Tim Young wrote: >3. What is to be done about this? > Diverse viewpoints to some extent are useful, and the new tabulation system > muffles joke, protest, or other extreme outlying ballots to some extent - their effect >on the poll results were not generally significant. However, I cannot help but feel > as if some individuals are intentionally sabotaging the efforts of myself and > others to provide a source of news/information to the AC community. There will > be a formula regarding ballot acceptability that will be designed to keep such > nonsense votes from being counted before the next poll. As you said - the effect of these ballots is pretty much negligible on the results as a whole. If someone wanted to skew things, then they would have to make a concerted effort to vote for the same teams. This basically happened in the Canada case. There was a concerted effort to vote for Canadian schools that I was aware of (but didn't participate in). There isn't a "circuit" to speak of in Canada right now, though three schools do have active programs (with others starting up). This voting as a block could be construed as a "protest" vote, but I'd prefer to think of it as trying to raise awareness for the fledgling programs. You could stop these votes with some rules about making votes. I think that the democratic nature of the poll is self-regulating, and that the teams that should have been close to the top were. There is no reason for an all Canadian poll right now (with only a few teams), but there IS a reason to have a Canadian circuit. I look on these votes as an attempt to publicize this need to our larger (and benevolent) quiz bowl neighbour to the south. Rob, #24 in the poll, but first in exiled canuck physicists
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