Question

Topic: Research/Metrics

Contest Rules - Need Help To Solve!

Posted by Anonymous on7/31/2009 at 9:32 AM ET 250 Points
We are running a contest for 140 school across Canada.
The school populations range from 200 to 40,000.

We would like each school to vote for the chance to win a concert from their school. 3 concerts will be chosen for each region (east, central, west).

If they are voting for their school, how do we make the contest fair (since we are basing it on school population). Also the voting is done online and can we can't tell if the user acutally goes to that specific school.

Also, we want to show volume meters of how the voting is going as well as the standings for each region.

Does anyone know how we should proceed? The only other suggestion we have is:
- Divide up the schools by region (East, Ontario, West)
- Take the top 3 schools by region (regardless of size) – top 3 is determined by % of votes against the school population
- Random draw out the top 3 schools by region will determine the winning schools
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RESPONSES

  • Posted byGary Bloomeron7/31/2009 at 10:31 AM Accepted
    Dear Ari,

    Are you talking about the chance to win a concert from their school, or FOR their school? And a concert of what and by whom? Ought there to be some other qualifying element here? Some kind of test?

    What’s the purpose of the voting exercise? To show children how voting works, or simply to win something? Additionally, this is the main problem with online voting: it can be rigged. The only way to fix this is to only accept votes from the IP addresses of schools and to limit the number of votes per school so that every school gets the same number of chances to vote. Or perhaps individual schools could carry out their own, in house vote and then aggregate their total into your system in some way?

    I hope this helps.

    Gary Bloomer
    Wilmington, DE, USA
  • Posted bykoen.h.pauwelson7/31/2009 at 11:26 AM Accepted
    Agreed with Gary; you need to track the votes by IP addresses of the school and either give each school the same number of votes, or weigh them by their size.

    To avoid everyone voting for their own school, and the end result being meaningless, you will have to forbid schools to vote for themselves. Just like in Eurovision, you may have some collusion going on (schools voting for eachother regardless of quality), but that can't be avoided....
  • Posted byJay Hamilton-Rothon7/31/2009 at 8:22 PM Accepted
    学生有学号#(或其他uniq吗ue identifier) to ensure 1 person = 1 vote? How about a random trivia question about their school that they attend that they must answer correctly for their vote to be accepted?
  • Posted byChris Blackmanon8/13/2009 at 4:35 AM Accepted
    If I understand it, the winning schools get to GIVE the concert, i.e. their school band or whatever performers they have there, get up and give a show to someone.

    So voting ought to be by anyone at all, for the performers. You need online video or sound samples so people know what they're voting for.

    And yes, the bigger schools have an advantage. But this is about mobilising communities, isn't it?
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