Calender and Polls

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mbroberg

IAP Activities Manager, Emeritus
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I am experimenting with Google Calenders to post a calender of Bash events for the membership to see. It is here. Please keep an eye on it and as I add events let me know if I make any mistakes with dates (or anything else).

We also need to decide if we are going to run open polls or attempt closed polls again this year. I like closed polls because I believe they provide more objective results. Others disagree with me about that. But a major porblem is that we cannot truly close polls because even closed polls are visible by members who use forum runner. We have at least one member who likes to post something about the poll as an excuse to post a screen shot of the results. Sense we can't truly close the polls I reluctantly suggest that they all be open. What are your opinions? (should we take a poll? :biggrin:)
 
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jeff

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I prefer closed polls. It encourages people to make their own choices rather than follow the herd. It also encourages voting, period. People see a huge win happening and they say why bother.

I can exclude a forum from being visible to forum runner. We could put all the polls in this forum. This has several drawbacks.

1 - If a link to the poll is posted in a forum visible to FR (everything else) the FR client can click and go to the poll.
2 - People will gripe that they only access the forum by FR and so we'd be preventing them from voting.

Survey Monkey has a polling/voting feature. We could get paid account there. They do allow the addition of photos, but I have no idea how it works. We'd have to assign someone to tinker with it and become the expert. One positive aspect of this approach is that there is no concern that there is any tampering of the vote. (Which I have been accused of...)
 

jeff

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OK, now that I think about it a little more, Survey Monkey isn't a good option. There is no easy way to limit the voters to IAP members. There is a way, but it would require that we deliver the survey by email with a key tied to the email address.

I think we're stuck with either open polls, or go closed and live with the FR bug.

The problem is that the code that hides the poll results is not compatible with the FR code because it's not a core function of the forum software.
 

Ed McDonnell

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Having a special forum that is hidden from forum runner limits the ability to provide links to the poll. As a contest manager I would rather be able to post messages with links to my poll to draw in voters. If some can use forum runner to see interim results, so be it.

An alternative would be to have closed voting with no IAP poll thread. The members email their vote to each contest manager and the manager manually tabulates the votes. The results would be hidden from everyone in this case. But now the conspiracy theorists would have a lot more people to accuse of vote tampering. It would also be more work for the contest managers. I'm willing to do it, but that's just me.

This whole issue is really raised because of one person. Maybe the focus should be on helping that person understand that the spirit of the contest is more important than the flawless execution of the contest. The flaws don't need to be publicly outed during the contest. Especially when nothing reasonable can be done about them.

My choice would be to have closed polls within IAP (like we have always done) and if a member causes problems deal with that member.
 

mbroberg

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Closed it is.

Ed Street is not the only one who knows he can access the polls via Forum Runner but to my knowledge he is the only one who has, on more than one occasion, gone out of his way to find any lame excuse to post a screen shot of some results of a closed poll. I don't know what his motivation to do so is other than he enjoys being a pain in the ass. If he does it again this year it won't be anything new, nor will it be the end of the world.
 

mbroberg

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I THINK I have most of the calender done. I do not have scheduled:

The Best Library Article
Trivia
Puzzles
Auctions
Donation Drawing (Jeff, will this be on the 28th?)

If we can nail down some tentative dates for Trivia, Puzzles and Auctions I will add them.

I also have not yet scheduled TENTATIVE 2nd polls for the contests. I'll do that later.

Please look at the Calender and find the mistakes I have made so far.

IAP Birthday Bash Calender

Except for the all of the entries on February 1st I think it is easier to read in the "Agenda" format.

Thanks!
 

Ed McDonnell

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Mike - Are you going to wait and put the results announcement dates in after we know whether we need a second poll? Or are you just going to leave the results dates off the calendar with the expectation that results will be known when the poll closes (and things become visible).
 

mbroberg

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I think it makes the most sense to leave results announcements off of the calender with the assumption that they will be revealed when the final poll (1st or 2nd) is completed.
 

D.Oliver

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I THINK I have most of the calender done. I do not have scheduled:

The Best Library Article
Trivia
Puzzles
Auctions
Donation Drawing (Jeff, will this be on the 28th?)

If we can nail down some tentative dates for Trivia, Puzzles and Auctions I will add them.

Well my thinking is we should run Trivia the first week. There isn't much happen then. The contest are just beginning, but there isn't anything really to engage the members (voting, trashtalk, ect.) So running the trivia contest then would engage the members until some of the other contest start to pick up. Any thoughts?
 

Edgar

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I THINK I have most of the calender done. I do not have scheduled:

The Best Library Article
Trivia
Puzzles
Auctions
Donation Drawing (Jeff, will this be on the 28th?)

If we can nail down some tentative dates for Trivia, Puzzles and Auctions I will add them.

Well my thinking is we should run Trivia the first week. There isn't much happen then. The contest are just beginning, but there isn't anything really to engage the members (voting, trashtalk, ect.) So running the trivia contest then would engage the members until some of the other contest start to pick up. Any thoughts?

I like that. We can start the puzzle contest shortly after the trivia contest is finished.

I have sent the crossword lists & jigsaw photos to Curtis for the puzzle contests, but I imagine that he will need a little time to get the web site set up for them, so doing the trivia contest first makes sense.

I have 8 puzzles right now & it will probably take close to 2 weeks to run them all.
 

mbroberg

IAP Activities Manager, Emeritus
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I THINK I have most of the calender done. I do not have scheduled:

The Best Library Article
Trivia
Puzzles
Auctions
Donation Drawing (Jeff, will this be on the 28th?)

If we can nail down some tentative dates for Trivia, Puzzles and Auctions I will add them.


Well my thinking is we should run Trivia the first week. There isn't much happen then. The contest are just beginning, but there isn't anything really to engage the members (voting, trashtalk, ect.) So running the trivia contest then would engage the members until some of the other contest start to pick up. Any thoughts?

I like that. We can start the puzzle contest shortly after the trivia contest is finished.

I have sent the crossword lists & jigsaw photos to Curtis for the puzzle contests, but I imagine that he will need a little time to get the web site set up for them, so doing the trivia contest first makes sense.

I have 8 puzzles right now & it will probably take close to 2 weeks to run them all.

I plugged Daily Trivia in starting the 1st and ending the 7th. I can extend the contest or move it if you want me to.

I have match the Pen to the Penmaker scheduled to start on the 7th and run until the 15th.

Let me know when you want to do the puzzles. I'd like to keep these contests spread throughout the month. If you want 2 weeks right oafter Trivia to complete puzzles I can move the Match the Pen to the Penmaker to the last week of February.
 

toddlajoie

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Let me know when you want to do the puzzles. I'd like to keep these contests spread throughout the month. If you want 2 weeks right oafter Trivia to complete puzzles I can move the Match the Pen to the Penmaker to the last week of February.

Not trying to make any extra work for anyone, so treat this as just a simple question from someone who knows nothing about running the schedule or how the puzzle contest is going to run, but my assumption is that each puzzle stands on it's own, would they have to run 2 consecutive weeks, or could you do Trivia Week - Puzzle Week - Pen/Maker Match Week - Puzzle Week?

If Ed wants to run the puzzles in one 2 week block, that's a good enough reason, as would be it being confusing or a PITA to split them up, but if it's a 6 or 1/2 dozen issue, it might be nice to keep things changing IMO...
 

Edgar

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It will probably work best to leave the Trivia & Pen Match contests as you currently have them then start the Puzzle Contest on the 15th or 16th.

I'm thinking that it will take a few hours to process all the entries for each puzzle, announce results & post the next one and I want to give at least 24 hours for folks to solve each puzzle. Once I get them rolling, I'd like to do them all in a row & I figure it will take about 10 days to 2 weeks to do so.

I've got 8 puzzles ready to go & will prepare a couple more just in case there's time for them.
 

mbroberg

IAP Activities Manager, Emeritus
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Columbus, OH
Thanks Edgar. I put them down as starting on the 15th and running throughout the rest of the bash.
 
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