Poll voting thoughts

I understand this is just for fun, but depending on the goal of the experiment, it may be better to weight the voting by number of apples rather having a one for one correspondence.  In other words, rather than Joe MegaPoster that has 5800 apples getting 5800 votes and Newby VonNewby gets 2 votes, maybe a scale.  As an example, 1-50 apples gets you 1 vote, 51-100 gets you 2 votes, 101-150 apples gets you 3 votes, and 151+ apples gets you 4 votes.  If you use a one to one apples to votes ratio, 1 poster could overwhelm a couple hundred posters, and make newer people think there is no point in voting.  On the other hand, I could just be way over-thinking this

Is this how the apple polls work?

You get one vote for each apple you have.

The polls are interesting, aren't they? I think Paul likes people who have more apples having more votes as a reward for being active contributers... let me see if I can find the thread that introduced them. Ah-ha! (https://permies.com/t/43502/Vote-Paul-DVD-Set-Rocket)

paul wheaton wrote:Apple polls is a new feature in our forum software.  I asked cassie to use it for this poll so that we might be able to test the feature as well as narrow down the list of possible names.   Stacking functions!

It sounds like apple polls needs a little more polish.  

The apple poll stuff was designed for polling on really important stuff like "best book" or "best DVD".   A problem with most polling stuff is that it can be gamed:  people will create a hundred accounts so they can put in a hundred votes and thus make their product "best".  But with apple polls, you limit the voters to "judges" rather than something that can be gamed.  Through  a bit of configuration, you can determine who can be a judge:   people with a certain number of posts or apples?  And people with a lot of apples - can influence the vote more than people with just a few.

Since this is not something where anyone might try to game the system, my suggesting the use of apple polls turns out to be silly.

Personally, I rarely ever use all of my apples, because it just seems unfair. Like, I have 332 of them! That's a whole lot more than other member. So, I usually only use a like 5-20 spread out over some options. Maybe it'd be fun to have both apple polls and normal polls? I like polls, and I find them really fun to do. I was actually really excited when I became a Gardener because I could finally make some polls! It's the little things in life that make me happy, LOL!

333...

334...

We're still playing with the apple polls to see what they can do.  

It's neat because it gives apples more meaning.  One apple, one vote.  People who contribute more to the site, get more say.

I don't know if the general public can see how many votes are on the polls before they close, but I've noticed most of those with high apple counts, have only been putting 10 apples here, 2 apples there...

Paul specifically said to us the other day that he won't be voting - he has infinity apples - to help keep things fair.



Once we get the hang of apple polls, it will be fun to start doing more serious ones, like best permaculture blog of 2017... Best permaculture youtube channel of 2017...  My problem is, I don't youtube or read blogs, so I have no idea what to put on the list.  with luck, people will post ideas here.

I think apple polls are also nice because any staff can keep adding things to them. They kind of act as a summary of all the things in the thread, and it's right at the top, so it's easy to see the summary. Often, on long threads, it's hard to see all the different suggestions in it. Like, there's a thread on staple foods, but it's really hard to see all the staple foods listed. But, if we had a apple poll, we could list all of them, add to them AND have a discussion down below about them. Or, if we had one of Favorite Fruit Trees, we could have a nice list of fruit trees with ideas of which are liked the most, and then a discussion of said fruit trees down below. I really like that! I'd often wondered how to utilize apple polls, but I think this is a really neat way to utilize their power.