Lemmings Forums Level Contest #16 - Voting Phase (Current: Final Round)

[IchoTolot]

Apologies - it was meant to be slightly in jest, if only because every single stage up to this point has resulted in a tie-breaker.  Mind you, I guess that implies that everyone was stepped up their game in regards to making quality levels.

Votings have indeed become a lot closer.

I will nevertheless make a poll after this contest's voting to ask if a slightly shorter voting round time is desired.

[Proxima]

...or maybe an overhaul of the entire voting system?

[IchoTolot]

...or maybe an overhaul of the entire voting system?

I can ask around about that as well if you wish for the next contest. You can think about a cocrete new plan if you want.

Smaller adaptations won't be a very big deal.

Still the basic rule for a new system will be that all levels shall be treated equally.

But for a big change I want 2 things:

1.) A majority for an overhaul determined by a poll.

2.) After that: A concrete plan to what the new system should be. As I don't know how which desired attributes a new system should have and what exact flaws shall be corrected - here the persons wanting a change shall help me out. I want concrete ideas!

[SQron188]

I'd say don't fix it if it ain't broken

[namida]

Some people feel that it is "broken", though. It's really a subjective question that's up to the community to decide on the answer to, rather than one that has an objective answer.

Personally, my opinion here - if people make use of the playing phase, they should mostly know the levels by voting time; so for that reason, I think allowing multiple polls at the same time (this can be done by having multiple topics) should be fine. Perhaps as a tradeoff for this, the open duration for each poll could be a bit longer.

I think the best way to do this would be to run each rule's single-rule voteoff independently, then once all three are complete, proceed with the finals as normal. Another possibility to keep things moving might be to start the creation phase of the next contest before the previous one's voting is complete (maybe once the mixed-rule votes start?). This would require a minor adjustment to the "choose next contest's rules" prize, with it instead being "choose the contest after next's rules".

To avoid overload, perhaps subforums could be created for some of the recurring popular contests - the official contest, LOTY, maybe the level solving contest if it stays popular.

[SQron188]

Personally, my opinion here - if people make use of the playing phase, they should mostly know the levels by voting time; so for that reason, I think allowing multiple polls at the same time (this can be done by having multiple topics) should be fine. Perhaps as a tradeoff for this, the open duration for each poll could be a bit longer.

I think the best way to do this would be to run each rule's single-rule voteoff independently, then once all three are complete, proceed with the finals as normal

That's an interesting idea, I wonder how well it'd fare in practice. 3*(1 to 3) votes at a time shouldn't matter if people vote for levels they appreciate, and most of the voters are competent in regards to what is being voted and presumably do not squander their votes, etc.

Another possibility to keep things moving might be to start the creation phase of the next contest before the previous one's voting is complete (maybe once the mixed-rule votes start?). This would require a minor adjustment to the "choose next contest's rules" prize, with it instead being "choose the contest after next's rules".

Hmm, so in essence, that would reveal the contest rules to the potential participants sooner. This could be a solution if we absolutely cannot wait for the following contest - I suppose the results of the poll would decide here.
I'd just hope for a sufficiently long creation phase in such a case!

[IchoTolot]

I think multi-poll in multiple topics is way too chaotic. If there is a strong preference for it we can try it though. I will make a topic after this contest has ended.

I will also propose a shortening of the time period from 3 to 2 days in there.

Increasing the rate of contests can also be a double-edged sword. Too many could tire out people. If there aren't enough right now, maybe additional contests run by other people could still temporary hunger.

[Forestidia86]

Why is it needed to vote for each rule separately?
Actually you can have an advantage when you're in a rule with a higher survival rate than the others, which doesn't seem to be justified.
Why not make one big mixed round with all the levels and then best 5 levels or so go in the next round?

[Crane]

A while ago, I submitted a level for a rule that had only one other submission, and both levels pretty much got an automatic pass into the next round. It is a little unfair, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. Trying to put the survival rate above 66% or so is about as fair as possible for everyone, unless it's changed so each rule is judged separately and there's no mixed group, but I don't think that will go down well and the competition will return to just a single rule per contest.

[IchoTolot]

Why is it needed to vote for each rule separately?
Actually you can have an advantage when you're in a rule with a higher survival rate than the others, which doesn't seem to be justified.
Why not make one big mixed round with all the levels and then best 5 levels or so go in the next round?

A while ago, I submitted a level for a rule that had only one other submission, and both levels pretty much got an automatic pass into the next round. It is a little unfair, but I'm not sure what the alternative is. Trying to put the survival rate above 66% or so is about as fair as possible for everyone, unless it's changed so each rule is judged separately and there's no mixed group, but I don't think that will go down well and the competition will return to just a single rule per contest.

I set the survival rates for the rules as close together as possible while also trying to result in a reasonable sized mixed group, so no big advantage spawns from this. This was the very first thing I minimized when taking over the contests! It could be that before my time there was a more unfair rate though.

Under me the highest diffrence in survival rates was/is 16,666666 %:

Biggest differences I had:

This contest: 50%-66,666666%.
Contest 15:  33%-37%
Contest 14:  50%-66,66666%
Contest 13:  40%-50%

1 big mixed round would be a bad thing. Large groups tend to deliver inaccurate results with the current voting poll way. The results from smaller groups are more accurate with polls as putting 1 level angainst 1 other is the clearest stand-off.
For very large groups a complete different voting scheme would be needed without polls, where the users not just vote for a few favorites from a selection, but deliver a complete ranking of all levels from "most favorite" to "least favorite".
The result would be a median of all rankings sent in.
Only 1 round would be hold this way with an immidiate overall result.
But I must say I don't really like this kind of voting.

I want to make the groups rather smaller than larger in general as a result.

Although I could distribute the levels from all rules together in ~3 groups, with near identical size. Mixing itself is no problem.


All in all I decided that after this contest's voting I will make a poll for 2 things:

1.) Shorten voting time from 3 to 2 days.

2.) Distributing all levels from all rules over a set number of groups with ~ the same size for the voting phase, so rules can get mixed. And survival rates are very colse together or identical, the rates themself will also depend on the number of entries.

[IchoTolot]

The next round is up.

[Crane]

Maybe I'm complaining too much, but in the last round, 2 levels got 5 votes each and 4 got 4.  I expected the two with 5 votes to go through, with the four getting only 4 votes having the vote-off (with 3 going through).

[IchoTolot]

Maybe I'm complaining too much, but in the last round, 2 levels got 5 votes each and 4 got 4.  I expected the two with 5 votes to go through, with the four getting only 4 votes having the vote-off (with 3 going through).

The goal of this 1 mixed group is to get down to the 2 finalists. It doesn't matter if 1 level more or less gets thrown out in the stepping-stones to that.

Compare to LOTY 2017:

10 levels were in a group and the goal was to get down to 4. For the first elimination round I was flexible: 7 was the goal, but one more or less did not matter. The 4 was enforced.

If we get ties, there may be some tiebreakers to ensure only 4 levels out of each group advance to Phase 2. That says: 10/9 to 8 or 6 levels instead of 7 will be acceptable in the first rounds, but afterwards the 4 will be ensured by tiebreakers.

For the rules here it was the same: The surviving rate was enforced by tiebreakers. And now the bigger group gets widdled down to the finalists with the stepping stones (5 and 3 was planned) being flexible.

So here the rule is:

- Survival rates get enforced by tiebreakers.

- Finalists get enforced by tiebreakers.

- Stepping stones are flexible.

[IchoTolot]

Round 3 is up! time to determine the 2 finalists!

[IchoTolot]

1 level advances to the finale. For the 2nd spot we need a little tiebreaker.