DEBATE & OTHER VOTING

Elsewhere I posted about the potential for what dragonrider has subsequently called 'vote spamming'.

In the Colonel vs goregrinder debate, dragonrider has indicated he saw the tally being manipulated.

I am pleased to hear it - not about someone's questionable ethics, but the fact that this is all in the realm of potential is now being examined.

Much as it takes away from people's freedom to make judgment calls in a secret ballot, it may be necessary for a while to do the voting another way, in all the things, not just the debates, if anything here that serves to gratify people's sense of accomplishment or self worth is so easily manipulated.

I can only thing of:

(1) controlled admin/staff votes on the same criteria as the old system (ie equitable assessment of the quality of arguments, or whatever else is being measured)

or

(2) members cast their votes openly in a post, and then make any elaborating remarks.

The second case doesn't make voting secret, but stiff - it means people either cast their vote for all to see and say nothing, or they make some comments that might help improve one or other of the participants.

Yeah, I think if 'vote tampering' has taken place, the person or people should be banned with no impeachment hearings.

Same as if it ever happened in, say, US elections in 2000 or 2004.

are we sure it's actual vote tampering, though? there was a bug in the UFO forum that caused the poll choices to be changed and it recorded who voted instead of the number of votes. if a bug was floating around there in the past week, it's not out of the realm of possibility that a bug also hit the debate tourney votes.

It was totally manipulated. William is going to look into it. And I will bet my life's savings on my friend.

I don't know if was manipulated or not BUT if it was I beleive the guilty party should be exposed and left to Mob Justice...

PEACE...
m...

Damn straight! Even if my friend is the guilty party (he is not). Whoever messed with it deserves their IP banned. Then they can only come on with a proxy, oh nevermind, that is a way to cheat the debate.