An unavoidable feature, except on the player end, of a highly split vote.
You characterize it as similar, but the reality is this also happens in choices like...
[] red
[] blue
[] green
[] white
[] black
with, say, 21 out of 100 votes going to the most popular. Or, 79% unhappy voters, by your framing.
If I, the QM of a quest presented such an option, and at the end informed the voters that 'well actually blue and white are similar, and so red loses' I doubt even the voters of the top out of blue and white would be happy.
I have seen this kind of split that extreme, this is not hypothetical. You fixating on a commonality to try to 'prove' the winning option should not have is arbitrary, there will always be commonalities to find.
That's an excellent argument when you're talking from the point of view of a QM presenting the voter base with a short list of mutually exclusive canned options.
It is not a good argument when you're talking about a QM inviting the voter base to develop their own write-in plans based on their own intellect, creativity, and desire to find a favorable resolution to a crisis.
Especially not in situations where the very existence of two or more of the vote options is the result of people who all support each other's ideas trying to collaborate and optimize towards a plan that gets what they want. In such cases, you can discourage them from even trying to compromise, discuss, and evolve the plans over time. At which point you no longer have discussion in your thread, just bickering.
Alternatively, you can encourage them to compromise, discuss, and evolve.
Creating incentives that point one way, when you want the opposite result, is counterproductive.
If you set things up so that a united group that are all willing to grit their teeth and vote for a plan they may or may not really like wins out over a larger group that keeps poking around and trying to optimize a plan... Well, you're going to get a voterbase that habitually forms up into separate entrenched blocs that snipe at each other rather than try to compromise. Anyone who tries to change the plans by proposing an alternative gets the "It's a two-party system... go ahead, throw your vote away!" treatment.
That's an excellent argument when you're talking from the point of view of a QM presenting the voter base with a short list of mutually exclusive canned options.
It is not a good argument when you're talking about a QM inviting the voter base to develop their own write-in plans based on their own intellect, creativity, and desire to find a favorable resolution to a crisis.
It's even worse to do that while allowing write-ins, which incidentally play poorly with ranked voting. Since then there's the issue of QM biases/interpretation creating an invisible vote weighting, whereby options are more likely to win if the QM sees them as similar. Which then encourages very strange power blocking, where if you think you know how the QM will judge things, you lump onto D not because you want it, but because it might beat the fold in of b and c and you are a B voter, C is winning of those, and is awful in your opinion.
Most of the remotely good solutions drastically slow Quest progression. Which may be even worse, and any contested vote is likely to make players unhappy. Maybe more, maybe less.
More seriously.... this is going to be terrible, and I'm really upset by it. I'm going to have to take a break, as this quest is doing horrible things to me during a stressful time.
It's even worse to do that while allowing write-ins, which incidentally play poorly with ranked voting. Since then there's the issue of QM biases/interpretation creating an invisible vote weighting, whereby options are more likely to win if the QM sees them as similar. Which then encourages very strange power blocking, where if you think you know how the QM will judge things, you lump onto D not because you want it, but because it might beat the fold in of b and c and you are a B voter, C is winning of those, and is awful in your opinion.
I still don't understand how this problem arises when Version Three of a plan says "please count a vote for this plan as a vote for Version Two, if Version Three does not win on its own merits." I can't imagine anyone in a case like that thinking C is winning and is awful, but supporting B, in a case like that- because C really was that similar to B. Anyone who thought "Not Again Three" was terrible wouldn't have any desire to vote for "Not Again Two" in the first place because it would be at best incrementally less terrible than "Three."
So it basically just comes back to prohibiting plans that say "this plan is meant as an incremental adjustment of Plan X, not a competitor TO Plan X."
You can discourage people from doing that, but only at the cost of punishing anyone who even has multiple versions of their plan or incrementally changes it over time. Which in turn penalizes both compromise and plans made early on.*
It penalizes compromise because changing a plan in response to criticism gravely endangers the plan's chances of success, even if the plan had a lot of support both before and after the changes. The key to success is simply to grit your teeth and tactical-vote for the least bad of the two or three frontrunners, and then ignore anyone who tries to point out flaws with your pet frontrunner. Because even if they're right there's nothing you can do about it, short of abandoning said frontrunner altogether and switching to a radically different one.
It penalizes early plans because it means that the early plans become highly inflexible and people get to spend dozens of hours nitpicking and badmouthing them. So even if they get a surge of early support, that support will erode over time. And the erosion can happen for reasons that have little to do with the actual merits of the plan, and everything to do with it being a fixed target in a contest with moving targets.
__________________________________
*By early on I don't mean "within an hour of the vote going up," I mean "12 hours into a 36-hour voting window."
I still don't understand how this problem arises when Version Three of a plan says "please count a vote for this plan as a vote for Version Two, if Version Three does not win on its own merits." I can't imagine anyone in a case like that thinking C is winning and is awful, but supporting B, in a case like that- because C really was that similar to B. Anyone who thought "Not Again Three" was terrible wouldn't have any desire to vote for "Not Again Two" in the first place because it would be at best incrementally less terrible than "Three."
So it basically just comes back to prohibiting plans that say "this plan is meant as an incremental adjustment of Plan X, not a competitor TO Plan X."
You can discourage people from doing that, but only at the cost of punishing anyone who even has multiple versions of their plan or incrementally changes it over time. Which in turn penalizes both compromise and plans made early on.*
It penalizes compromise because changing a plan in response to criticism gravely endangers the plan's chances of success, even if the plan had a lot of support both before and after the changes. The key to success is simply to grit your teeth and tactical-vote for the least bad of the two or three frontrunners, and then ignore anyone who tries to point out flaws with your pet frontrunner. Because even if they're right there's nothing you can do about it, short of abandoning said frontrunner altogether and switching to a radically different one.
It penalizes early plans because it means that the early plans become highly inflexible and people get to spend dozens of hours nitpicking and badmouthing them. So even if they get a surge of early support, that support will erode over time. And the erosion can happen for reasons that have little to do with the actual merits of the plan, and everything to do with it being a fixed target in a contest with moving targets.
__________________________________
*By early on I don't mean "within an hour of the vote going up," I mean "12 hours into a 36-hour voting window."
Please pardon me if this comes across as a little... mean. I'm in a lot of pain right now, so my social niceties filter may not be running at 100%.
First off, please stop going back to the "if you had only let us cheese up multiple votes for the plans we wanted, everything would be better" argument. Because face it, nested votes are just that... and currently the rule is "one person, one vote".
Secondly, your "point" of the voting system stifling cooperation and improvement would be a lot more convincing if we didn't have all these pages of proof that you're wrong about that. Go back and read some of the back and forth on previous votes, especially the "decide what to do with your year" votes. In the pursuit of votes, many plans have changed considerably.
I mean, even iterative improvement is easy to do under the current system. All you have to do is change the plan itself. Admittedly, it's a dick move if you do this without telling your voters, but you can in fact change your plan without worrying about losing all the votes and most vote originators are pretty courteous in that regard. And if you see a plan that you want to improve for whatever reason, but the originator won't/can't change it... make your own plan. I mean, it's worked pretty well so far in this quest. Just remember that it's up to you to convince the voters that your plan really is superior... and that if you don't that maybe it wasn't such a good idea in the first place, as you're at fault for splitting the vote.
And finally, I find your assertion that the early plans are at a disadvantage somewhat naive. From my experience, it is rather the other way around: generally, the early plans are the ones that get the most exposure and discussion, and also are the ones that find themselves benefitting the most whenever bandwagon-ing happens. They also hilariously enough, seem to be the ones that deal the most with your iterative improvement. For all that we argue a lot around here, most of the time we vote for the options we like, not against the options we don't... so all that "badmouthing" doesn't seem to do as much damage as you assert.
And I think I'll stop there. I could go on, but with how bad I'm feeling most of it would just be me complaining about how you jumped in and unilaterally took over someone else's plan so that you could split the vote with a much lower powered version of that plan, tried to cheese in extra votes by nesting a vote for the previous plan in the current one and failed to do so, failed to put more than a token effort into convincing the previous plan's voters to switch over, lost because of the split vote, and then... and then... started complaining about "the voting system being unfair" when I can say with almost perfect certainty that if your vote had won we wouldn't be hearing a peep out of you about an "unfair system".
Voting reform is a sticky issue, folks. Here are my thoughts on it at the moment.
Ranked voting is an option. Unfortunately, ranked voting plays very poorly with write-ins. I'd have to open discourse for write-ins, approve write-ins, and then send out an updated full list of options for people to rank. I would have to do this for every round of iterative vote edits.
So in other words: we do it this way, or we go to ranked voting and you all don't get write-ins anymore.
I could also switch to a "Marked for Death"-style approval-voting system, which has much fewer apparent drawbacks. I am currently running simulations on whether or not it would hopelessly complicate matters, and checking them against Marked for Death's voting record for evidence.
You can vote for every option that you like the look of, even contradictory ones. In other words, it's no longer, "one person, one vote," it's "as many votes as any one person pleases."
On the other hand...to be blunt, this style of voting is good enough. I understand many people have objections to how voting can sometimes run, but the rules are clear. If a vote winds up split, it's not as though you all are making the choice to cause that in the blind. It's not as though this penalizes iterative improvements; it does, however, penalize voting for iterating a plan before the previous version's author and its adherents have signed onto it. We witnessed this on this past vote, and also on the six or seven versions of Plan Sucal back in the year post. Both split along new plan versions, and inevitably lost voters along the way; not everybody follows the discussion closely enough to catch each new plan iteration. This is why people vote for other users or for plan names; so that they may invest their faith with somebody and then step back.
The rules are perfectly clear, and the ways to avoid all of the pitfalls in the system are quite simple. I don't find it unreasonable to suggest that I've done enough fault-proofing.
All of that said, I am considering switching to a MfD-style system regardless. My preliminary stress-testing suggests that I would lose nothing from switching to it, and it offers several advantages. My preliminary impression is that I'd be getting something for nothing. But, voting is the meat of the quest. I'm going to thoroughly test this out before I seriously consider adoption. Until that time, just be more careful with how you vote, and remember that vote splitting is a thing.
That said, @PoptartProdigy would The Examined Life option on next year vote work on the trait Cognitive Dissonance? It sounds like something Kakara would spend time thinking about after all.
@Simon_Jester your assesment is not entirely accurate. This time there was bad luck in that the person who made the first vote was not available but usually there are no problems. You make one plan, discuss with the thread and the original poster modifies the plan according to the concensus of those voting for it without changing the name of the plan unless there is a change in the spirit of the plan. That is how it goes in most quests and how it worked most of the time in this one.
Usually there is no need for the whole version 3 thing you did. This was the exception as modifying is not that hard.
On the other hand, the suggestions you are making... frankly, they seem terrible. Priority voting works best when all options are there already and all apply but for write in plans they are a bad idea. You have seen how messy the tally is as is. Some people vote by plan name, some by plan name plus its description, some by username, not to mention plans are added all the time. That just makes a mess, especially since some will vote by ranking and some just for one plan.
On the other hand, adding a clause that says to switch the vote if the plan will lose is basically voting against an action instead of on favor of one, which is bad form (basically, if I vote for A on the condition it counts as B if A loses then what I am actually doing is voting "not C") as what it shows is that you are not commited to the plan. Furthermore, once it is allowed more people do it with other plans and it becomes a mess. If A and B are fundamentally different but each has a clause to switch to the other if it has less votes then C can lose even with majority. If the plans have mechanically the same effects then @PoptartProdigy merges them anyways so if he didn't with ver 2 & 3 then different things would have been accomplished and this would be the case.
Furthermore, even if it had won... I don't think it has been pointed out to you but telling Cabba the plan didn't adress the fact that Maya was charging an enemy that outmached her right now and how to solve that situation, something that running away and powering up adressed. Yes, Kakara tells Maya not to attack in it but the girl is not listening right now (wildly charging against a stronger opponent knowingly and seemingly without a plan) and could be seriously hurt on the firsy exchange before the plan came into effect. THAT should have the first thing it adressed so that she is not hurt before Cabba powers up, not the wording and acting skills.
As for the loss of reputation Kakara could suffer... all saiyans know that she is vastly superior to the scout and had nothing to fear if she didn't hold back as much. She is making a tactical desition of following Berra's instructions regarding the masquerade and protecting a civilian. We are waiting for Berra to intervene because Maya already knows his PL reaches a million.
Voting system, Aranfan, not discussion depth. My gut reaction to plans bloating as much as MfD's do is a profound, hell no. I am not signing on for that.
I still feel like, under the circumstances, I should have not tried to participate in compromise and extended discussion and just voted for V2 (warts and all) and encouraged others to do so. That's the way the incentives run when there's no such thing as preference voting- you have to pick the least bad option and defend it vigorously against all comers. Because compromise means getting your vote split, at which point you can lose to a fairly narrow plurality candidate.
My argument is that vote splitting tends to act against that dynamic by penalizing extended feedback cycles, unless literally everyone who votes in the early phase just proxies their vote over to someone else.
This is further complicated by the fact that voters often don't know in advance how long a vote period is going to be open for, so they cannot predict whether they'll be in any position to participate in the last 8, 12, or even 16 hours of voting and discussion. It's hard to decide to proxy because you'll be at work when the vote is decided, when you don't know whether the vote will close at midnight or noon local time.
There is the further issue of key information being revealed part way through the discussion process or even near the end of it. If someone has a really good idea that nobody thought of at the "T minus six hours" mark, are they just supposed to sit on it for fear of causing a vote split? Especially when, as noted above, they don't always know six or twelve or however many hours in advance how long the vote period is?
The situation is even more problematic othan in real life political campaigns, where at least the elections are held with a very long period to discuss the issues in advance and where the polls close at a well-defined, specified time.
So, looking at this in the abstract, it really does seem like there's a case for preference voting- or something like it, IF there were a practical way to implement it.
All this is implicitly set up on a foundation made of a high level of coordination, plus detailed knowledge of the schedules and habits of other quest participants.
Being on a community of anonymous Internet people tends to undermine that foundation.
As I see it, there are three important tasks. It doesn't matter how they get done, unless there are unusual long term consequences. But it does matter that they get done. The tasks are:
1) Actually subdue the scout.
2) Maintain Berra's deception plan, so far as possible, so that the aliens don't realize this planet is defended by ultra-powerful warriors and start blabbing to the larger galaxy.
3) Damage control with Maya. In particular, stopping Maya from being damaged physically, while if possible avoiding anything that would unambiguously reveal to her that she's being badly decieved.
The very reason that "Not Again" in its various incarnations was such a popular version of the plan (overwhelmingly more popular than any other single plan that involves action as opposed to fleeing) is because it outsources (1) to Cabba, an experienced fighter, (2) to Berra, an experienced politician, and (3) to Kakara, Maya's best friend.
As to why people voted for action as opposed to fleeing?
Well, like it or not, Kakara has a reputation to be concerned with despite her young age. She may be a child in our eyes, but in the eyes of her own people she's the Scion of Goku and one of the four most physically powerful entities on the planet. She's somewhere between 'superhero' and 'demigod,' and for at least half of the exile community she's going to be de facto queen starting within the next couple of decades.
Running away from this situation, in addition to the high risk that the alien will use his ki to signal his friends and escape, gives us a major negative to our reputation. Sure, Daddy can fix it, but Daddy trusted us to have the power and maturity to handle it ourselves. Given that we're already engaged in adult-level political conspiracy, and given that we have like a thousand times more raw power than everyone else involved in the conflict put together... That was probably a reasonable expectation on his part.
The situation wasn't irretrievably ruined just because Kakara entered the fight; there were many ways to get a resolution that the saiyan community at large would approve of. Sure, it might mess up one of Kakara's traits, but they don't care about that. They care about results. And in the first real test of Kakara's ability to deliver results to the general benefit of her community, in a crisis situation that requires martial prowess and good judgment... Kakara ran away rather than fight. That's probably going to have ramifications.
My argument is that people shouldn't be voting in the early phase. If that just doesn't happen, the problem doesn't exist.
GMs who care enough about the issue to use moratoriums generally calibrate the available time to the level of discussion and only call the vote when things have settled or don't appear as if they ever will, and even then give ample warning that vote closure is incoming. If it's really a concern, one can just default to proxy vote and then only change it if they end up having a chance to review the plans once settled- or simply not vote.
Seriously, not voting is not some devastatingly onerous expectation. If you can't exercise your vote well it is you duty to every one of your colleagues who can that you do not to exercise it at all. If meatspace is getting in the way of your proper participation there is nothing wrong with just folding this one hand and letting the people who can afford to make the investment handle it.
Kakara isn't running. No Saiyan alive could possibly think that a full power Super-Saiyan was actually scared of a measly 300K. It is an objective fact that she could crush him like a bug in a heartbeat. If she doesn't do that, it's because there are other concerns that have to be accounted for. She failed the initial engagement due to particularly odious surprise restrictions and exceptional circumstances. In the resulting circumstances with Berra already taking the hit to his masquerade, the responsible, adult thing to do is to is to admit that she failed her mission and try to mitigate the consequences as a team player focusing on whatever role will best get the job done even if it is mundane support logistics instead of endangering everything by insisting on grandstanding on the front lines. Yes, some people aren't mature enough to appreciate that, but stubborn narcissists who refuse to admit their mistakes and accept their failures make crap leaders and it's not a good general policy to become one just to appease them.
Sometimes the majority is just plain wrong. This appears to be more the result of a lucky break than a system being wiser than its median participant, but we should be grateful either way.
If we recognize the ways in which "highest scoring vote is highest scoring vote" encourages tactical voting.... And if we understand how it incentivizes people to ignore objections to their plans rather than trying to fix perceived problems for fear of causing a split... And if we think that those are good things...
Then there isn't a problem with "single highest vote is single highest vote."
The Gibbard–Satterthwaite theorem proves that it is fundamentally impossible to avoid these problems in any deterministic system. Frankly, I prefer ranked voting in most cases, but in this case it would have just created a situation where a majority of voters on both sides considered the winning plan sub-optimal and only the winner due to tactical voting. I happen to consider the currently winning vote also a sub-optimal one I was forced to tactically vote for, but at least a majority of the people who did vote for it don't feel the same way.
Voting reform is a sticky issue, folks. Here are my thoughts on it at the moment.
Ranked voting is an option. Unfortunately, ranked voting plays very poorly with write-ins. I'd have to open discourse for write-ins, approve write-ins, and then send out an updated full list of options for people to rank. I would have to do this for every round of iterative vote edits.
So in other words: we do it this way, or we go to ranked voting and you all don't get write-ins anymore.
I could also switch to a "Marked for Death"-style approval-voting system, which has much fewer apparent drawbacks. I am currently running simulations on whether or not it would hopelessly complicate matters, and checking them against Marked for Death's voting record for evidence.
You can vote for every option that you like the look of, even contradictory ones. In other words, it's no longer, "one person, one vote," it's "as many votes as any one person pleases."
On the other hand...to be blunt, this style of voting is good enough. I understand many people have objections to how voting can sometimes run, but the rules are clear. If a vote winds up split, it's not as though you all are making the choice to cause that in the blind. It's not as though this penalizes iterative improvements; it does, however, penalize voting for iterating a plan before the previous version's author and its adherents have signed onto it. We witnessed this on this past vote, and also on the six or seven versions of Plan Sucal back in the year post. Both split along new plan versions, and inevitably lost voters along the way; not everybody follows the discussion closely enough to catch each new plan iteration. This is why people vote for other users or for plan names; so that they may invest their faith with somebody and then step back.
The rules are perfectly clear, and the ways to avoid all of the pitfalls in the system are quite simple. I don't find it unreasonable to suggest that I've done enough fault-proofing.
All of that said, I am considering switching to a MfD-style system regardless. My preliminary stress-testing suggests that I would lose nothing from switching to it, and it offers several advantages. My preliminary impression is that I'd be getting something for nothing. But, voting is the meat of the quest. I'm going to thoroughly test this out before I seriously consider adoption. Until that time, just be more careful with how you vote, and remember that vote splitting is a thing.
Let's see how the trait stands at year's end before talking about how to address it.
Approval voting tends to select the least objectionable, but by the same token least exceptional option. Good for applications where you're most concerned about consistently getting a not-awful winner, but that's a disadvantage in a challenging game. MfD avoids a lot of that downside by having an... unusual demographic with unifying attitudes breeding consensus and an implementation so byzantine that only a small number of heavily vetted representatives can practically produce options to vote on in the first place.
-and for all its benefits, that last bit has resulted in at least two catastrophic mistakes.
Voting system, Aranfan, not discussion depth. My gut reaction to plans bloating as much as MfD's do is a profound, hell no. I am not signing on for that.
Well, I certainly don't want bloat. I don't want a vote system that would leave a QM feeling overworked. The only things I think would be desirable are things which for me would present a very light cognitive burden, things I would not hesitate to ask another person to do because I would not hesitate to do them myself.
All I know is, I hope I've learned my lesson about trying to get into the "respond to people's criticisms and improve the plan" trap. Because it's a trap.
Can people maybe please calm down and step back at least until @PoptartProdigy has written the update?
Like, I'm not 100% happy with how the "scenes" have played out in the last couple of updates, but those aren't nearly as off-putting as the mountains of texts being put forth around here right now.
Personally my inclinations run in almost the opposite direction.
As alluded to in one of my posts earlier, I'd like to push things towards:
1) Being peaceful at the start is both easier and more rewarding than allowing things to escalate and having to stop them later by switching away from violence. Be very hesitant to try and use "just a little" violence in a small burst, because by nature, violence begets more violence. Violent actions provoke violent responses, and the process grows beyond what anyone, even a super-saiyan, can hope to control.
2) There are certain times and places where violence is the only option that doesn't make things rapidly worse. Such situations are rare, but they happen. At those times and places, there is no need to feel undue guilt over engaging in the violence. Because "it is not a sin to fight for the right cause."
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(2) is something Kakara explicitly doesn't understand yet but may grow into. Hopefully we can work on that.
(1) is something WE need to learn even more than Kakara does. Left side of road, safe; right side of road, safe; middle of road, go 'squish.'
It is much easier to plan for a "short victorious war" to improve your situation than it is to actually improve your situation by trying to fight the war. It is easy to tell yourself "I'll punch him in the face once, THEN tell him to stand down," but human and near-human psychology doesn't work that way. Punch someone once and if they were ever likely to engage in violence in the first place, think about what happens. They won't stand down; they'll fight back against the person who just hurt them.
Most problems in Dragonball Z are problems that in theory you could probably punch your way out of, if you figure out the right way to punch and get good enough at it. It's the way the setting works. So emphasizing violent resolution to conflict (including nonlethal brawls) can work... sort of.
At the same time, there is a lot to be said for peaceful resolutions, joining the hands of former foes, finding ways to overcome problems without fighting and killing, That is a valid road for Kakara to walk, very much so.
But combining violent and peaceful options 50/50 won't work, especially when it involves starting off with the violence and then expecting to be able to clamp back down and re-assert control of the situation after violence has begun. We should be reluctant to start fighting precisely because once you have started a fight, you must finish it.
By the brevity of my post I probably made my stance not very clear. I am supportive of fighting for "the right cause" but I probably have far too wide of a view for what is a just cause.
From what I remember of Dragon Ball (which is terribly little beyond the abridged series) I am thoroughly biased against any alien that lands on our planet. I can't imagine any where a peaceful solution will work, nor can I imagine any that a peaceful solution will be result in anything other than us receiving a sucker punch. This bias probably exists to some degree or another in most of the thread, with many of you probably being far less so than me. Therefore, quickly (and non-lethally) defeating these enemies is automatically something I consider a just cause. I may be wrong in doing so, but I will stand by my opinion.
I think I had something else to say but it's slipping my mind right now.
On an unrelated note, would anyone be interested in seen a Jaffur Quest omake, and if so willing to be part of the negaverse? I'm feeling like trying my hand at negaverse stuff, but I don't know if it will turn out that well.
On an unrelated note, would anyone be interested in seen a Jaffur Quest omake, and if so willing to be part of the negaverse? I'm feeling like trying my hand at negaverse stuff, but I don't know if it will turn out that well.
