Re: 2013 Internet Wooden Roller Coaster Poll (Mitch Hawker's
roomraider said:
Anyone who says "the polls biased I'm not voting" is actually part of the problem and should realise such and fill in there damn ballot before they moan about it.
I beg to differ.
I'm complaining that people are trying to skew the results intentionally and thus not voting.
For three consecutive years, I helped write the ballots, incorporating the necessary additions and deletions, and reviewed every single ballot submitted, because I was asked, and Mitch needed help (notice the poll is starting and ending later every year?) because it is a
lot of work running that poll. The first year, if I found a ballot with format issues, or some kind of possible disparity, I'd let Mitch know, and if he agreed, he'd contact the individual and ask for clarification. The next two years, I did the asking. For a while, and as many times he complained about how he didn't have time to do it any more, I was starting to wonder if he was going to just give up and give the whole damn thing to me.
I stopped voting because despite blatant evidence that his polling system
can be manipulated by a small number of well-travelled enthusiasts, he refused to accept that as a possibility. The closest I could get was getting him to put an asterix (*) next to coasters that appeared on less than 1% of respondents ballots, and the next year, he pushed it up to 3%.
The poll is absolutely fantastic, and provides an excellent measure of a coaster's performance and popularity, without being a pure popularity contest.
As long as all the ballots are filled honestly.
Those two have, IMO, tilted their ballots to "punish" parks they feel haven't treated them as well as they feel they deserve, and to boost the parks that are on the trips planned for the next year. Comparing their ballots from one year to the next, and to an extent, to the 'rider sensations', these patterns become evident.
The poll can be swayed by small numbers of voters, precisely because it is designed so that it doesn't punish rides for being poorly attended. That algorithm provides additional weight to ballots with more coasters on them. A coaster voted down on a big ballot picks up mutual losses. A coaster voted up picks up more mutual wins. Heck, even the use of voting by grouping makes it that much easier to rack up more wins or losses.
It sucks, but it's true, and thus it can be manipulated to an unfortunate degree. The razor thin margins between adjacent rankings clearly show that it doesn't take a lot to move a coaster up or down at least a few places.
Because the system has been shown to have a pretty major flaw, which is being taken advantage of by people for purely selfish reasons, and the unwillingness of the pollster to adjust the method or compensate for that flaw, my participation or lack thereof is irrelevant.
And the results are tainted, which is a terrible shame. The only good thing is that it only really affects enthusiasts, and not the GP.
So, yeah. Watch for coasters at 6FoT to get torpedoed if/when the steel poll comes out.
