Locust or Bumblebee is an impressive blog promoting sustainability, created by UBC students Anthony Stal and Sam Wempe:
"Through this gateway we hope to inform Vancouver’s populations of the decisions and activities occurring around them that negatively affect them, the environment, or even some distant population. ... Once we gain a larger readership in Vancouver, we hope to spread to other cities around the world."
This entry poses a challenge for votermedia.org, because we have not yet built a login system that identifies whether a voter is a member of the community they are voting on. The lack of login is not a serious problem as long as the blogs listed on a community's ballot appeal primarily to members of that community. But if a blog attracts many voters from outside the community, then award funds may be directed in ways that the funding community may not want.
At this stage in the development of votermedia.org, attracting voters (from the UBC AMS community) is a bigger challenge than keeping voters out (who are outside the community). Having no login helps us attract more voters (from the community), because voting is so easy. Our award allocation system actually worked better than a system with a login, when we ran a test of two parallel contests in January 2010:
"...continuous VFM kind of yielded results that people thought were more accurate, given the amount of effort the VFM had been putting in, and the amount of contribution they give to that dialog. Whereas one-time VFM was a bit more... there was a lot more noise in the results." -- Alex Lougheed, AMS VP Academic 2008-2009 – in votermedia.org/videos/3
Many factors affected the continuous versus one-time comparison, but my point here is that our (continuous) system without a login actually works pretty well. It does, however, have this potential weakness with blogs that attract voters from outside the community, so we need to guard against that until we build an effective login system.
For that reason, I am recommending to the AMS Elections Administrator that he not accept Locust or Bumblebee's contest entry. Funding is from the AMS, so it will be an AMS decision. From the contest Terms: "The Sponsor may direct the Administrator regarding... adding, editing, rejecting or removing any website/blog listings;"
We are also planning a one-time votermedia contest on the January 2011 election ballot which requires a UBC student login. So there would be no problem with letting Locust or Bumblebee enter that.
Of course there are dangers in allowing the government to decide which media are eligible for funding. So building our login system is a priority for votermedia.org in the coming year (see our funding application). Meanwhile, media contestants seem quite willing and able to critique the government, e.g. these posts from UBC Insiders and AMS Confidential.
I applaud the dedication of Locust or Bumblebee to the cause of global sustainability. As votermedia proves its value to smaller communities, we aim to spread it to larger communities so that it can help us better to address such pressing global issues.
I welcome your comments on all this!
2 comments:
really appreciate all the hard work that goes into this funding model and its support structure; I really do think it makes a difference.
that being said, if "attracting voters (from the UBC AMS community) is a bigger challenge than keeping voters out (who are outside the community)" then I do not see why the location of our readers is much of an issue. At least not any more than those who use separate computers to vote more than once already.
Call me crazy, but I am of the belief, that there are many things relevant to a UBC student and the community here at UBC besides what happens within the boundaries of Pacific Spirit Park. And I think you would be hard pressed to find a student who finds Locust or Bumblebee's posts about frugal student living in this city, fundraisers put on by UBC student-musicians and homeless policy on the DTES less relevant than the (justified) rants on "Tyler's Blog." Agree or disagree, but this is something that can only be decided democratically.
We'll go to whatever lengths we have to to show that the UBC community is interested in our work - through raw traffic information, petition, whatever it takes.
-Sam Wempe
Co-editor of LocustorBumblebee.com
Thanks Sam for your excellent blog, interest in votermedia, and discussion of this important design question. The AMS Elections Administrator and I would love to have more blogs in this contest. But it's important that student money be directed by students. To ensure that, building a login system at votermedia.org is a high priority this year. Until we get that done, we think it's best to limit entry to websites whose main audience is UBC students.
This is not my decision, although I give advice on it. It's an AMS decision. Their point person on votermedia is the AMS Elections Administrator, and as you saw from his email a few hours ago, his view seems similar to mine. But he's the one you would need to convince.
Replying to your specific points:
1. To add some explanation to my quote -- attracting voters (from the UBC AMS community) is a bigger challenge than keeping voters out (who are outside the community) as long as we limit entry to websites whose main audience is UBC students. If we relaxed that restriction, then voting from outside UBC would become the bigger challenge.
2. I agree that there are many things relevant to a UBC student and the community here at UBC besides what happens within the boundaries of Pacific Spirit Park. My advice on not accepting your blog into the contest is not based on its quality or interest level. The whole idea of votermedia is that those judgements should be made democratically, not by contest administrators. But the decision should be made democratically by UBC students.
3. I believe that the UBC community is interested in your work. But I also think the city of Vancouver community is interested in your work, and many people beyond that also. Which is great, of course, but we don't want to send UBC student money to places directed by so many people who are not UBC students. I hope the City of Vancouver will fund a blog contest so you could be in it. I funded one for Vancouver 2 years ago as a trial run – see votermedia.org/van/index.html.
And again, I'm sure you'd be welcome to enter the AMS's one-time votermedia contest in January 2011, which has a UBC login requirement to vote.
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