weighted FPTP, vote-weighted ranked voting, or vote-weighted approval etc.
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    Eliminating vote weight doesn't immediately open up voting to abuse any more than having them weighted does. It's not uncommon to still see inactive people start logging in for elections. It doesn't take that long to accrue the time necessary to get a vote weight of one, and people often see elections coming. Avoiding this kind of abuse is really easy, in any case, and would just require a system similar to what we have currently, where largely-inactive people just...don't get a vote. Weighing votes doesn't fix this problem, and, frankly, is bizarre and unfair.

  • TiurTiur Producer
    I was avoiding this, because it feels a bit like salting wounds, but this does keep going...

    No election in the last month or two would have changed without vote weight. Anyone who won by points also won by popular vote. Vote weight tends to be a binary thing, it's either minimum or maximum, so it tends to average out to nbd. So, other than novel voting systems like Approval/Ranked, removing vote weight would change nothing except perception, so I'm inclined to keep it.
    TetchtaMjollArchelausSaritaGavramelSaidennFezzixAxius
  • TetchtaTetchta The Innocent
    I'm not super surprised to hear that, honestly, which is why I offered novel voting systems even though it was arguably off topic. I think it actually addresses things a lot better than fudging with vote weights.

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