Conlang Flag: Voting

This is a thread dedicated only to how voting should work - not to
flag submissions and opinions.

Unless someone else wants to do it, I'm perfectly willing to handle
the collection of votes. My calculation method would be to feed the
votes into the calculator at <http://www.ericgorr.net/condorcet/>.

There are broadly two options. One is to ask people to submit votes
by email, the other is to create a web form.

If we choose the email route (which is certainly easier because then
no php code has to be written) then I'd like votes to be submitted in
the format preferred by the above calculator. For example, if flag C
is your favourite, flags A and D are next but you can't decide which
is better, and flag B is your least favourite, then your vote would be
"C>A=D>B" (which means, "C is better than A, which is equal to D,
which is better than B").

If we choose the web form route, then there are several questions
raised. For example, should voting be anonymous? If so, there's no way
to prevent people voting twice, etc, but perhaps that's a negligible
risk. As for storing the votes, the easiest way is to have a plain
text file which lists everyone's vote (there would be no security
involved - anyone could view the votes if they knew the name of the
text file). Every time someone submits a vote, the text file would be
updated, and I'd collect them at the end of the voting week. Is that
acceptable?

I've uploaded a draft web form here - it doesn't do anything; it's
just so that we can discuss layout:
http://web.netyp.com/member/dragon/temp/flagvote.htm

Email votes are easier for me; the web form option is probably easier
for everyone else. I'm happy either way.

Adrian.

Replies