One minute delay

[Patrick Harris @ SD]

Can we lower the one-minute-before-you-can-vote delay? I read really fast, especially if it's two short entries, and it's just a little bit too demanding of attention to properly multitask while remembering what I wanted to vote on ... basically I'm spending several seconds staring at the clock waiting for the chance to vote.

... and if people aren't going to read the entries before voting, making them wait a minute won't change that.

[Victoria Jaczko]

I do think the intent is to give people nothing to do but read both items. I have a similar issue, though, I consistently am having 30-40 second wait times after I've already decided which to vote for.

It does force me to sanity check stuff like costs and construction considerations, though.

[Gary Teter]

We are going to let the voting run for at least a day or so before we consider making any changes to how it works. I know the delay is annoying but the intent is to ensure that people actually read the items.

[Jacob Trier]

I often find myself with 40+ seconds left after I made a decision. I guess this comes with following the contest so closely for several years.

Like the judges have often stated, I look for a reason to stop reading - format error, poor writing, unimaginative or cliché idea, auto-reject violations. I rarely have to spend much time.

[Joseph Kellogg]

Yeah, without the delay I'd be tempted to just glance at the Requirements section, and vote for whichever one got it less wrong.

[Lakesidefantasy]

Keep the delay please.

[Matthew Morris]

For some reason, I time out and have to sign in again.

[RonarsCorruption]

I was going to say the opposite. I'm reading both items thoroughly, and I keep getting booted back to the login screen - I take a few minutes per item , but I don't want to lose my vote if I got up mid-contemplation to, say, get a drink.

[Vic Wertz]

Matthew Morris wrote:

For some reason, I time out and have to sign in again.

It's unrelated to voting, and should stop doing that soon.

[Patrick Harris @ SD]

Mm. Another thought: The one minute delay is especially annoying when I'm looking at two items I've seen before. Which is a phenomenon that will presumably occur more and more as I continue to vote.

[Gary Teter]

You won't have seen those two items paired together, though. That's the important part, judging each item against the other, not each item individually.

[Sean H]

I actually like the delay, but I agree with you here Patrick. When both items are new, I take some time to think of the possibilities and weigh them against each other. When I've seen both before, and KNOW that B is just plain better than A, the waiting period kind of sucks - I want to see other cool items!

EDIT: There is a problem with trying to weigh each item against each other sometimes Gary. Going off my previous example, I got A and B just now. I have already read A and know that it is a poorly formatted SIAC, and have also read over and deliberated on B and thus know that it's a interesting and unique item. Spending a minute thinking about the items in relation to each other won't change that.

Only if they are two really good items(or two really bad items you need to pick the least bad of) will that minute really come into play.

[Vic Wertz]

To be frank, the delay also helps ensure that it's a pain in the ass to try to spam votes for your own entry.

[Jonasty1031]

Just as a 2 cents, I like the delay cause it forces me to really think through my decision. I'm all for keeping it as is but if the judges do end up changing it, I would just toss a vote out there to have it shortened but not removed. Maybe 30 seconds.

[CouncilofFools]

Vic Wertz wrote:

To be frank, the delay also helps ensure that it's a pain in the ass to try to spam votes for your own entry.

To be frank...er, I'm happy with anything built in against that. That's not to say that I think anyone is suspect. It's just better to have those things built in to protect the process.

[Coridan]

In future years perhaps a better system would be for everyone to just mark a like/dislike pile, then narrow their like pile down to top ten or what have you. This we have now is a sick torture =p

[Liz Courts]

Coridan wrote:

This we have now is a sick torture =p

I'm sure the judges have felt similarly over the years.

[Coridan]

Oh I bet, and they even had to see the ones that blatantly broke the rules. On the other hand, I've seen four or five items about ten times apiece now.

[Jared Espley]

Please keep the delay. It forces us (myself included) to read and think about the items and not just judge on whether the formatting is perfect. In other words, it forces us to judge as the judges themselves do it -- on the merits of the items with a slight bias for poor formatting.

[Sennet]

The delay needs to be lowered to 30 seconds. I read quickly, and I make decisions quickly, and watching 30-40 seconds count down on every single entry is tedious. I'm sorry, but I can't judge any more items at one minute per. It's too frustrating.

Ideally, I'd like 20 seconds, but I could be persuaded to come back at 30. If you like the delay, nothing is stopping from using extra time.

[Sulaco]

It's also very annoying when the same pair of items comes up twice in a row.

[Wild Gazebo]

1000 - 1200 wpm is the rate at which contestants read at the World Championship speed reading competitions...the average adult reads at approx 250 wpm. Meaning the greater majority of people would take approx 2 minutes to read two entries...I think we are pretty safe.

That being said, I definitely wouldn't complain if it was reduced to 30 seconds.

[Jason S]

Please keep the delay.

[Scott Fernandez]

Yes keep the delay. It's like the regular season of a pro sport folks, every game counts! Once we're through the slog of the regular season the judges set the playoffs up with the Top 32.

--Vrock the Vote!

[Paldasan]

Braaaaains.

Err I mean I am quite happy with the delay. It does make me read both rather than just reading the first one and disliking it when the second one could be so much worse. Even when I see repeat items I will re-read and maybe, just maybe there was a nugget of gold I missed the first time around. ;)

[RonarsCorruption]

Sulaco wrote:

It's also very annoying when the same pair of items comes up twice in a row.

That will never happen if you're actually voting on a pairing. Only if you vote for neither.

[James Conder]

I also support the delay. Deliberation is good for the health.

[mad_mac_hl]

I think 60 seconds delay is spot on. I'm a slow reader so I didn't even realise it was there until I got a pair of very short entries to vote on and even then, it was just an extra few seconds for me to consider which I thought was best.

[gbonehead]

Yeah, I say keep it. Avoids temptation to skim and temptation to spam. Sounds good to me :)

[Patrick Harris @ SD]

Meh. It's annoying me enough that it makes me not want to bother voting. I'm sure some people will say "good!" (and now I'm imagining a million pictures of Grumpy Cat staring at me), but I don't think that's necessarily the sign of an ideal voting system.

[Sean K Reynolds]

I think anything that encourages you to spend at least 30 seconds thinking about a particular item is a good thing.

Just because you can read it in ten seconds (as I can) doesn't mean you've thought about it long enough to properly evaluate it compared to the other item.

[Pedro Coelho]

After seeing a lot of repeats (even though I very rarely choose "neither"), I'm starting to think sometimes 60 seconds is too long. Maybe further down the road the waiting time could decrease, since we'll be more familiar with many of the items.

[Patrick Harris @ SD]

I understand the thought process behind the decision, Sean, but it's presenting a problem for the voting process. It's like this: I load the page and read the items, consider my decision, and I'm ready to go. Then I have to wait 20-30 seconds for the counter to tick down. I'm not going to revisit the items and think, "Hm, maybe my earlier decision was crap, I should do this again!" Instead I'm going to sit there thinking, "Well, this sucks."

Yes, sometimes the items are long and the decision is hard. In those cases, I don't go to click the button until I'm ready. And I still usually wind up having to wait a few seconds.

Now, I can multitask, but reading these items and making an informed decision requires some brainpower. So if I'm focusing on these, I can't really be properly working on my thesis (or whatever) in another window. Conversely, if I'm working on something intensive in another window, I can keep flipping back to vote, but I'm not going to be paying enough attention to the items.

So if I want to multitask I have to half-ass something, which isn't good. I'd rather not multitask anyway, because I could vote on items for hours, except that I'm rewarded for my focus with a counter telling me I didn't think hard enough.

If you want to narrow the voting field down to people who don't mind waiting for a counter to tick down--or simply half-assing their opinions--then obviously that's your prerogative. But it seems contrary to the idea of crowdsourcing something like this, which I assume was intended to allow a lot of people to weigh in on a lot of items, and was a decision based on the intellect and experience of your user base. None of which adds up to "We don't trust you to think hard enough without a clock making you do so."

(IMO, etc.)

[Lone_Wolf]

I vote to keep the delay, please.

[Gary Teter]

One thing to remember is that this is the first time we've done anything like this, and actually this might be one of the first times anybody's ever tried anything like this on this scale before anywhere.*

So we're erring on the side of caution. What if someone were to just sit there and click the left button repeatedly? What would that do to the rankings? That's the sort of thing we're trying to be really careful about for now. We might relax the timer requirement at some point but right now I am disinclined to recommend we do so.

*(There's a lot of academic voting research out there but most of it seems to focus on much smaller ballots where a voter can actually express a preference ranking for every item on the ballot. That's basically impossible here due to the sheer number of entries we have.)

[Patrick Harris @ SD]

Gary Teter wrote:

So we're erring on the side of caution. What if someone were to just sit there and click the left button repeatedly? What would that do to the rankings? That's the sort of thing we're trying to be really careful about for now. We might relax the timer requirement at some point but right now I am disinclined to recommend we do so.

I'm hip. I'm just keen on explaining why I think something, especially once people start disagreeing with it. :D

[James Raine]

I'm not having a problem with the timer, but I can see how some people could. I would recommend reducing it by at most 15 seconds. I think 45 seconds is short enough to not bother exceptionally quick readers/decision-makers, but long enough that it prevents spamming.

[Sennet]

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

Just because you can read it in ten seconds (as I can) doesn't mean you've thought about it long enough to properly evaluate it compared to the other item.

I realize you're afraid of spam -- perhaps justifiably so. However, you are being very narrow-minded about both the speed at which other people process information and the method by which they reach decisions. With all due respect, please don't tell me that my 30-second judgments are less than valid, because I have every indication to the contrary.

I will stand by every 30-second judgment I make. But I will [u]not[/u] twiddle my thumbs for another 30 seconds waiting on what feels like an arbitrary countdown. With a one-minute delay, you are losing fast decision makers as judges. On the other hand, maybe you avoid some spam. That's a perfectly valid tradeoff, and it's your call to make, but it is simply wrong to assume that slow decisions are necessarily better than fast ones.

[Sean K Reynolds]

Sennet wrote:

I realize you're afraid of spam -- perhaps justifiably so. However, you are being very narrow-minded about both the speed at which other people process information and the method by which they reach decisions. With all due respect, please don't tell me that my 30-second judgments are less than valid, because I have every indication to the contrary.

Feel free to tell me how narrow-minded I am about how long it takes to judge hundreds of wondrous items in a short period of time. ;)

[R Pickard]

I like the delay, I think it gives time to think about it, and also to cross reference rules (both game rules and contest rules). It probably also helps keep the server from locking up.

When I don't need as much time, I just tab over to another screen and read a little before coming back. Worst things have happened in my life than having had to wait 30 seconds for something.

[Sennet]

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

Feel free to tell me how narrow-minded I am about how long it takes to judge hundreds of wondrous items in a short period of time. ;)

I'll give you points for the zinger, but my statement stands as written.

It's too bad -- I do want to look over the other submissions, but the information flow you are offering me is a trickle, which changes reading those submissions from "fun" to "not fun." In which case, I'm simply going to decline, with apologies. But who knows? Maybe you'll see me next round.

["Devil's Advocate"]

Gary Teter wrote:

One thing to remember is that this is the first time we've done anything like this, and actually this might be one of the first times anybody's ever tried anything like this on this scale before anywhere.*

So we're erring on the side of caution.

*(There's a lot of academic voting research out there but most of it seems to focus on much smaller ballots where a voter can actually express a preference ranking for every item on the ballot. That's basically impossible here due to the sheer number of entries we have.)

Would it be possible, in the future perhaps, to maybe break down the Round 1 open voting into a few (2-4) diffrent catagories along some generic system. For example, different groups by price. Items that are 10,000 or less, 10,001 - 60,000, 60,001 +, and then the last would be maybe a week later with just the top contenders from the prior votings?

Or perhaps by slot affinities, None, Hands/Wrists/Weapons, Headbands, and Other, for example.

[Coridan]

I would be ok with the delay if you couldnt get repeat items until you have seen them all. What about a system where it paired up all the items until you saw them all, then you start voting only between those you already upvoted and so on?

[Drejk]

The problem with 60 second timer is that anyone can take more time when he needs it to properly evaluate the items but sometimes one of the items is so obviously bad that the choice can be made in even 15 seconds. And really, one minute timer won't prevent anyone from sitting there and spamming left button if he decide to do so.

["Devil's Advocate"]

It wouldn't, but it does significantly cut down on that. If someone get a few friends to all go through and just vote for their items, they are likely going to be spending a lot of time waiting to just find that/those items. It can still happen, but it's not as likely to be common. Though honestly I'm not sure just how much that would really happen anyway.

[Zeeboo]

Coridan wrote:

I would be ok with the delay if you couldnt get repeat items until you have seen them all. What about a system where it paired up all the items until you saw them all, then you start voting only between those you already upvoted and so on?

I second this opinion.

I have seen some items 20 times, (at least it feels like that.) I know how I will vote because I have seen both items several times. What I end up doing is opening a second window and doing something else for 45 seconds.

A 30 second delay does not mean that I must vote after 30 seconds. When I've seen both items half a dozen times a shorter wait means I don't have to post here where I wait for the timer to count down....

[Sean K Reynolds]

Coridan wrote:

I would be ok with the delay if you couldnt get repeat items until you have seen them all. What about a system where it paired up all the items until you saw them all, then you start voting only between those you already upvoted and so on?

According to Gary, excluding repeats would put a significant burden on the server. So instead of a 60-second countdown until you could vote, you might have to wait that long (or longer) for the code to search through and find items you haven't seen yet.

[Coridan]

In that case I support a quarter quell.

[Bob_Loblaw]

I didn't even notice there was a timer! I had been taking my time with each item to make sure that it was a good item. Some have been obviously better than others but I still wanted to take the time to give both items their fair evaluation. I think I owe it to those who took the time to submit their items for all of us to see.

[cwslyclgh]

Sean K Reynolds wrote:

I think anything that encourages you to spend at least 30 seconds thinking about a particular item is a good thing.

Just because you can read it in ten seconds (as I can) doesn't mean you've thought about it long enough to properly evaluate it compared to the other item.

I'd agree with this Sean, if 4/5ths to 5/6th of the items that we see were not items that we have seen and read multiple times before... after a while you get to know the items pretty well, and judging between two such items is a very swift process (note that this speaks for those of use that have done a a lot of voting since the poles opened... somebody who sits down to vote for the first time probably won't have this problem for the first couple of hours).