Song Contest 131 (Results posted!)

[Aristophanes]

^ Nth all of this

[Aristophanes]

Goddamn pagetops! XD

[N]

as someone that only enters occassionally, when I think I'll have time to vote, I don't like the new rule. I don't think you'll have many people vote between five days and the hard deadline, because if you're already losing some points anyway why not lose the full 20?

[vizIIsto]

as someone that only enters occassionally, when I think I'll have time to vote, I don't like the new rule. I don't think you'll have many people vote between five days and the hard deadline, because if you're already losing some points anyway why not lose the full 20?

Because then, there would be no flexible deadline. And that brings us back to where we started..

[Song Contest]

Reminder: Entries are due tomorrow!

[Song Contest]

Reminder: Entries are due at the end of today!

[vizIIsto]

I think I already know what so-called song I'm gonna enter for the next contest.
And I have a feeling it will not get top 5.

[Song Contest]

Three changes made to the voting rules:

1. The initial voting deadline will be seven days instead of five.
2. A five-point penalty was added for failure to vote when no extension is needed.
3. I wrote in that nobody will get banned for failure to vote.

We can keep talking about what a good number is for point penalties in various situations, but this is what I want to try for now.

[Song Contest]

Entries will go up today no matter what, but I'm giving one person who submitted an ineligible entry a little bit to read their PMs and send me a new one.

[vizIIsto]

Three changes made to the voting rules:

1. The initial voting deadline will be seven days instead of five.
2. A five-point penalty was added for failure to vote when no extension is needed.
3. I wrote in that nobody will get banned for failure to vote.

We can keep talking about what a good number is for point penalties in various situations, but this is what I want to try for now.

So wait, do you mean the point penalty system works like this:
You get a -5 point penalty for every time you didn't vote.
And no extra points will be added if it's the last deadline.
So that if you haven't voted after the initial deadline and one extension, your penalty for not voting at all is -10 points?
I think that works well enough. And it's not complicated.

[Song Contest]

If I'm reading that right, what you said is wrong. Wish I knew how to build tables better, I might just force my way through it, but for now here's my best attempt at explaining:

-If you vote during the initial period: You get all your points; no penalty
-If you fail to vote and no extension is needed: You lose five points
-If you vote after the first extension: You lose five points
-If you vote after the second extension: You lose ten points
-If you vote after the third extension: You lose fifteen points
-If you fail to vote, even after three extensions: You lose twenty points

Or from a more "administrative" point of view:

-If no extensions are needed: Give five point penalty to everyone who didn't vote
-If one extension is needed: Give five point penalty to everyone who didn't vote by the time votes are tallied
-If two extensions are needed: Give ten point penalty to everyone who didn't vote by the time votes are tallied
-If three extensions are needed: Give a fifteen point penalty to everyone who didn't vote until after the third extension and a twenty point penalty to everyone who didn't vote at all

Update: I tweaked the first version of the description; I realized after the fact that it was confusingly written.

[VashtaNeurotic]

Three changes made to the voting rules:

1. The initial voting deadline will be seven days instead of five.
2. A five-point penalty was added for failure to vote when no extension is needed.
3. I wrote in that nobody will get banned for failure to vote.

We can keep talking about what a good number is for point penalties in various situations, but this is what I want to try for now.

So it's still profitable to not vote?

[Song Contest]

Three changes made to the voting rules:

1. The initial voting deadline will be seven days instead of five.
2. A five-point penalty was added for failure to vote when no extension is needed.
3. I wrote in that nobody will get banned for failure to vote.

We can keep talking about what a good number is for point penalties in various situations, but this is what I want to try for now.

So it's still profitable to not vote?

You lose five points if you fail to vote no matter what. The longer you wait to vote, the more points you lose. So no, it's not "profitable."

[Xtoxm]

unless the minimum cumulative penalty for not voting is 12 points, it's profitable not to vote. multiple people have pointed this out.

[Plotinus]

but if more than 25% of people strategically not vote, then the penalty rises.

[Song Contest]

Yeah and I addressed it.

You lose five points no matter what. This means that there is an inherent risk in not voting. Meanwhile you have no idea whether the songs you would have voted for are anywhere near you in the contest.

A person who's considering not voting knows for sure that they will lose points. They have no certainty that the points they would give with a vote would change the ranking of their song.

And the heart of the issue is math. Let's say you get a 12 point penalty instead of a five point penalty when you either:

A) Fail to vote, and there are no extensions, OR
B) Vote after the first extension

What would the penalties be for further extensions? It would make the most sense to layer another 12 on each time. That would move the schedule to this:

-If you fail to vote and no extension is needed: You lose 12 points
-If you vote after the first extension: You lose 12 points
-If you vote after the second extension: You lose 24 points
-If you vote after the third extension: You lose 36 points
-If you fail to vote, even after three extensions: You lose 48 points

After the second extension, the penalty becomes so ridiculously large that it kind of becomes a moot point whether somebody who's already failed to vote continues not to vote. In other words, who cares whether you lose 24 points or 48 points? You're very, very boned either way.

[Song Contest]

Also what plot said.

If you have another suggestion, I'm open.

[Song Contest]

Also if you fail to vote there's a decent chance (5/12 = a 42% chance, maybe? idk, that's very clumsy math on my part) that your failure to vote will cause your song to slip below another person's in the rankings. As in:

-Entry A has 50 points, but the person who entered it fails to vote so they get 45.
-Entry B has 46 points, and they do vote so they don't get any penalty.
-The person who submitted Entry A wouldn't have voted for Entry B anyway (or if they would have given them fewer than 5 points) so by not voting they caused Entry B to beat their song.

[Xtoxm]

keeping the same thing you suggested, but defaulting any entries that

never

end up voting, to 12, or 20 points, would be fine.
the 5 point penalties can be for the entries who do vote, but do it late.
we dont want to encourage people to not vote. even with penalties having some people not vote is harmful to the competition. the extensions are there if enough people dont vote that some sort of group busyness is implied, and we need to give extra to make the contest mathematically sensible.
realistically i dont expect extensions to happen very often? one was needed in the prev contest due to a national holiday right

[Xtoxm]

Also if you fail to vote there's a decent chance (5/12 = a 42% chance, maybe? idk, that's very clumsy math on my part) that your failure to vote will cause your song to slip below another person's in the rankings. As in:

-Entry A has 50 points, but the person who entered it fails to vote so they get 45.
-Entry B has 46 points, and they do vote so they don't get any penalty.
-The person who submitted Entry A wouldn't have voted for Entry B anyway (or if they would have given them fewer than 5 points) so by not voting they caused Entry B to beat their song.

but you

gain

all the points that you didn't give to other entries. you have to give points to 10 different songs, so chances are high you would give 5 points to that entry anyway.

[Song Contest]

Ohhhhhhh. That's a whole new mechanism.

Here's how it would look:

-If you fail to vote and fewer than three extensions are needed: You lose 12 points
-If you vote after the first extension: You lose 5 points
-If you vote after the second extension: You lose 10 points
-If you vote after the third extension: You lose 15 points
-If you fail to vote, even after three extensions: You lose 20 points

That could maybe work. It's a little weird that you lose fewer points if there's an extension (or two) and you vote than if there isn't an extension and you don't vote, but...w/e.

I still don't really want to switch things up right now just because we're about to go into the first voting deadline and I don't want to confuse people further with a last minute change of this magnitude.

I am thinking that for you and Vashta I will run sims on your ballots and let you know whether it would have helped you not to vote.

[Plotinus]

Sounds good. We could try that mechanic next contest

[Xtoxm]

that new proposal is good.
the winning margins on these things are usually small, and this would become a problem if you used the flawed system for long enough.
winning songs are typically voted for by everyone - and >5 pts on average.
so in terms of winning the contest, it would be advantageous not to vote.
you dont want entries winning simply because they didnt vote.

[Song Contest]

Entries are up!

[Aristophanes]

I think I Djibooboo'd XD

Can I save the first song entry for the next contest?