Subject: acka-research-digest V3 #173
From: [email-masked] (acka-research-digest)
To: [email-masked]

acka-research-digest      Tuesday, August 4 1998      Volume 03 : Number 173

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 00:16:03 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: acka vote

On Mon, 3 Aug 1998, Brandon Ray wrote:

> #vote 3333 Y
> 

I'm only sending this to the public forum because we have so many new
players, I don't want to see them repeating each others mistakes.

Generaly, we don't send votes to a public list. It does work, but it isn't
required.  We usually send votes directly to the Tabulator, who's breadbox
right now.  His email address is [email-masked].  But he actually
prefers that you send votes (and proposals, hes the Promoter as well) to
another address: [email-masked].  This, as you might gather from
the name, is a bot, and it processes the votes and stuff for him.  Thats
the reason for the funny format that you seem to ahve already stumbled
across.

So what this all sums up to is, you shoudl probably send your votes
privately from now on. And so should the rest of our new players, even if
some of us older folks occasionally mess up, as I think Nicollo did a few
days ago.

                                     Vynd

[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 08:19:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: [email-masked] (L'homme a tete de choux)
Subject: Acka: Anti-voting

Vynd:

>Without anti-voting, theres only one reason for anyone to ever vote
>against anything.  At thats because they want it to fail.

This is so true. Consider those uncontroversial proposals where the actual
content of the proposal is sound, reasonably well written, and you have nothing
personal against the proposer, but frankly you don't care one way or the other
if it passes.

In this situation, anti-voting allows a player to decide whether or not e
thinks it is more worth eir while aiding the proposal's passage to acceptance,
or tryign to grab emself a few points.

Also bear in mind that if everyone anti-voted all the time, then the scam
wouldn't work (because the proposal that everyone was expecting to pass would
fail, or vice versa), so there is an element of skill and judgement in deciding
when to anti-vote.

You may even get a situation where a proposal is so ridiculous that it couldn't
possibly be accepted, so everyone anti-votes and it is accepted. If that isn't
harfy, I don't know what is.

JT:

>That is what anti-voting sabatoges.  It offers
>people the chance to vote not based on their interest in the game, but
>rather on their interest in their score.

But anti-voting only works if the person anti-voting accurately predicts
whether or not the proposal wil be accepted.

So, if anti-voting works, it actually has no effect on the outcome of a vote.
If anti-voting does influence the result, then it has failed in its aim and the
attempted anti-voter gets no points. Besides, as Slakko previously pointed out,
if you really want a proposal to fail, it's much more effective to abstain and
make the proposal fail quorum.

Therefore, I cannot see how anti-voting can possibly be a bad thing for the
reasons people have suggested.

Brie Clump:

>I also fail to see why voting in the different way as 
>everyone else should be a method of winning.

Because if someone is astute enough to make anti-voting work, then they deserve
some credit. Anyway, i don't see how anyone could get enough points for a cycle
win from anti-voting alone.

I also think anti-voting promotes good proposal composition -- you can't just
churn out banal proposals and expect them to get accepted just because there's
nothing wrong with them, you need to make people want your proposals to pass,
make them think that accepting your proposal really would be a good thing.

If someone earns a few points off the back of your proposal, it's probably your
fault for making it nothing special.

Ethelred

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 09:32:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

At 08:19 04/08/98 -0400, Ethelred wrote:
>Vynd:
>
>>Without anti-voting, theres only one reason for anyone to ever vote
>>against anything.  At thats because they want it to fail.
>
>This is so true. Consider those uncontroversial proposals where the actual
>content of the proposal is sound, reasonably well written, and you have
nothing
>personal against the proposer, but frankly you don't care one way or the
other
>if it passes.
>
>In this situation, anti-voting allows a player to decide whether or not e
>thinks it is more worth eir while aiding the proposal's passage to
acceptance,
>or tryign to grab emself a few points.

If you don't care whether a proposal passes or fails then surely the best
thing to do is vote BAA! This is what I do, anyway. In trying to grab
yourself a few points, as you put it, you are risking that the hard work of
the proposer will be wated due to a rejection for no reason. During my time
in Acka the most vocal group of the anti-voting haters have probably been
myself, Malenkai/saaremaa and JT. Other supporters of this group include
Niccolo and /dev/joe. Do you think that it is a coincidence that all of
these submit (or have submitted) proposals far more regularly than average?
We recognise the ammount of work that can go into proposals and don't want
to see them fail just so a few people can get some extra points. (Granted,
quite a few players of this type (e.g., Slakko, K 2, Alfvaen) also support
anti-voting but I think that the ratio of "regular submitters" to "others"
is higher on the "repeal anti-voting side of the divide.)

>Also bear in mind that if everyone anti-voted all the time, then the scam
>wouldn't work (because the proposal that everyone was expecting to pass would
>fail, or vice versa), so there is an element of skill and judgement in
deciding
>when to anti-vote.

True. If everyone anti-voted then it wouldn't work. However, some people do
not anti-vote because they prefer to see proposals pass and fail on their
merits. This allows those people who do anti-vote to gain points for
nothing much IMHO.

>You may even get a situation where a proposal is so ridiculous that it
couldn't
>possibly be accepted, so everyone anti-votes and it is accepted. If that
isn't
>harfy, I don't know what is.

I would say that that isn't harfy. An example of this would be the passage
of the mu cow hunter proposal. While that was fun rule to some extent, it
didn't really add to the game in any way and made a lot of extra work for
breadbox, which is, IMHO, a bad thing. Another example was when Hubert (I
think) proposed to repeal all the rules and replace them with the rules of
draughts (I think). Can you imagine where we'd be now if that had passed? I
don't want to even think about it.

>
>JT:
>
>>That is what anti-voting sabatoges.  It offers
>>people the chance to vote not based on their interest in the game, but
>>rather on their interest in their score.
>
>But anti-voting only works if the person anti-voting accurately predicts
>whether or not the proposal wil be accepted.
>
>So, if anti-voting works, it actually has no effect on the outcome of a vote.
>If anti-voting does influence the result, then it has failed in its aim
and the
>attempted anti-voter gets no points. 

Yes, but anti-votingwould still have caused an otherwise perfectly good
proposal to fail. The fact that the anti-voters didn't get what they wanted
doesn't mean thatanti-voting was not the cause.

>Besides, as Slakko previously pointed out,
>if you really want a proposal to fail, it's much more effective to abstain
and
>make the proposal fail quorum.

Rubbish! Look through the proposal archives and take a look at those which
failed due to not receiving the required number of yes votes. Then take a
look at those that failed due to not meeting quorum. There will be a much
larger number of the former than the latter

>Therefore, I cannot see how anti-voting can possibly be a bad thing for the
>reasons people have suggested.
>
>Brie Clump:
>
>>I also fail to see why voting in the different way as 
>>everyone else should be a method of winning.
>
>Because if someone is astute enough to make anti-voting work, then they
deserve
>some credit. Anyway, i don't see how anyone could get enough points for a
cycle
>win from anti-voting alone.

IIRC, cycle 2 was won by anti-voting. Not that I was around then; I just
remember having this discussion before :-). Also, predicting the outcome of
a proposal is generally not too difficult. I am confident that I could
easily predict above 50% of proposal results and would probably be able to
get up tto about 80%.

>I also think anti-voting promotes good proposal composition -- you can't just
>churn out banal proposals and expect them to get accepted just because
there's
>nothing wrong with them, you need to make people want your proposals to pass,
>make them think that accepting your proposal really would be a good thing.

A lt of uninteresting proposals are absolutely necessary though. Things
like small bug fixes are necessary for the continuance of the game. The
last one of these to be voted down that I recall was K 2 trying to fix a
potential scam in the quirpele of
pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis rule. After it got voted down
e then used the scam and nearly crashed the game.

Personally, I will vote for anything that I think will make the game
better, against anything I think will make it worse and baa! on anything
which I don't think will effect the quality of the game, unless I find them
harfy in which case I will vote for them. I think that it is not
unreasonable to expect a proposal to pass if it adds something useful to
the game.

>If someone earns a few points off the back of your proposal, it's probably
your
>fault for making it nothing special.

I don't buy that. If people anti-vote on one of my proposals then that is
because they choose to do so. It is not because there is anything wrong
with my proposal. Maybe certain types of proposal make anti-voting more
likely but in the end the decission as to whether to do so or not rests
firmly with the voters and not the proposer.

Brie Clump.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 10:12:05 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Tom Walmsley wrote:

> Niccolo and /dev/joe. Do you think that it is a coincidence that all of
> these submit (or have submitted) proposals far more regularly than average?
> We recognise the ammount of work that can go into proposals and don't want
> to see them fail just so a few people can get some extra points. (Granted,
> quite a few players of this type (e.g., Slakko, K 2, Alfvaen) also support
> anti-voting but I think that the ratio of "regular submitters" to "others"
> is higher on the "repeal anti-voting side of the divide.)
> 

No, I don't think it is a coincidence.  I also think we have way too many
proposals generating way too much of a ruleset.  I also resent that alot
of people seems to believe that because "there's nothing 'wrong' with the
proposal" and "I put alot of work into it" that they deserve the full
support of all Ackans and a place in the ruleset.  If even one tedious
little "tweaking of the ruleset" fails because of anti-voting it was all
worth it.

> True. If everyone anti-voted then it wouldn't work. However, some people do
> not anti-vote because they prefer to see proposals pass and fail on their
> merits. This allows those people who do anti-vote to gain points for
> nothing much IMHO.
> 

Why is everyone always yapping about the proposals which FAIL due to
anti-voting?  What about the proposals which PASS due to anti-voting?
Admittedly it's easier to kill a proposal than pass one with anti-votes,
but that leads me to the conclusion that people have probably made more
"anti-voting points" voting YES than NO.  How do you recognize an
anti-vote anyway?  

Vynd makes a fine point with not having an "excuse" to vote against a
given proposal.  It has become far too popular, imho, to "call people out"
on their votes.  Posting lists of names and demanding reasons for their
votes.  If my name appears in those lists, expect a full description.
People with hearts on their sleeves need not apply.  

It is my contention that more proposals in a given batch fail because they
suck than have ever failed due to true anti-voting.

> I would say that that isn't harfy. An example of this would be the passage
> of the mu cow hunter proposal. While that was fun rule to some extent, it
> didn't really add to the game in any way and made a lot of extra work for
> breadbox, which is, IMHO, a bad thing. Another example was when Hubert (I
> think) proposed to repeal all the rules and replace them with the rules of
> draughts (I think). Can you imagine where we'd be now if that had passed? I
> don't want to even think about it.
> 

Probably not having to listen to the 8000th rehash of the evils and merits
of anti-voting.

> Yes, but anti-votingwould still have caused an otherwise perfectly good
> proposal to fail. The fact that the anti-voters didn't get what they wanted
> doesn't mean thatanti-voting was not the cause.

So what?  

> Rubbish! Look through the proposal archives and take a look at those which
> failed due to not receiving the required number of yes votes. Then take a
> look at those that failed due to not meeting quorum. There will be a much
> larger number of the former than the latter
> 

Take a look at the number of proposals which failed because they were
stupid/tedious/anal-retentive/boring.  Then take a look at the number
which failed due to anti-voting (prove it).  There will be a much larger
number of the former than the latter.

> IIRC, cycle 2 was won by anti-voting. Not that I was around then; I just
> remember having this discussion before :-). Also, predicting the outcome of
> a proposal is generally not too difficult. I am confident that I could
> easily predict above 50% of proposal results and would probably be able to
> get up tto about 80%.
> 

Not if there was a vast anti-voting wing conspiracy.

> A lt of uninteresting proposals are absolutely necessary though. Things
> like small bug fixes are necessary for the continuance of the game. The
> last one of these to be voted down that I recall was K 2 trying to fix a
> potential scam in the quirpele of
> pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis rule. After it got voted down
> e then used the scam and nearly crashed the game.
> 

Not if there wasn't such an anal-retentive use of semantics.  But =hat's
the other big argument, isn't it?

> Personally, I will vote for anything that I think will make the game
> better, against anything I think will make it worse and baa! on anything
> which I don't think will effect the quality of the game, unless I find them
> harfy in which case I will vote for them. I think that it is not
> unreasonable to expect a proposal to pass if it adds something useful to
> the game.

I think it is unreasonable to expect to keep adding to the game.  Useful
or not.

> I don't buy that. If people anti-vote on one of my proposals then that is
> because they choose to do so. It is not because there is anything wrong
> with my proposal. Maybe certain types of proposal make anti-voting more
> likely but in the end the decission as to whether to do so or not rests
> firmly with the voters and not the proposer.
> 
> Brie Clump.
> 

And we can't let the voters make up their minds how and why to vote!  That
would be wrong!

IB
can't remember having anti-voted, ever. 
loose constructionist.
dumb as a box of hammers.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 10:41:35 -0400 (EDT)
From: John Frederic Mc Coy <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Matt Miller wrote:

> On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Tom Walmsley wrote:
> 
> > Niccolo and /dev/joe. Do you think that it is a coincidence that all of
> > these submit (or have submitted) proposals far more regularly than average?
> > We recognise the ammount of work that can go into proposals and don't want
> > to see them fail just so a few people can get some extra points. (Granted,
> > quite a few players of this type (e.g., Slakko, K 2, Alfvaen) also support
> > anti-voting but I think that the ratio of "regular submitters" to "others"
> > is higher on the "repeal anti-voting side of the divide.)
> > 
> 
> No, I don't think it is a coincidence.  I also think we have way too many
> proposals generating way too much of a ruleset.  I also resent that alot
> of people seems to believe that because "there's nothing 'wrong' with the
> proposal" and "I put alot of work into it" that they deserve the full
> support of all Ackans and a place in the ruleset.  If even one tedious
> little "tweaking of the ruleset" fails because of anti-voting it was all
> worth it.

I must say I have to agree with IdiotBoy here (say that out loud and see
how stupid it sounds :)).  I want to be able to vote the way I feel like,
a decision that rarely involves "can I get a few points by anti-voting,"
without fearing that someone who thought their proposal was just great is
then going to jump down my throat. I am uncomfortable with the recent
trend for people to, as I believe IB calls it somewhere later in this
message, "call out" the people who voted against something and demand an
explanation.  I'm a loopy, intuitive thinking, whimsical kind of guy,
especially when it comes to this game. Sometimes my votes may not make
much sense to you.  But I think its your job to explain to me why I should
vote for your proposal, rather than making me justify my actions after it
turns out it didn't have enough support to pass.

> 
> > True. If everyone anti-voted then it wouldn't work. However, some people do
> > not anti-vote because they prefer to see proposals pass and fail on their
> > merits. This allows those people who do anti-vote to gain points for
> > nothing much IMHO.
> > 
> 
> Why is everyone always yapping about the proposals which FAIL due to
> anti-voting?  What about the proposals which PASS due to anti-voting?
> Admittedly it's easier to kill a proposal than pass one with anti-votes,
> but that leads me to the conclusion that people have probably made more
> "anti-voting points" voting YES than NO.  How do you recognize an
> anti-vote anyway?  
> 
> Vynd makes a fine point with not having an "excuse" to vote against a
> given proposal.  It has become far too popular, imho, to "call people out"
> on their votes.  Posting lists of names and demanding reasons for their
> votes.  If my name appears in those lists, expect a full description.
> People with hearts on their sleeves need not apply.  
> 
> It is my contention that more proposals in a given batch fail because they
> suck than have ever failed due to true anti-voting.

There, told you he said it later on.  Again, I have to agree with IB.  I
just don't think too many proposals are failing because of anti-voting.
Suck may be too harsh of a word, but most proposals fail because people
didn't like them. Just how many?  Well, we won't have to find out unless
we repeal anti-voting, and personally I'm in no hurry.

> 
> > IIRC, cycle 2 was won by anti-voting. Not that I was around then; I just
> > remember having this discussion before :-). Also, predicting the outcome of
> > a proposal is generally not too difficult. I am confident that I could
> > easily predict above 50% of proposal results and would probably be able to
> > get up tto about 80%.
> > 
> 
> Not if there was a vast anti-voting wing conspiracy.

Ah yes, the infamous Cycle 2 won by anti-voting.  Frankly I ahve no idea
if this is true or not.  Considering that it hasn't happened again in,
what, two years, I'd say its about time we dropped that one.

So far as this ability to predict is concerned, is this really a good
thing? If you can already figure out how about say, 60% of proposals are
going to go, just how high would it get without anti-voting? 90%?  Next
people will suggest that we just let the "obviously going to pass"
proposals go straight into the ruleset.

I think that, in honor of this discussion, we should redefine anti-voting
to voting in a manner opposite to what Brie Clumps expects. :)

                               Vynd

[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 11:25:56 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

>I must say I have to agree with IdiotBoy here (say that out loud and see
>how stupid it sounds :)).  I want to be able to vote the way I feel like,
>a decision that rarely involves "can I get a few points by anti-voting,"
>without fearing that someone who thought their proposal was just great is
>then going to jump down my throat. I am uncomfortable with the recent
>trend for people to, as I believe IB calls it somewhere later in this
>message, "call out" the people who voted against something and demand an
>explanation.  I'm a loopy, intuitive thinking, whimsical kind of guy,
>especially when it comes to this game. Sometimes my votes may not make
>much sense to you.  But I think its your job to explain to me why I should
>vote for your proposal, rather than making me justify my actions after it
>turns out it didn't have enough support to pass.

As someone who does occaisionally ask this kind of question I feel a bit of
an explanation is in order. I'm not asking you to "justify your actions". I
actually want to know *why* they failed. *That* they failed doesn't
particularly bother but I do like to know why - maybe there was something
moronicly dumb in the proposal that would make it not work as intended,
maybe there's one little bit that people didn't like that could be changed,
maybe there's a reason why the change would be a bad thing that I hadn't
spotted, you'll never know unless you ask. I never ask this question with
the intention of getting people to justify their actions and if that's what
it looks like then I'm sorry. Your votes are your business.

>> 
>> > True. If everyone anti-voted then it wouldn't work. However, some
people do
>> > not anti-vote because they prefer to see proposals pass and fail on their
>> > merits. This allows those people who do anti-vote to gain points for
>> > nothing much IMHO.
>> > 
>> 
>> Why is everyone always yapping about the proposals which FAIL due to
>> anti-voting?  What about the proposals which PASS due to anti-voting?
>> Admittedly it's easier to kill a proposal than pass one with anti-votes,
>> but that leads me to the conclusion that people have probably made more
>> "anti-voting points" voting YES than NO.  How do you recognize an
>> anti-vote anyway?  

Fine then. Let's talk about proposals that pass due to anti-voting. Look at
the mu cow hunter. Would that have passed without anti-voting? I very much
dooubt it. Would things have been better without it? In my opinion, yes,
and judging by how quickly it got repealed the majority of Acka agrees with
me. The reason thatmore proposals fail due to anti-voting than pass for the
same reason is, I believe, that there are a lot more proposals that seem
certain to pass than there are seem certain to fail.

>> Vynd makes a fine point with not having an "excuse" to vote against a
>> given proposal.  It has become far too popular, imho, to "call people out"
>> on their votes.  Posting lists of names and demanding reasons for their
>> votes.  If my name appears in those lists, expect a full description.
>> People with hearts on their sleeves need not apply.  
>> 
>> It is my contention that more proposals in a given batch fail because they
>> suck than have ever failed due to true anti-voting.
>
>There, told you he said it later on.  Again, I have to agree with IB.  I
>just don't think too many proposals are failing because of anti-voting.
>Suck may be too harsh of a word, but most proposals fail because people
>didn't like them. Just how many?  Well, we won't have to find out unless
>we repeal anti-voting, and personally I'm in no hurry.

I agree here. More proposals will fail due to people not liking them than
fail because of anti-voting. That doesn't mean that proposals don't fail
due to anti-voting. You are correct in that we won't know how many unless
we repeal anti-voting but I guess this is the difference between us.
Personally, I'd rather know if people voted against my proposal because
they didn't like it. That way I know not to try again.

>> > IIRC, cycle 2 was won by anti-voting. Not that I was around then; I just
>> > remember having this discussion before :-). Also, predicting the
outcome of
>> > a proposal is generally not too difficult. I am confident that I could
>> > easily predict above 50% of proposal results and would probably be
able to
>> > get up tto about 80%.
>> > 
>> 
>> Not if there was a vast anti-voting wing conspiracy.
>
>Ah yes, the infamous Cycle 2 won by anti-voting.  Frankly I ahve no idea
>if this is true or not.  Considering that it hasn't happened again in,
>what, two years, I'd say its about time we dropped that one.

Fine, I have no problem there, I was only trying to answer a question and
it's not an integral part of my argument.

>So far as this ability to predict is concerned, is this really a good
>thing? If you can already figure out how about say, 60% of proposals are
>going to go, just how high would it get without anti-voting? 90%?  Next
>people will suggest that we just let the "obviously going to pass"
>proposals go straight into the ruleset.

You have to ask yourself the question, "which is more important to you, not
being able to predict which proposals will pass, or having proposals that
the majority of Acka want to pass pass?" If it's the former then I suppose
I don't stand any chance of convincing you so I won't even bother trying
(he says :-)).I personally don't see what's so great about unpradictability
but each to their own I suppose.

>I think that, in honor of this discussion, we should redefine anti-voting
>to voting in a manner opposite to what Brie Clumps expects. :)

Well, if you want to do that then I won't object :-). Maybe a proposal like
that would get in due to anti-voting :-).

Brie Clump, off to try to find a nomic without anti-voting. Agora maybe??

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 11:53:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Tom Walmsley wrote:
>IIRC, cycle 2 was won by anti-voting. Not that I was around then; I just
>remember having this discussion before :-). Also, predicting the outcome of
>a proposal is generally not too difficult. I am confident that I could
>easily predict above 50% of proposal results and would probably be able to
>get up tto about 80%.

After my last attempt to repeal anti-voting, I deliberately went out of my
way to anti-vote for about 2 weeks.  They were fairly active weeks, and I
managed to anti-vote (on the proposals I didn't care about) correctly
about 70% of the time.  I don't think I'm that much more astute or
competant a predicter than anyone else.

>Personally, I will vote for anything that I think will make the game
>better, against anything I think will make it worse and baa! on anything
>which I don't think will effect the quality of the game, unless I find them
>harfy in which case I will vote for them. I think that it is not
>unreasonable to expect a proposal to pass if it adds something useful to
>the game.

I also vote the same way as Brie Clump, except that I really do try hard
to make sure that I don't vote Baa.  I will generally vote against a
proposal if I cannot find something in it that makes me want to vote for
it in the bottom line however.  If I really cannot decide (which is rare)
then I will either vote baa, or abstain.

- --JT

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 11:59:55 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Matt Miller wrote:
>No, I don't think it is a coincidence.  I also think we have way too many
>proposals generating way too much of a ruleset.  I also resent that alot
>of people seems to believe that because "there's nothing 'wrong' with the
>proposal" and "I put alot of work into it" that they deserve the full
>support of all Ackans and a place in the ruleset.  If even one tedious
>little "tweaking of the ruleset" fails because of anti-voting it was all
>worth it.

I most certainly don't believe that any proposal (even one I worked on)
'deserves' a place in the rules.  I do believe that people should vote on
a proposal based on how they believe it furthers the game rather than
trying to predict and gain points.  I want a proposal failing to mean 'the
majority of the Ackan population doesn't think this is a good thing'.
I don't want it to mean 'Some people think it's a bad thing, but others
were just trying to get some points and it happened to backfire so the
proposal failed so it just needs to get resubmitted' which is what it
means today.   That's my primary objection to anti-voting.

>Why is everyone always yapping about the proposals which FAIL due to
>anti-voting?  What about the proposals which PASS due to anti-voting?
>Admittedly it's easier to kill a proposal than pass one with anti-votes,
>but that leads me to the conclusion that people have probably made more
>"anti-voting points" voting YES than NO.  How do you recognize an
>anti-vote anyway?  

I dislike those as well, for the record.

>Vynd makes a fine point with not having an "excuse" to vote against a
>given proposal.  It has become far too popular, imho, to "call people out"
>on their votes.  Posting lists of names and demanding reasons for their
>votes.  If my name appears in those lists, expect a full description.
>People with hearts on their sleeves need not apply.  

I ask when it's a proposal I really feel would have bettered the game.  If
I ask, I *want* a full answer because if there was something flawed in it
that I didn't see, then I want to know about it.

- --JT

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 12:08:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

>No, I don't think it is a coincidence.  I also think we have way too many
>proposals generating way too much of a ruleset.  I also resent that alot
>of people seems to believe that because "there's nothing 'wrong' with the
>proposal" and "I put alot of work into it" that they deserve the full
>support of all Ackans and a place in the ruleset.  If even one tedious
>little "tweaking of the ruleset" fails because of anti-voting it was all
>worth it.

I can't speak for anyone else but that is not my opinion at all. I think
"there's nothing technically wrong with my proposal and I put a lot of work
into it so it deserves tosucceed or fail on it's merits and not on whether
a few people fancy a few extra points today." I also sometimes think the
same about other people's proposals, not just my own.

>> Yes, but anti-votingwould still have caused an otherwise perfectly good
>> proposal to fail. The fact that the anti-voters didn't get what they wanted
>> doesn't mean thatanti-voting was not the cause.
>
>So what?  

So a proposal that the majority of Acka players who cared wanted to see
adopted wasn't. This in some way detracts from the fun for those players
who wanted to see it adopted, and I doubt it greatly adds to the fun for
those who didn't care and anti-voted.

>> Rubbish! Look through the proposal archives and take a look at those which
>> failed due to not receiving the required number of yes votes. Then take a
>> look at those that failed due to not meeting quorum. There will be a much
>> larger number of the former than the latter
>> 
>
>Take a look at the number of proposals which failed because they were
>stupid/tedious/anal-retentive/boring.  Then take a look at the number
>which failed due to anti-voting (prove it).  There will be a much larger
>number of the former than the latter.

While you are undoubtedly correct this is totallyirrelevant. I was
responding to a claim that not voting was a more effective way of getting a
proposal to fail than voting no. I never claimed that more proposals failed
due to anti-voting than for other reasons.

>> A lt of uninteresting proposals are absolutely necessary though. Things
>> like small bug fixes are necessary for the continuance of the game. The
>> last one of these to be voted down that I recall was K 2 trying to fix a
>> potential scam in the quirpele of
>> pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis rule. After it got voted down
>> e then used the scam and nearly crashed the game.
>> 
>
>Not if there wasn't such an anal-retentive use of semantics.  But =hat's
>the other big argument, isn't it?

Yes, it is. But the way things stand we have the "anal-retentive use of
semantics" sio we've got to live with them or try to channge it. Personally
I don't care either way on that issue but I do care about anti-voting,
which is why I'm trying to change it :-).

>> Personally, I will vote for anything that I think will make the game
>> better, against anything I think will make it worse and baa! on anything
>> which I don't think will effect the quality of the game, unless I find them
>> harfy in which case I will vote for them. I think that it is not
>> unreasonable to expect a proposal to pass if it adds something useful to
>> the game.
>
>I think it is unreasonable to expect to keep adding to the game.  Useful
>or not.

When I say adding to the game I do nnot necessarily mean adding to the
ruleset, rather adding to the ruleset. Repealing a load of old, duff,
complex, scam bait, boring rules that generate loads of work would add
something to the game

>> I don't buy that. If people anti-vote on one of my proposals then that is
>> because they choose to do so. It is not because there is anything wrong
>> with my proposal. Maybe certain types of proposal make anti-voting more
>> likely but in the end the decission as to whether to do so or not rests
>> firmly with the voters and not the proposer.
>> 
>> Brie Clump.
>> 
>
>And we can't let the voters make up their minds how and why to vote!  That
>would be wrong!

I'm perfectly happy for people to vote however they want I just don't want
them to want to vote in a particularly way just to gain points.

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 12:09:06 -0400 (EDT)
From: Matt Miller <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, JT wrote:

> After my last attempt to repeal anti-voting, I deliberately went out of my
> way to anti-vote for about 2 weeks.  They were fairly active weeks, and I
> managed to anti-vote (on the proposals I didn't care about) correctly
> about 70% of the time.  I don't think I'm that much more astute or
> competant a predicter than anyone else.

Ok, let's say you did that.  And let's say Vynd and I, as malicious hated
anti-voters, decided to anti-vote on those same proposals, using the same
highly predictive schema which you used.  Would it have changed the
effectiveness of the model?  Almost certainly.  Whoa, wait a minute...
then if the results ARE pretty easily predictable.. doesn't that mean that
there isn't a scourge of anit-voting?

> I also vote the same way as Brie Clump, except that I really do try hard
> to make sure that I don't vote Baa.  I will generally vote against a
> proposal if I cannot find something in it that makes me want to vote for
> it in the bottom line however.  If I really cannot decide (which is rare)
> then I will either vote baa, or abstain.
> 

If I was to completely hoestly express my feelings on most proposals, I'd
vote BAA! about 85% of the time.  The rest of the time it would probably
look like I was anti-voting, since I would vote in favor of actually
MOVING the game in a new direction.

Does this sound like a contradiction to my claim that the rules are too
overloaded with stuff?  It isn't.   The game has so much baggage that we
can't just decide to go to Hawaii instead of Europe, cos all our crap is
already on the Swissair flight to Frankfurt.

Where did that come from?  The box of hammers, baby!

IB 

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 12:22:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: JT <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, Matt Miller wrote:
>Ok, let's say you did that.  And let's say Vynd and I, as malicious hated
>anti-voters, decided to anti-vote on those same proposals, using the same
>highly predictive schema which you used.  Would it have changed the
>effectiveness of the model?  Almost certainly.  Whoa, wait a minute...
>then if the results ARE pretty easily predictable.. doesn't that mean that
>there isn't a scourge of anit-voting?

The thing is, when I was doing this, I took into account the fact that
other people did in fact anti-vote as well.  Granted it still came down to
guesswork, but it seemed reasonably effective nontheless.   

>If I was to completely hoestly express my feelings on most proposals, I'd
>vote BAA! about 85% of the time.  The rest of the time it would probably
>look like I was anti-voting, since I would vote in favor of actually
>MOVING the game in a new direction.

If that's the case, then that's how you should vote, and getting rid of
anti-voting shouldn't affect how you vote one way or another.

>Does this sound like a contradiction to my claim that the rules are too
>overloaded with stuff?  It isn't.   The game has so much baggage that we
>can't just decide to go to Hawaii instead of Europe, cos all our crap is
>already on the Swissair flight to Frankfurt.

Believe it or not, I agree with you.   I happen to believe it will become
easier to change the rules to remove that baggage without anti-voting.
Either that, or it says that all the rest of Acka really wants to go to
Europe and I'm either playing the wrong game or I should just give up and 
enjoy a European trip as it isn't going to change anytime soon. That's why
I don't want to see voting results obscured by a random factor.

- --JT

[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]
[ Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.                  ]
[ It's hard to seize the day when you must first grapple with the morning ]
[-------------------------------------------------------------------------]

------------------------------

Date: Tue, 04 Aug 1998 12:36:19 -0400 (EDT)
From: Tom Walmsley <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Acka: Anti-voting

At 12:09 04/08/98 -0400, you wrote:
>On Tue, 4 Aug 1998, JT wrote:
>
>> After my last attempt to repeal anti-voting, I deliberately went out of my
>> way to anti-vote for about 2 weeks.  They were fairly active weeks, and I
>> managed to anti-vote (on the proposals I didn't care about) correctly
>> about 70% of the time.  I don't think I'm that much more astute or
>> competant a predicter than anyone else.
>
>Ok, let's say you did that.  And let's say Vynd and I, as malicious hated
>anti-voters, decided to anti-vote on those same proposals, using the same
>highly predictive schema which you used.  Would it have changed the
>effectiveness of the model?  Almost certainly.  Whoa, wait a minute...
>then if the results ARE pretty easily predictable.. doesn't that mean that
>there isn't a scourge of anit-voting?

We never said thatresults getting changed by anti-voting is a comon
ocurence; we just said that it happens. And one of the annoying things
about it is not knowing which proposals it has happened to. We may as well
just resubmit every proposal that fails. Anyone fancy taking over as
promoter and tabulator after breadbox quits from the extra work load this
would entail?

>> I also vote the same way as Brie Clump, except that I really do try hard
>> to make sure that I don't vote Baa.  I will generally vote against a
>> proposal if I cannot find something in it that makes me want to vote for
>> it in the bottom line however.  If I really cannot decide (which is rare)
>> then I will either vote baa, or abstain.
>> 
>
>If I was to completely hoestly express my feelings on most proposals, I'd
>vote BAA! about 85% of the time.  The rest of the time it would probably
>look like I was anti-voting, since I would vote in favor of actually
>MOVING the game in a new direction.

Why don't you then?

>Does this sound like a contradiction to my claim that the rules are too
>overloaded with stuff?  It isn't.   The game has so much baggage that we
>can't just decide to go to Hawaii instead of Europe, cos all our crap is
>already on the Swissair flight to Frankfurt.

If you don't like the way things are going then try to dosomething to
change that. Just don't criticise those of us who make propoals that take
the game in a direction you don't like. Also, at the risk of being
extremely petty and annoying, isn't repealing anti-voting setting the game
off on a different tack, doing something different?

Brie Clump.

------------------------------

End of acka-research-digest V3 #173
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