techPresident - 10Questions Update: Did Ruffini Snipe a Top Spot? - Comments

Questions Lacking Organized Support

alcannistraro — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 04:18:34 -0500

What feels fair to me is that questions that have been supported by support-this video campaigns should compete only against each other, and that questions that remaimed "independent" should likewise compete only against each other (5 or 10 winners in each category). Otherwise, it would seem futile to submit a question without the backing of some organization, website, etc.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good

justin@justinhamilton.org — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 17:36:21 -0500

Ruffini didn't break the rules, but he did artfully game the system. While his ebay parallel is apt, there was also another opportunity to game the system a bit on the front end.

TechPresident contributor Ruby Sinrich's question on transparency (a feel good question, that is not at all partisan) was the first question added to the site. Over the first couple of days, as the buzz around the effort built, her question was the only one posted with which few could disagree, automatically delivering her over 1,000 positive votes in the first week.

In fact there was a period when her video was the only one with positive votes, and any unvoted video uploaded to the system automatically had the number 2 spot. Eventually Ruby's questions was pushed down a few spots but she still made the top 10.

You cannot discount the advantage of having video's placed in order of the number votes they garnered (unequal footing in the marketplace), because many people won't move past the first page.

While market forces are an outstanding way to aggregate crowd opinions, you need to have the same types of protections built in that the actual stock market does.

The suggestion that submissions be cut off prior to ending the voting is a smart one, though I would say you need at least a week or two. A day is not enough.

Placement on the front page (above the scroll point), should be randomized by default with the option to view videos by date, topic, votes, etc.

There should be an “overlooked” section just like the one Colaruso implemented in the original communitycounts.us effort.

10Questions wasn’t perfect. But as far as opening up the presidential debates process to the public, 10Questions is in a league of its own.

And with a few tweaks, it could be even better the next time around

-Justin

My Response to Micah

AdrianHaynes — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:06:20 -0500

Micah Sifry,

Thanks for your prompt response. I understand your side of the argument, however I would encourage you to change policy. I disagree with the other lobby efforts being similar, as there was a clear operation to undermine the system (admitted to by Patrick himself). Also, Patrick's voting assault started 6 hours before the polls were closed. All the other videos had been on the front page for weeks, which gave an adequate time for anti-lobby attempts to be organized. In 6 hours of voting his question received nearly 200 negative votes - while the previous 10 spot question received only 700 after being on the front page for over a week (300 of which likely came from Patrick's crowd as when i checked on the 14th, it was only at 400 negative votes).

If this particular case is allowed, it will be attempted again in the future, and if nothing is changed, successfully. The quality of the questions will suffer greatly, and the questions asked will voted on solely lobby efforts, with the weight of the content of the question being tossed out. Its wishful thinking that in a country with such a lousy voter turn out, that a community can develop that will have the time to be watch dogs on 10questions (i personally think that the near 200 voted down on Patrick's question was admirable vigilance of the community, considering the response time available).

So here are some suggestions to protect the quality of questions in the future.

1) Show more videos on the front page - the top 20 - only having 2 questions not in the top 10 shown gives less exposer time to last minute lobbies.

2) Have a cut off - 2 days before voting ends, limit the voting to the top 20 videos - or subject videos that moved into the top 10 in the final few days to an extra week of voting.

3) LET THE PEOPLE VOTE ON THIS! If the people want stricter rules to protect against last minute lobbies, let them have it - if they don't - keep it as is.

Thanks for this post

Patrick Ruffini — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 15:02:09 -0500

In a continued spirit of transparency, let me suggest one method you could have used to "defeat" my methodology: close the question submission period before the end of the voting period. This probably would have given the votes on my question ample time to "correct" themselves.

As you say, though, this leads to a slippery slope whose effect over the long run is to chill participation. You need ever more complex methods to defeat ever more sophisticated attempts to vote up questions. And there is probably no way you could defeat a MoveOn or an American Family Association, with 3M+ email lists, if they decided to ask their members to vote up a question in unison -- no matter when they did it.

I will say I find the reaction to this pretty interesting. When MoveOn sent an email to a segment of its list promoting the net neutrality question (which remains the #1 question), there was hardly a peep of complaint from the user base and the tone of the explanation did nothing to raise questions about the fairness of the process:

What happened? Several different advocacy campaigns, each on behalf of a particular question, joined in the conversation. A new video asking about net neutrality was posted, and from what we understand, MoveOn.org sent out an email to about 60,000 of its member activists urging them to vote for it. Obviously, a lot of people did, as that video rose to the top (with more than 5,000 net positive votes as of now). MySpace/MTV will be playing it for Senator Obama to answer during today's webcast (1:30pm EST), which will also be aired on MTV tonight at 7pm.

But that's not where all the traffic came from or went. The current #2 question on the site, about medical marijuana, has benefited from the advocacy of the Marijuana Policy Project and its grassroots supporters. (See here for one example.) Same with the current #3 question, on warrantless wiretapping, which the folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have been telling their activists about.

It's great to see this kind of participation on the site, and we're hoping to see a lot more of it. Remember, if you think a question doesn't deserve to be in the top ten, you can vote it down. And if you think a question deserves more attention, you can use our email and embed tools to tell other people about it and/or post it on your own site. That's what blogger Jamie Bernstein is doing here, promoting a question about atheism and the Supreme Court. (emphasis added)

It's also interesting that questions fueled primarily by advocacy campaigns that were once #1, 2, and 3 ended up as #1, 4, and 5. That I can find, no one found these concerted campaigns troubling -- and the longer voting period (the solution your correspondent suggests) did nothing to dislodge these questions from the top 10.

It's certainly possible my question could have survived a longer period on the top 10. It had a bit of a libertarian streak that could have earned support from Ron Paul supporters. The very early voting for it (before I did anything to push it) was 2-to-1 in favor.

But for the purposes of this experiment -- undertaken to see how a minority group could effectively mobilize when outnumbered -- I wasn't going to leave anything to chance.

10Questions Update: Did Ruffini Snipe a Top Spot?

Micah L. Sifry — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 14:09:27 -0500

Voting on 10Questions closed yesterday with a huge surge in participation...and a number of last-minute submissions, including one that appears to have climbed into the top ten. And that raises an important question, was the process fair?