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".

Launching UBC Continuous VoterMedia Contest

The University of British Columbia Alma Mater Society seems ready to start funding the Continuous VoterMedia competition hosted at votermedia.org/ubc. Watch for official confirmation from AMS Elections Administrator Erik MacKinnon, hopefully via a comment on this post.

Erik and I have discussed contest plans with AMS council, executives and staff. Like last year, we are aiming to run two contests:

1. Continuous VoterMedia (CVM): This year with $6,000 of AMS funds, starting at [revised: $20/day] from November 1, with varying amounts through August 31, 2011 -- see [revised] planned award schedule. Continuous voting year-round at votermedia.org/ubc is already underway.
2. 1-Time VoterMedia (1VM): This year with $2,000 of AMS funds. Voting on the same ballot as the AMS elections in January 2011.

To make it easier for new blogs to get started, we're planning no entry fee for CVM, and free entry into 1VM for the top ten CVM blogs as of January 15, 2011. Enter now -- see CVM entry form and rules. All blogs currently on the ballot must submit a new entry form by this Saturday October 30 if they want to stay in the contest.

Please note that all these plans may evolve and change through time!

Your comments & advice are welcomed.

Our 2nd video: How VoterMedia Affects Election Campaigns

Transcript available here. The video is also on our home page at votermedia.org.

Your feedback welcomed!

New VoterMedia.org feature: See more blog text

Yesterday I released a new feature on the VoterMedia ballot pages: You can now read more text from each blog by pausing your mouse over each post link. E.g. see ballots for UBC AMS and U Vic Student Society.

Is this useful? Distracting? Too much?

I welcome your feedback by email to mark[at]votermedia.org, or comments here or on the ballots.

Lowered maximum vote from 40% to 30%

We've now had many months of testing and feedback on the votermedia.org ballot (e.g. UBC), in particular the menu options for blog funding shares. To increase competition among blogs, we've decided to reduce the maximum share you can vote when there are 5 or more blogs competing, from 40% to 30%.

Before long, we plan to enhance our system so as to allow different communities to use different voting parameters, including this maximum setting. But for now it's "one size fits all" -- same model for every community. However, at least we adapt to the number of blogs competing, with a higher maximum vote share when there are fewer blogs.

We welcome your comments & advice!

Shorter URLs like votermedia.org/ubc

Today we implemented a system of shorter web addresses for VoterMedia community ballot pages. For example, the page for the University of British Columbia Alma Mater Society is now:

votermedia.org/ubc

instead of votermedia.org/communities/82-ubc-ams. Sweet!

The old longer URLs still work too, but we'll probably phase them out after a while, so please update your links.

Our first video: VoterMedia at UBC

We recently uploaded our first video to Youtube:

Transcript available here. The video is also on our home page at votermedia.org. We're learning as we go along, so please comment, email or phone me with advice on how to improve our AV techniques -- editing, composition etc. More videos in production!