V-Prize Competition

I am offering a L$20,000 prize to an individual or team that can design and implement an advanced voting system for use in Second Life.

The requirements are:

1. The system should consist of three parts: an in-word voting station, a web-based voting station, and code to analyze voting results.
   
2. The in-world voting station (similar to the GOM ATM) should be used for the following: to collect avatar data (agent and key) and to direct them to an external voting page.
   
3. The web-based interface should record agent, key, email, and IP address (and other data if necessary).
   
4. Code should be written to postprocess and statistically analyze the voting results in a way that takes into account methods of fraud which cannot be stopped. (For instance, one could assign a weight to each vote based on its probability of being unique. The difference between the direct addition and weighted addition create a margin of error that is used to determine if there is a sufficient majority to pass a vote. Any statisticians or voting theorists out there?)
   
5. The system should support novel forms of voting, such as ranking.
   
6. The system designers should disclose all methods of possible fraud.
   
7. The system should be tested with several known groups of honest and fraudulent voters and provide satisfactory results.
   
8. All code must be open and released under the GPL.
   
9. All server-side code must be written in Perl or Python.
   

Note: As this progresses, the list may grow, shrink, or change. If there are additions to the scripting language that would facilitate the creation of this infrastructure, feel free to contact the Lindens with suggestions. An in-world voting system would be optimal but, due to the use of alternate accounts, this doesn't seem feasible. Those who implement the system must carefully balance user privacy and verification techniques, to maximize participation while mitigating alternate-account voter fraud.

The prize will be disbursed in two payments. The first after completion of the above goals and the second after its successful use in a real election.

This project will support the elections of the first in-world socialist democracy, Neualtenburg, where those in charge of city are democratically elected representatives. The first elections are scheduled for the middle of January.

~Ulrika~

I dunno, 20K is like a couple hours work for most coders.... I could give you a voting system for 20K but if you want the source thats more like 200K.

This is about more than money. This is about creating an open infrastructure that will enable democracy in Second Life. By directly addressing and designing around the problem of voter fraud and the in-world/www disconnection with technology, we will enable a new form of self organization in SL.

~Ulrika~

Ok, when you put it that way, $400K and you have a deal.

That maybe Ulrika - but offering $20,000 is way too little.

No PHP? Ah well, thanks anyway.

You should mention whether you have a DB server running on the host machine. Using flat files instead of a DB = more development time.

I am also of the opinion that $20K is enough for a closed-source system, but not for an open one. Sorry. The open source thing is also problematic for those of us who have already built frameworks for talking to SL from our own servers, and don't want to publish them.

BTW no one who has even a marginal interest in such an election should be hosting the voting system. That should be very obvious.

Heh, I would do it for free. You greedy bastages!
I just dont have time for anything right now... too much RL work.

I would do it for free too if I wasn't busy. To get me to stop what I'm doing I need $400K

Wouldn't it have to be closed source anyways? If I know the format of the emails you send I can send fake emails to your server appear as if they came from LL.

Eh, you could put that in a config file and not release the actual values.

Hard

who needs democracy in sl? i'm enjoying the anarchy. i'll give ya L$20 for a solemn pledge you'll never script a voting system. i think my offer is better than Ulrika's when you compare the amount of work for the reward.

"Democracy is the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people." - Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
- E. B. White

Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is ignorant.
- John Simon

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.
- Thomas Jefferson

Exactly. Neualtenburg is a socialist democratic republic. Democracy is only exercised within the limits of providing general societal benefit. For example, no one could hold a vote to reduce taxation below a point that costs are no longer covered, as that could bankrupt the city and undo the society.


On another subject, I actually think this could actually be pretty easy to put together.

1. Click on an object in world. If you are in the group, it sends the agent and key to a server by email.
   
2. The server replies via XML-RPC with a coded URL and password.
   
3. The object IMs the person with the password and URL (launching a browser if possible).
   
4. The URL expires in 5 minutes.
   
5. The individual then enters their name and password.
   
6. Additional data such as IP address, OS, and browser are collected.
   
7. The user votes.
   
8. The vote metadata is analyzed and a weight is applied.
   
9. The scores are added with and without weights and there is a meaningful result if the the margin of victory is in excess of the margin of uncertainty.
   

You should be lucky to get $20k!

~Ulrika~

Bah. A measly 20K? I've got that much, and I don't sell a damn thing in world.

Anywho, before I started working on my SimFPSMap, my original plan for my plot was something along the same lines, but built totally in world.

I ditched the idea. Not enough room, and less need.

Well, that is a huge amount of money for me! Perhaps some interested parties would like to donate prize money, to increase the size of the prize.

I call for volunteers to donate prize money to the V-Prize Competition! Let's bring democracy to SL together!

~Ulrika~

What your asking for is really hard though.

How bout this:

Drop a notecard in object
Drop another notecard for registered voters
Rez a vote button for each line in the notecard
Click on a button to submit vote, no xml
Owner of machine clicks and it displays tally

That's a 20K'er.