[PL] 2004 VOTE DISCUSSION

[Spacey Spade]

Okay, I'm feeling incrediby dense today, but let's walk through it.

This year, we had separate voting threads for Graphics, File Utilities,
etc.

Next year, you're proposing one "megathread" where all categories are
combined?

The voting for PL 2004 did have all the categories combined... were
there not progams from all categories placed in the same vote?

During the vote, you remove all programs you don't wish to vote for.

The only reason you have CesarFTP listed without a category assigned is
because people didn't agree to have an FTP server category??? No
category = niche program???

Let's say that the nominator nominated CesarFTP and gave the category
FTP Server for it. So we only have one category for CesarFTP. The
category was in the example I posted: the reason you don't see it is
because you snipped the other part. The other part had the category
"FtpServer". The other part, the categories, would be in the same post
as the voting for the programs.

Some programs fulfill more than one category because they are
multipurpose... the nominator for XnView, for example, may nominate
XnView as a Graphics Viewer and Graphics Converter. During the vote, a
voter could vote for XnView as a graphics converter (they use XnView's
nConvert... ok, lousy example, but let's proceed), but not as a Graphics
Viewer. Thus parts of this voters vote would read:

<snip>
GraphicsConverter
GraphicsEditor
GraphicsViewer
<snip>
XnViewAsGraphicsConverter
<snip>

This tells me that this person does not use XnView as a Graphics Editor
or as a Graphics Viewer. Other people may vote for it as a Graphics
Viewer and Editor, but not this person. Lets say that of the 100 people
who voted, 87 use a GraphicsViewer. Lets say that 24 people voted for
XnViewAsGraphicsViewer. Survey Says: 24 out of 87 people who use a
graphics viewer think that XnView is the best graphics viewer. With a
percentage score of 24/87 = 28%, XnViewAsGraphicsViewer does not make
the cut into the Niche Pricelessware, but it DOES make it into the
popular vote and Pricelessware page.

After the vote, the programs with categories asssigned are analyzed for
inclusion in the main PW list. The programs that don't have a category
assigned are analyzed for inclusion in a separate Niche page?? The
criteria would be more generous for the niche programs...fewer votes
required to keep them in.

If 8 people vote that they use an FtpServer, and of those 8, 6 voted for
CesarFTP, then CesarFTP has a score of 75%. Let's say the group decides
on a cutoff point of 60%. CesarFTP didn't make the popular vote, but it
did make the Niche Pricelessware page.

Is that what you're trying to say, or am I way off?

I'm not sure.

 

[Spacey Spade]

I won't even try.

OTOH it was a last minute change - and that didn't help (no proper
description of what was needed etc.)

I thought Genna was going to be the point person and I would be sitting
quietly in a corner doing the web pages - when Genna found she was too
overloaded to get involved this year ISTM there I had two choices- I
could ask for a lot of help from a few people (the way I did last year)
or I could ask for a little help from a lot of people - which is what I
did. (Genna did it all - she's superwoman - I'm not).

Having survived that phase of the PL2004 selection process I'm convinced
that descriptions should be submitted before the start of nominations.
If we do that it that way next year I won't have to get the whip out.

Susan

Getting people to supply descriptions for their nominations was
excellent (thumbs up). And if you say that incomplete descriptions
don't make it to the vote, and enforce it, you shouldn't have any probs.

Spacey

 

[Susan Bugher]

I know you'd like to help, I would never question that. Only you can
decide how (and in my case, determine if the help is wanted).

Help is always wanted! Just trying to think about the best way to split
the work up - also doing a few chores - junk mail: life is too short to
do housework - I thought: maybe I could use that as my excuse for the
dust, dirty dishes etc. etc.

Thought more about additional web pages. I think we could do it with two
sets of web pages. Call the existing second set of web pages the Best of
the Rest (suggested in another thread). Keep all the programs that were
nominated *and* seconded for PL2004 - omit descriptions (if any) of
programs that didn't get a second for PL2004. Add new programs
throughout the year.

What I would like to do is split the work this way:

You be point person - do the discussion-selection of new programs etc.
etc. part of the process.

I'll finish preparing the initial web pages and update them as new
programs are selected. Does that sounds anything like a plan to you?

Susan
--
Pricelessware: http://www.pricelessware.org
PL2003: http://www.pricelessware.org/2003/about2003PL.htm
PL2004 Review: http://www.pricelessware.org/2004/2004nominationsPL.php
alt.comp.freeware FAQ (short) - maintained by John F.
http://clients.net2000.com.au/~johnf/faq.html

 

[Spacey Spade]

I'm all for whatever eases the load on you. So you're saying that a month
or so before the election, people start sending in descriptions of their
favorite programs...the ones they want on the ballot? You keep the group
informed of what those programs are... When election time approaches, any
program with a description is considered a formal nomination, and people
then second the programs they want on the ballot. This way, we avoid all
the begging for descriptions *after* a program has been nominated and
seconded? Is that pretty much how you envision it?

I think it was Spacey who mentioned it might involve too many programs
(not sure of the exact wording). Not sure what he meant by that...
Spacey?

I meant if it occured all year round, and if a page was kept up for
nominations as omega described in another post. I just responded to
Susan with my suggestion. Spacey

 

[omega]

I'm all for whatever eases the load on you. So you're saying that a month
or so before the election, people start sending in descriptions of their
favorite programs...the ones they want on the ballot?

I picture'd it as posting those descriptions, at the pre-nomination phase.
Only completed descriptions are eligible for nom-second-voting.

What would help a lot would be a (txt) template for the applications. As
in, Name______ Ware Type _______ Homepage _______ Description ______ etc

So that people know right at that time what constitutes completeness. And
no one is just saying, "Put Program Y in there, and you can find it at
Simtel," leaving others to do the work from there.

With the description applications posted in full, then any errors, such a
dead links, or wrong ware type, etc - then others can read and correct the
information as needed.

At least that's my picture of how this could work....

When election time approaches, any program with a description is considered
a formal nomination, and people then second the programs they want on the
ballot. his way, we avoid all the begging for descriptions *after* a program
has been nominated and seconded? Is that pretty much how you envision it?

.. . .

Plus one added benefit: the whimisical, insincere nominations, low-quality
programs being thrown in, without care, those don't crowd up the later stage,
to waste people's time.

 

[Genna Reeney]

The PL list becomes MORE useful with *more* categories, not less, IMO.

I agree.
That is why we always voted for programs, NOT categories.

Once we had the programs, we could decide where they fit best. In subsequent
years, it was simpler to list like programs together during the nomination
process, but again that was to help during the selection process, NOT to
determine the specificity of each program.

 

[jason]

Spacey Spade wrot:

jason wrote:

I'm not sure.

Oh man, I'm more confused than before! ;o) But that's okay, I think I
understand the basics. We'll have the same number of ballots as
before...one for File Utilities, one for Graphics, one for Multimedia,
etc., but the ballot will be structured very differently. The revised
wording gets deeper into who uses what program for what specific purpose.
The votes are then analyzed, with some programs making it onto the PW list
and others diverted into a separate Niche list. The criteria for each list
are very different.

I think I got the gist of it, I just didn't understand the specifics,
probably because too much math gives me a headache. ;-)

 

[Genna Reeney]

I personally don't feel I deserve to say what should be of the
Pricelessware site because I only take a small part, while Susan does
all the work. However, if it was a group effort, I could see having
nominations and voting on the goals of the Pricelessware site.

But the PL is and always has been the product of the contributions of all
acf posters. While the behind-the-scenes has only been handled by a few
people, the actual list is "determined by the readers of alt.comp.freeware."
No one person has more or less power than any other.

 

[Genna Reeney]

Having survived that phase of the PL2004 selection process I'm
convinced that descriptions should be submitted before the start of
nominations.

I agree.
Actually, what I have wanted to do for a while, but have not had time to
implement is move the whole lot to a database. Once created, it would make
everything so much simpler to run, from submissions to listings.

Anyone familiar with php and willing to help sometime in the first quarter
of 2004, should contact Susan or me.

 

[jason]

I picture'd it as posting those descriptions, at the pre-nomination
phase. Only completed descriptions are eligible for nom-second-voting.

Okay right. The pre-nomination phase deals with getting people to make
their descriptions complete. The nomination phase proceeds on the
assumption that the descriptions *are* complete.

What would help a lot would be a (txt) template for the applications.
As in, Name______ Ware Type _______ Homepage _______ Description
______ etc

So that people know right at that time what constitutes completeness.

Excellent idea.

 

[Spacey Spade]

[snip]

<quote summary>
Some programs are specialized, and even though they may be the best of
the best at their task, they do not have a large user base because only
a minority of people use such program categories. For example an FTP
server as opposed to an email client, which most everyone uses. For
example all the small single purpose apps.

What can be done in the future is to add program categories to the
voting:

LEAVE ONLY THE CATEGORIES OF SOFTWARE THAT YOU USE.
Remove all software categories that you do not use.

...

LEAVE ONLY THOSE PROGRAMS THAT YOU WISH TO VOTE FOR.
Remove all programs that you do NOT wish to vote for.

...

So now we can grade votes on percentages, which would be a lot more
meaningful when it comes to grading programs in "niche categories".

This would answer the questions:
- Of the people who use GraphicsConverters, what percentage find
Irfanview to be the best (or among the best in case they vote for more
than one GC).
- Of the people who use a custom ProgramLauncher, what percentage use
RUNit?

*********An example vote:*********

LEAVE ONLY THE CATEGORIES OF SOFTWARE THAT YOU USE.
Remove all software categories that you do not use.
----------------------
FtpServer
GraphicsConverter
GraphicsEditor
GraphicsViewer

LEAVE ONLY THOSE PROGRAMS THAT YOU WISH TO VOTE FOR.
Remove all programs that you do NOT wish to vote for.
----------------------
CesarFTP
XnViewAsGraphicsConverter
IrfanViewAsGraphicsConverter
IrfanViewAsGraphicsEditor
IrfanViewAsGraphicsViewer
**********************************

</quote summary>

The reason I am putting words together is because I used TextStat to
count votes. In Microplanet Gravity I selected the voter's posts, then
File | Save As, then strip everything but the votes and save as another
file, then run TextStat. Would be super easy if every program and
category was a single word.

 

[Genna Reeney]

Below is a list of the PL2004 voting results (final with one
exception). Programs are listed in alphabetical order.

As the title of the thread indicates, this is a discussion about the 2004
list.

Lesssons learned from this round will be useful for next year, but there is
enough to be done now without worrying about something that is months away.

Susan has managed an incredible load. Let's just make sure we get to the
finish line on this one.

 

[Spacey Spade]

Okay right. The pre-nomination phase deals with getting people to make
their descriptions complete. The nomination phase proceeds on the
assumption that the descriptions *are* complete.


Excellent idea.

Thirded
But what if people start seconding when they see the prenomination
description?

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=BBQ=AB?=]

Getting people to supply descriptions for their nominations was
excellent (thumbs up). And if you say that incomplete
descriptions don't make it to the vote, and enforce it, you
shouldn't have any probs.

I agree. Here's how I think it should work, in some detail, working
mostly from others' ideas but maybe tossing in a couple of my own
thoughts as well.

Prior to the nominations phase, we submit descriptions of programs we
might nominate (with links and all that good stuff) so that they will
already be 'on file.' A webpage is maintained with all these
descriptions.

When the nomination phase is at hand, one may nominate any app that
already has its description, links, &c., on file.

No doubt there will be some nominations for apps which do not have
pre-filed descriptions, and it should be permissible to give the
description at the time of nomination.

Unfortunately, it's likely there will also be some attempted
nominations of programs without descriptions. Rather than
disregarding them completely, I think they should go up on a
temporary 'incomplete nominations' page or even on the main
nominations page with a note, "attempted nomination without
discription." If, before the nomination phase is over, someone sees
fit to provide the necessary description, these nominations count.
If not, they are simply discarded at the end of the nominations
period. No whip-cracking necessary.

 

[Spacey Spade]

news.ops.worldnet.att.net>,
Genna Reeney (e-mail address removed) wrote...

But the PL is and always has been the product of the contributions of all
acf posters. While the behind-the-scenes has only been handled by a few
people, the actual list is "determined by the readers of alt.comp.freeware."
No one person has more or less power than any other.

Like Susan said, it would be up to her to decide if she wants to
implement changes in procedures or the web site, since she is doing the
work (which I agree with completely, especially if it calls for
additional work). It would be another matter if the work was split up
among more persons. Even further, volunteers should have no obligation
to do work if they disagree with the end goal.

No one seems to understand my method for adding categories inline with
the main vote, but if you want to know how I want to contribute, go to
this post:

news:[email protected]

 

[Spacey Spade]

Ok, I didn't include *every* program, but pretend that below is a list
of all the programs for the 2005 PL vote. Also pretend that at the time
people turned in descriptions for the programs they wish to nominate,
they also gave the TYPE of program (aka category) they wanted the
program included in. We could have a listing of pre-defined program
types/categories to smooth out the naming.

Some logistics:
- If you vote for an HTML Editor, but don't leave the Program Type "Html
Editor", your entire vote is thrown out unless you fix it.
- If you use a Newsreader (thus, you leave the Program Type
"Newsreader"), and you don't vote for any newsreader in the list, then
that is perfectly ok, as the newsreader you consider the best was not in
the list.

LEAVE ONLY THE PROGRAM TYPES THAT YOU USE.
Remove all program types that you do not use.
----------------------
FileRenamer
HtmlEditor
FileBrowser
Newsreader
ArchiveUtility
WordProcessor
HtmlEditor
FileSearchUtility
FormFiller
FtpServer
GraphicsConverter
GraphicsEditor
GraphicsViewer

LEAVE ONLY THOSE PROGRAMS THAT YOU WISH TO VOTE FOR.
Remove all programs that you do NOT wish to vote for.
----------------------
1-4aRename-FileRenamer
1stPage2000-HtmlEditor
2xExplorer-FileBrowser
40tudeDialog-NewsReader
7-Zip-ArchiveUtility
AbiWord-WordProcessor
AceHTML5Freeware-HtmlEditor
AgentRansack-FileSearchUtility
AIRoboForm-FormFiller
CesarFTP-FTPServer
IrfanView-GraphicsConverter
IrfanView-GraphicsEditor
IrfanView-GraphicsViewer
XnView-GraphicsConverter
XnView-GraphicsEditor
XnView-GraphicsViewer
QuicknEasyFTPServer-FTPServer

 

[jason]

Ok, I didn't include *every* program, but pretend that below is a list
of all the programs for the 2005 PL vote. Also pretend that at the
time people turned in descriptions for the programs they wish to
nominate, they also gave the TYPE of program (aka category) they
wanted the program included in. We could have a listing of
pre-defined program types/categories to smooth out the naming.

Some logistics:
- If you vote for an HTML Editor, but don't leave the Program Type
"Html Editor", your entire vote is thrown out unless you fix it.
- If you use a Newsreader (thus, you leave the Program Type
"Newsreader"), and you don't vote for any newsreader in the list, then
that is perfectly ok, as the newsreader you consider the best was not
in the list.

LEAVE ONLY THE PROGRAM TYPES THAT YOU USE.
Remove all program types that you do not use.

<snip>

Excellent. That makes it very clear. Thanks Spacey.

Now in an equally simple fashion, what is your proposition for singling
out the "niche" programs from the regular PW programs. No need for a
lot of detail, just a general statement.

 

[Spacey Spade]

Help is always wanted! Just trying to think about the best way to split
the work up - also doing a few chores - junk mail: life is too short to
do housework - I thought: maybe I could use that as my excuse for the
dust, dirty dishes etc. etc.

Thought more about additional web pages. I think we could do it with two
sets of web pages. Call the existing second set of web pages the Best of
the Rest (suggested in another thread). Keep all the programs that were
nominated *and* seconded for PL2004 - omit descriptions (if any) of
programs that didn't get a second for PL2004. Add new programs
throughout the year.

What I would like to do is split the work this way:

You be point person - do the discussion-selection of new programs etc.
etc. part of the process.

I'll finish preparing the initial web pages and update them as new
programs are selected. Does that sounds anything like a plan to you?

Susan

My view on freedom to decide how to contribute:

What I had in mind, the work I want to do, is here:

It's up to you to alter the voting format to allow me to contribute what
I want to contribute.

 

[Spacey Spade]

<snip>

Excellent. That makes it very clear. Thanks Spacey.

Now in an equally simple fashion, what is your proposition for singling
out the "niche" programs from the regular PW programs. No need for a
lot of detail, just a general statement.

PW programs are a popular type vote. If we agree that the cutoff point
for popular is 12, then those with less than 12 votes don't make it to
PW.

Niche programs are graded like this:

(Number of Votes) / (Number of Users) = Percentage Score

Example:

(7 votes for blahblah) / (10 users of blahblah type program) = 70%

Group decides 60% to be the cutoff point, thus blahblah makes the Niche
Programs page.

 

[jason]

jason wrote:


PW programs are a popular type vote. If we agree that the cutoff point
for popular is 12, then those with less than 12 votes don't make it to
PW.

Niche programs are graded like this:

(Number of Votes) / (Number of Users) = Percentage Score

Example:

(7 votes for blahblah) / (10 users of blahblah type program) = 70%

Group decides 60% to be the cutoff point, thus blahblah makes the Niche
Programs page.

Got it! Thanks Spacey.