Website privacy policy revised for Facebook logins

Yesterday we updated items 2 and 9 in the votermedia.org privacy policy, to reflect our new Facebook login option.

Continuous #votermedia relaunched!

UBC AMS has reactivated funding for its Continuous VoterMedia (CVM) contest at votermedia.org/ubc. The blog award pool is now $40/day; they plan to continue this through April 30, then lower it to $10/day through August 31. You can track the award series at votermedia.org/ubc/horserace.

The contest is also reopened for new entries -- see votermedia.org/ubcentry. AMS Council has approved these new contest rules, including:

• Minimum 40% UBC-related content.
• Council members may not participate in the contest.
• Blog Editor's name must be submitted but need not be made public.
• "The SAC Vice-Chair may also impose penalties up to and including removal from the contest for the publication of content that the Vice-Chair deems to be libellous, offensive, a violation of personal privacy, or a violation of Society policies on confidentiality."
• Funding shall be established each year in the AMS budget [likewise for 1-time VoterMedia].

To encourage more competition and diversity among blogs, the SAC Vice-Chair has approved the following implementation of proposals I made in this post:

• Raise the cap on votable shares from 30% to 40% (effective today).
• Raise the "spread" parameter from 1 to 4 (effective Feb. 8).
• Raise the "spread" parameter from 4 to 8 (effective Feb. 15).

This will smooth out the "progressive tax rate" on blog votes as a function of share%. There's more detail in my earlier post, but below is a brief comparison. [Remember that each blog is supported by the number of (interpolated) votes above their current share%, and the required number of supporting votes is chosen so that share%'s total 100%.]

With the previous 30% cap and 10% interpolation interval, UBC Insiders at their recent 30% share has a tax rate of 50% (being half way through the interpolation) -- only half of their votes for 30% are being counted; AMS Confidential at 31% is taxed at 60% -- only 40% of their votes for 30% are being counted.

Now that the votable cap is 40%, let's suppose that all the 30% voters change their votes to 40%. [Actually some may not, and those that do change will take some time to do so.] So suppose there are no votes for 30%. Consider a blog with a current share of 33.333%. A spread parameter of 8 would discount the votes (for 40%) by dividing the number of votes by 8 to the power 0.33333, which is 2 -- so a tax rate of 50%, the same rate UBC Insiders are facing now. The interim (Feb. 8 through Feb. 14) spread parameter of 4 would discount votes by 4 to the power 0.33333, or about 1.6 -- a tax rate of about 37%.

The idea is to give the top blogs more upside potential if they work harder, while still facing tax rates progressive enough to give opportunity to several other blogs working their way up to becoming known. The new tax rates phase in much more gradually than before.

Unlike the "floating cap" system I outlined in my ealier post, the UBC AMS ballot will keep its cap at 40% for now. That will mean double taxation if a share goes above 35%. But I will probably recommend letting the cap float in the summer, when funding drops to $10/day and there may only be enough news to justify a couple of active blogs.

I thank everyone at the AMS who helped get CVM going again, especially Legislative Procedures Committee Chair Iggy Rodriguez and Student Activities Committee Vice-Chair Alannah Johnston. Let's keep monitoring and improving VoterMedia to maximize the benefit to UBC students!

Your comments are invited as always...

Locust or Bumblebee raises votermedia design issues

This morning I received an application for the blog Locust or Bumblebee to enter the UBC AMS votermedia contest. This raises some big issues about the design and administration of votermedia – hence the long post below.

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.

Planning to tweak the votermedia award algorithm

As I've been watching how the contest is working at votermedia.org/ubc, it seems to me we can tweak one of the model's parameters to make it work a little better. This parameter affects the trade-off between two things we'd like to achieve, both of which encourage competition but in different ways:

1. Limit the maximum share each blog can win. Currently with 5 or more competitors, the maximum votable amount is 30%. This ensures that at least 4 blogs can get funding, thus enhancing competition that way.

2. Even though their shares are at or near the 30% cap, we'd still like the top blogs to feel some incentive to keep making an effort. If the top 3 are all up against a hard ceiling at 30%, they may have little or no incentive to keep working at their blogs.

Revised Terms for votermedia.org

Occasionally we revise the terms of use for our website votermedia.org, and notify users via this blog. Yesterday I posted revisions primarily to support the upcoming UBC AMS Continuous VoterMedia contest at votermedia.org/ubc, but which should also serve for similar sponsored contests in the future.

So there's a new section at the bottom entitled "Contest Sponsor Discretion". There are also two new references to our security measures in the section headed "Administrator Discretion".

UBC VFM blitz!

The UBC Arts Undergraduate Society Elections Committee has generously decided to sponsor voter funded media during the upcoming constituency elections. They will award a total of $1500, at a rate of $150 per day for 10 days from Friday March 12 through Sunday March 21.

This is designed to benefit all the UBC constituency elections happening during that period, including Arts, Science, Engineering and Human Kinetics. Thank you AUS! See the multi-election info website ubcvotes.ca

Media voting will be on the same Continuous VFM ballot we have been using for the UBC AMS: votermedia.org/communities/82-ubc-ams with same media continuing, unless any let me know they want to drop out.

NOTE: Only votes cast after noon tomorrow (Thursday March 11) will count! So the rankings will start afresh on the daily tally early Friday morning. (I'll probably trigger an interim tally Thursday afternoon so everyone can see how it's going.) This creates a big incentive for the media to get your readers voting ASAP, ideally by Thursday night.

It's also a great opportunity for new media to enter the fray. Please follow the entry instructions at votermedia.org/ubc2010. For fastest upload, email entry to me (mark[at]votermedia.org). If you emailed an entry to Taylor Lukacin that's OK too -- she's forwarding them to me.

There's no entry fee. Usual CVFM terms apply: votermedia.org/terms

Our plan is for the AUS to pay the awards directly to media winners. We at VoterMedia.org will just be managing the ballot, tallying votes, calculating and displaying the awards on a best efforts basis, with no money paid to, from or via us.

Have fun!

UBC VoterMedia Awards first weekly results

I've just counted the votes in the first weekly round of the UBC VoterMedia Awards (also called voter funded media, VFM, blog contest). Congratulations to our first two entrants and prize winners UBC Insiders and Global Ink.

The second week's ballot is now open for voting, with our third entrant The Devil's Advocate added (welcome!). Weekly award pool has increased to $150. See info page for voting instructions.

As I proposed in this post, I will soon publish names of people who vote here, to thank them for this community service. You can opt out of this on the ballot. I've revised the awards contest terms accordingly.

Vancouver Election Blog Awards weekly update

I've just tallied the votes for this past week. The awards came out the same as last week. So congratulations to prize winners Beyond Robson, The Tyee, David Eby and Frances Bula -- see ballot at votermedia.org/van. Thank you to all participants -- media/blogs and voters.

As usual, details of votes and award allocation method are in spreadsheets linked here.

I get the sense that I've been over-emphasizing the competitive aspect of voter funded media, so I changed the name from "Vancouver Election Blog Contest" to "Vancouver Election Blog Awards", took out the ranking numbers, and changed some of the wording on the ballot and the terms.

Vancouver contest updates

The Tyee has regained first place in the Vancouver Election Blog Contest, as of today’s weekly vote tally. See current ranking on the ballot.

Welcome new contestant Beyond Robson!

The vote tallying method is explained here, with link to spreadsheet showing vote percentiles.

I’ve updated the contest terms to include a listing of the representative of each contestant.

Is the Vancouver contest political/municipal enough?

These two comments on my August 25 post are worth quoting and following up in a new thread:

Chris said...

The results are turning more into a popularity contest then a reasonable measure of political blogs in Vancouver. Half of the blogs on the list have little or no political content, especially Vancouver municipal political content.

As much as I like Miss 604's blog, I can't remember the last time she wrote about anything regarding politics in Vancouver. The closest thing I can think of was a discussion of the smoking ban.

Same goes for Vancity Buzz.

The Vancouver Observer, Price Tags, and Paul Hilsdon have minimal municipal political content

Bill Tieleman and Walter Schultz focus provincial politics.

A general Vancouver blog like Beyond Robson or Metroblogging Vancouver has more political content then most of the blogs on the list.

August 25, 2008 2:41 PM

Raul (hummingbird604) said...

I am the newest addition to the roster, for which I'm grateful. As for political content, I would ask one question and point out to one thing.

1) Is the contest purely for political blogs? That wasn't my understanding.

2) I am in no way, shape or form justifying my blog or my inclusion in the ballot, but I do write about Vancouver's public policy issues, particularly environmental policy.

I think that having a variety of blogs allows for the experiment to take place. As a social scientist myself, I can see how the experiment is developing and I'm curious to see the outcome.

August 26, 2008 6:59 PM

Thanks Chris and Raul for taking up this important question. I agree with most of the points you made.

Two weeks ago I invited Beyond Robson to enter the contest, and we’re just sorting out who on their end should approve the entry and receive any award payments. Once that’s done I plan to invite Vancouver Metblogs, which seems to have a similar structure of platform provider aggregating independent bloggers.

The contest is designed to empower Vancouver voters to fund whatever they think serves their interests. My expectation is that they will want to support bloggers that give insight on municipal politics and policies, so I call it the “Vancouver Election Blog Contest”. But to keep this process democratic, the contest administrator should not impose that view by restricting entry to political blogs. This is partly to prevent political control by the adminstrator, and partly to keep the door open to other possible community benefits – e.g. see Will VFM Provide Consumer Info?

Here’s a relevant section of the contest terms:

We refer to contestants as “media” or “bloggers” and call this a blog contest based on what we think contestants will do, but we do not actually require contestants to act like media or be bloggers. This contest is designed to benefit the voting community, and many types of benefit are possible. We think contestants will win votes by providing such benefits as blogs, websites, newspapers and broadcasts giving insight on Vancouver civic issues, especially those decided by vote.

Likewise the question of regional focus (municipal, greater metropolitan, provincial) is left to the voters. Vancouver issues overlap so much with regional and provincial (transportation, education, environment, crime, you name it) that I wouldn’t know how to draw a dividing line. Right after the municipal election in November, I plan to morph it into a B.C. political blog contest and promote it to bloggers and voters province-wide, as a run-up to the B.C. election next May.

When assessing contest voter tendencies, it’s helpful to look not only at the current week’s ranking on the ballot, but also at the cumulative awards won so far. Current rankings fluctuate depending on who posted about the contest recently. The leader in cumulative awards is The Tyee, with serious in-depth coverage of politics and policy. And speaking of policy, some contestants may not discuss Vancouver’s election specifically, but give voters valuable insight into municipal issues, e.g. Price Tags on urban planning and Paul Hillsdon on transportation.

Nonetheless, Chris’s point that the voting results are like a popularity contest is still something to worry about. Marketing is not my forte. My main promotion strategy for attracting people to vote is to depend on the contestants to publicize it in their blogs. Most of them have mentioned it once or twice, but that’s about it. So we may not have expanded the voter pool much beyond the bloggers themselves and their friends. As a result, many of the votes may reflect loyalty to friends rather than the broader public interest. To some extent such biases cancel each other out, but I think some flavour of a popularity contest remains.

Part of the problem is the limited award pool. $300 a week is not much to support independent political media for a city the size of Vancouver. Bloggers may not find it worthwhile to promote their entries for a few extra dollars. So this may change in future if we can attract more funding.

But meanwhile there’s a lot we can do. A few days ago I finally learned how to mask the ballot’s super-long URL, so now I can encourage bloggers to link to the new short URL: http://votermedia.org/van. A ballot link that stays near the top of a blog, like those at Vancouver Manifesto and UBC Insider, would bring multiple benefits: more voting support for that contestant, knowledge of other blogs for their readers, and a broader voter base for the contest. So it’s not just a selfish plug. Better still, bloggers can recommend other contestants they consider particularly worthy, as Miss604 did in this post.

BTW I’m writing a paper on the overall rationale and strategy for voter funded media – download the latest draft “How to Create Public Interest Media in Your Democratic Community” at http://votermedia.org/publications.

I welcome more comments on all this!

Vancouver contest terms and name update

I’ve amended the Vancouver contest terms by adding:

[… we may…:]
(o) change the contest's name;
(p) change the contest's focus from Vancouver to British Columbia and back again.

Reasons:
With the election coming soon, I think it’s better to shorten the name from “Vancouver Voters’ Guide Blogging Contest” to “Vancouver Election Blog Contest” (see ballot).
When the Vancouver election is over, I’d like to morph the contest to focus on BC issues and the election (& referendum) coming up in May 2009. There’s a lot of overlap in coverage of Vancouver and BC anyway.

I welcome your comments!

Vancouver Contest Terms

I've posted terms for the Vancouver Voters' Guide Blogging Contest at www.votermedia.org/vancouver/terms.html.

Basically the terms say that since this is an experiment, anything could happen, I can run the contest any way I choose, and the only recourse for those who don't like it is to not participate.

I welcome your comments, advice, questions etc!

UBC Year-Round VFM Details

I just posted this at www.votermedia.org/ubc/details.html. I'll update it there occasionally in future, and show how many voters have registered.

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The main info page for this contest is here. Below are more details than you really need!

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Voting Instructions that appear on the ballot when you start to vote:

Please rank the media from best (most deserving of award funds) to worst (least deserving) in the "Matching pairs" section below.
- When you're done, click "Save Answer" and then "Finish", unless you want to return and finish later (any time through April 30).
- If you rank a contestant more than once, only its highest rank will be counted. E.g. if you rank a contestant both 1st and 4th, it will only be counted as ranked 1st.
- Any contestants you don't rank will be counted as ranking below those you do rank. E.g. if you only rank one contestant, it will be counted as ranking above all the others, even if you put it in the lowest rank.

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Contestant names come up in a random order for each voter.

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Plans for Future Contest Periods:

We can adjust all contest terms from one period to the next, so I welcome your ideas by email or comments on the VoterMedia blog. My current plans are:

Two contest periods in summer --
May 1 - June 30: $600: 1st prize $200, 2nd $160, 3rd $120, 4th $80, 5th $40.
July 1 - August 31: $600: 1st prize $200, 2nd $160, 3rd $120, 4th $80, 5th $40.
$10 entry fee per period.

Then monthly during school year; higher award pool in January election month.

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Suggestions for Contestants:

Since this year-round VFM contest is not linked to an AMS election, you media contestants are the main source of publicity to potential voters. Especially because voter registration is somewhat cumbersome (emailing me their login IDs), the contest may be won by those who can persuade more of their readers to vote. By about August 2008, UBC expects to have a one-step self-enrollment process by clicking on a web link and logging in. That will make it easier and increase turnout.

With preference voting and Condorcet tallying, it really matters who a voter ranks second, third etc. There are no electoral condidates to endorse, but you can review all media contestants and say how you would rank them. Some of your readers may not read all the other contestants, but could still support those that give greater public benefit.

In a way, the media contestants are a team, and different media will fulfill different roles and specializations. The value of each contestant should be judged in the context of what the other media are already providing. What does each one add to the total?