The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I thought it would be interesting if we did polls on the boards so we could get an idea of who would win the fights according to the votes of just the board participants. In the future it would probably be simpler to incorporate the polls into the review threads, if we wanted to do them at all, although it takes a while to get the "final" list of entrants, so maybe we'd have to have separate threads. Anyway, I thought I would set this one up as a little experiment. Who are you voting for this fight? You don't have to say, you can just vote in the poll and remain anonymous if you want.

i voted for mc frontalot.

it looks like i have 100% of the votes.

My fear is that you will adversely effect the outcome of the fight by essientially asking people to vote twice. Some folks readily admit that they forget to vote on the fight but they "would have" voted for so and so.

Now you want to start a vote and a poll? Where's the delete this thread choice?

The "delete this thread" choice is only available to the admins, as far as I know.

It's just an experiment. People should definitely vote for real first, of course. Consider this just an attempt to gather some supplemental info, like a summary of the "my vote went to" or "I would have voted for" comments from the review thread. It's not meant in any way to be a replacement for the real voting, just a different perspective on the fight that the real votes and review thread don't necessarily provide.

I voted for Saint Cale in this poll but I will not vote for anyone.

I can't believe it's come to this -- demanding a recount??

This is a neat idea. It's an exit poll targetted at all the active board readers. It'd be interesting if this varied much from the reviews since more people read than review. And it would be interesting if it differed from the actual results because more people vote than read. SCIENCE!

If I had a song in this fight, and some friends, I would totally get them to flood this poll.

Egg wrote:This is a neat idea.

No it's not. No offense, Lunkhead.

Is it time yet to bring up the suggestion again that the "one vote" system be scrapped in favour of a "good, OK, bad" system a la Somesongs?

You can bring it up whenever you want. Ain't gonna happen.

SPUD

frankie, I'm not offended by your opinion. I do think it's lame that you're being such a poor communicator, though. I don't understand why you would feel like you needed to chime in to say "This is a bad idea" yet you didn't feel like you could be bothered to explain yourself in any way. What's the point of that? And not to get personal or anything but it seems like it's been a trend with you lately. I don't get it.

Lunkhead wrote:I don't understand why you would feel like you needed to chime in to say "This is a bad idea" yet you didn't feel like you could be bothered to explain yourself in any way. What's the point of that?

It's the same point of voting in a poll, I guess. Everyone wants to be counted, but not necessarily have to explain the reasoning behind their choices. I don't feel like I "needed" to say it--I wanted to say it, especially in the face of everyone telling what a "neat idea" this is. It's not that I "felt I could(n't) be bothered to explain"--I just didn't want to. If this seems like a trend with me, it's because a) I get tired of being called an asshole every time I take a dissenting opinion with the board "regulars"; b) I don't always have time to write out all the reasons why I think something's a bad idea; and c) I almost never have time to defend myself in the drawn out debate that follows virtually every post.

If you're really interested, I think this is a bad idea because it smacks of elitism, as if the opinions of the people who participate on the boards are somehow more enlightened than those of the voting public. It creates a situation where we will now have the actual winner and also the "real winner" as declared by, again, the relatively small number of people who read the boards and happened to visit this thread and vote in your poll. Regarding the latter, I've seen this kind of statement on the boards: "we all know who the real winner of Romantic Cheapskate is" and I think this kind of poll just encourages that kind of thought. (I can envision a future poll that looks like this: vote for your favorite song, now that I've removed MC Frontalot from the list.) Finally, it allows people to look at the current results before they vote, which I believe influences the way people vote and maybe even listen to the songs.

So, basically, I think this poll undermines the voting system and that's why I don't think it's a good idea. If there's something wrong with the voting system (e.g. friend flooding), then maybe it should be fixed. But having a separate thread devoted to determining who is the winner according to board participants seems wrong to me. That being said, I fully support your freedom to make such a thread/poll and obviously the people who run the site don't mind since they altered the poll preferences to give you 31 options.

For what it's worth, i agree with Frankie.

(Although Frankie's example of Mc Frontalot I personally find a bit unhelpful. my impression is that although the presence MC Frontalot attracts a lot of 'irregular voters' to the board he would almost certainly win even if he didn't. Also I always like to hear a new MC Frontalot song.)

it sucks when friend-flooding stops people winning, but what does a 're-count' (as anti-m fairly defines it) achieve, apart from a sulky 'told you so'? It doesn't stop anyone friend-flooding; in fact one could argue that it lets potential friend-flooders off the hook - "Well, if they have a 'real winner' vote anyway, why should I feel guilty about over-running the main board vote?"

Just my tuppence-worth.

2 cents from a newbie… I have been lurking on Song Fight for a while and my band has submitted a few songs (under different names depending on who was there recording). I think it is kind of sad that people put so much mental energy into “winning” on Song Fight. I have no problem with friend flooding for one reason… that is the way it works in “music world”. The band with the most interested (fully participating in the music scene) friends wins the good gigs and the most buzz. The band that has the best network of support wins (translates well to this place). Sure there are aberrations to that concept, say if a band from nowhere puts out a great record, but it is a lot harder without lots of friends. You tell me if the best music out there sells the most. I have access to a small army of on-line buddies if I wanted to “win” and many would actually take a listen to a bunch of the songs and maybe not even vote for me (not all of them like me). But what is more important to me is the critical feedback that the forum brings and the concept that you can write a song in a week and have a bunch of people actually listen to it. That said, I say open up the flood gates and make this a real contest. : )

Thanks for taking a few minutes to go into more detail, frankie. I disagree about a poll like this being "elitist", though. I don't think it's any more elitist than the community of folks that has grown around the boards and the live shows. It isn't that I think our opinions are "more enlightened", it's just that I'm more interested in the opinions of the board participants because I've interacted with them a lot more, and many are people I've met and consider friends. If you wanted to go off and have your own SongFight! on the side with your friends I don't think that would be elitism. I think it's only natural human social behavior to want to socialize with people you know, and to be more interested in their opinions.

As for the other points in your first paragraph, I don't see how a poll like this "creates" the situation you're talking about. That situation has existed the whole time. I don't think you can make people stop mentioning who they'll likely vote for or whose song they liked best in their reviews, or stop being disgruntled about friend floods. All of that is already there, in virtually every review thread. (Technically the experiment I wanted to do was to have the poll thread and review thread be the same but I couldn't do that because this week's review thread had already been made.)

And as for undermining the voting system, it seems like people on the board all tend to agree already that the vote tally is generally pretty meaningless, so how could it be undermined? It's still out there for people who care about it, and the reviews are still here for people who are looking for a different type of feedback than what they get from the vote count.

I think this thread is a perfect example of the freedom of speech, as are the opinions. Nothing more and nothing less. Although I see Song Fight as a democracy, it still is a privately owned site and we are guests. So I have to believe that if this poll was bothersome enough to the Administration here, it would have already been removed and a warning posted with a swastika in the background.

Pro - An independent poll will most likely be viewed and voted on by members only.
Con - We already have a voting system in place that has evolved from past experience and a second poll lowers the value of the true poll.
Pro - We can watch the poll actually grow hour by hour, day by day.
Con - A member that friend floods can still give his one computer nerd friend with his IP changer, the independent poll link which will defeat the purpose.
Pro - ummm, that's all I have at the moment.
Con - ...I said, that's all I have right now, good day...I said good day sir!

ps, note the fence straddling. I should run for Mayor of fence town.
edit: ...haha, fence town. I hope you guys are writing this stuff down.

Caravan Ray wrote:Is it time yet to bring up the suggestion again that the "one vote" system be scrapped in favour of a "good, OK, bad" system a la Somesongs?

Someone could always create a parallel songfight with that kind of voting. It shouldn't be too hard, if the Songfight Explorer existed.

What happened to the Songfight Explorer, anyway? I was looking at it within the last month, and it was fine. Now it's gone.

I guess I'm still not understanding how a poll like this could "lower the value" of the actual votes. The real, official voting system is still there, still available to everyone, still the only voting system that matters to most of the voters and listeners, and still presumably working exactly as intended, friend floods and all. And the board participants would still be voicing their opinions to each other on the boards in the review threads the same way they are now, and still voting in the real fight as they hopefully are now. How would things be any different if we also had a straw poll in the review thread to collect the data that people are already providing about whose song(s) they liked the best?

Lunkhead wrote:I guess I'm still not understanding how a poll like this could "lower the value" of the actual votes. The real, official voting system is still there, still available to everyone, still the only voting system that matters to most of the voters and listeners, and still presumably working exactly as intended, friend floods and all. And the board participants would still be voicing their opinions to each other on the boards in the review threads the same way they are now, and still voting in the real fight as they hopefully are now. How would things be any different if we also had a straw poll in the review thread to collect the data that people are already providing about whose song(s) they liked the best?

You're right, "lower the value" wasn't the best choice of words. The main voting poll is still the final decision for the weekly winner.

By the way, I haven't voted in this poll or the main poll yet because I can't decide.

Lunkhead wrote:If you wanted to go off and have your own SongFight! on the side with your friends I don't think that would be elitism.

Heh. Interesting comment (wink wink). I could see someone accusing us of elitism and I'm okay with that. We have our reasons, but that's for another thread.

Lunkhead wrote:As for the other points in your first paragraph, I don't see how a poll like this "creates" the situation you're talking about. That situation has existed the whole time.

I think having a poll where people vote and numbers are tallied adds a whole new level to the discussion. It's one thing for a bunch of people to get together in IRC or in a thread and say "yeah, I think the real winner of this fight is [insert band name here]" and something completely different when there's now "hard data" to prove it.

Dude, I think you're an awesome guy and that you have nothing but good intentions when it comes to anything SongFight!-related, but in this instance, I think the poll sets a bad precedent and detracts from SongFight! But I'm like an old-school purist type and my opinion is just that. You don't have to convince me because it really doesn't matter what I think. That's what's awesome and terrible about the Internet: you can do anything you want and there will always be people who think it's a good idea. I'm just not one of those people this time. Maybe next time!