Let's discuss VOTE BOOTHS

I can't say anything that hasn't been said already... but I'm gonna do my best to summarize. ^_^

A) If voting booths were designed to do anything except reward building projects with the most users and people with the most neighbors, they have failed. I've torn apart the math on my booths, my friend's booths, and the ones I see on the posts every day... and the statistical clustering on the top voting booths is nothing short of inbreeding.

B) What are voting booths for? Only Lindens know for sure, but after listening to everyone, my theory is that they are designed to reward social interaction at your place. Everything else that is rewarded in Second Life (building, your appearance, etc.) is handled through the ratings system... which, as bbc said, is another topic entirely.

C) If that is said, here's a key argument: Does a store built by five people have a right to more money than the store built by one person, given the exact same customer base? A store with five voting booths can make far more money than one with one, given the same voting.

D) To correlate this, I do not feel that voting booths should be a reward for a group collaborative project. Five people with the same approximate rating are each contributing only 1/5 of their incomes to build something as grand as one similar person could build with their entire weekly income. These five people each pay 1/5 of the taxes they would for the site. THAT is their reward for group collaboration. Unless you can conclusively prove to me that five people of my rating will consistently build something BETTER than I can, I see no reason to reward the project financially with more voting booth "rights".

E) The "land use" system seems FAR better than voting booths for the intended purpose I stated above. Exploits are few, they can be exploited for far less than voting booths can, they remove the player's ability to interact in Second Life, and they do NOT make more money as more active players get involved. However, this is a complex enough system that I doubt we could see it overnight. We may still be stuck with voting booths when Second Life becomes for pay.

F) So how do we fix voting booths? Someone threw me the idea of forcing them to be on the owner's land. I retorted that players would just start clustering 2x2 land for more farms. The solution, then?

G) ONE VOTING BOOTH PER PLACE. Anything I build on my own, I'm only allowed one booth. All the problems, the exploits, the farming is being caused by allowing multiple people to put booths at one place. I say, stop allowing this and force people to get UNIQUE votes each day. A group project will get a bonus individuals will not because they can all vote for the station.

Just my thoughts.

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P.S. This isn't about me personally or how voting booths affect me. After disposing of my primary source of income, I'm still making enough money on clothing sales that my voting booth income isn't essential. I've toyed with removing it entirely.

All I ask as you read this is to take what I say seriously. Please do not discount me because of my STUPID Net Worth. It's irrelevant to the issue, and if you think I'm impacting your bonuses or hoarding your money, allow me to have chat with you about my balance sheet and our economic model sometime.

I argue this issue because the booths are currently flawed from a mathematical, economical, and social sense, and because it will rapidly turn SL into an ugly booth-farm mess if unchecked. Let's focus on that for the purposes of this thread, shall we?

C and D: Wow, I hadn't really thought about that but you are right. What is needed then is a booth that automatically splits its pay among X people (owner says "BOOTH SETUP" and anyone that touches it until he says "BOOTH DONE" is who the money is split between). And for booths to auto destruct if built within 10m of another one. (give or take, do a sensor sweep on rez and change of location for a scripted item named 'Vote Booth', if found communicate and if verified llDie() ).

E: As for being much harder .... I could make a script that kept track of how much time people spent on my land, within range of a sensor sweep. Do a repeated sensor sweep every 60 seconds for agents and store them in a list, possibly checking they are on your land first. On the next sweep, increment a total counter by 1 for each name still in the list and remove those that aren't in the list. Problem? Sensors limited to returning 16 things I believe. So big events wouldn't get properly rewarded, and in fact could be hurt unless more safe guards are put in by people moving around so a different 16 get detected, even though the first 16 are still there.

Thats all off the top of my head, just saying I think its more feasable than its being given credit.

Another very related issue is that voting booths are being used as a crutch while the other systems may be hurting. I think it is very important that the voting booth system be brought into line very quickly so that the other systems can be adjusted if they need to be.

I can't directly comment on this as I just dont have the history to back it but...

I have 1 voting booth. Its at the foot of my statue. I put it there for 2 reasons:

1. To see if people liked my creation (Meaning I would work to maintain it if they did, or tear it down and try again if not).

2. To support the structure's tax cost so that, if my creations are something that people enjoy, I can (hopefuly, that things big) have enough cash left over after my stripend to create more things people will like.

If one day I have more regular income than outpay I plan to use it directly for the betterment of the community by creating public works or 'items' for free.

I have explored SecondLife some (theirs so much it will take me weeks, and by that time I'll have to start all over from the other end) and based on what I have heard from others and seen done,

I ONLY vote for projects that I find estheticly pleasing to me (or that I think are useful to the community).

And any that I see being worked on regularly or that I realy wish to stay a part of the landscape/world will get my vote on a regular basis. This is because I want these thigns to grow and flourish.

As I see my vote as not only my aquiecence to the creators vision but my reward to him or her for making my time in SL more pleasureable. I understand the money is not coming out of my pocket, but currently I just don't have enough money to fund other peoples visions on top of my own so I realy appreciate the ability to give beyond my means to those I think deserve it.

I don't vote at shops and wont have a vote box for mine as the shop itself is not a creation and the objects within should be the profit..

I don't vote for anything that hasnt shown some love and sweat put into its creation. A few platforms whos only creative imput was by the artist who created the texture will not get my vote.

I think the voting farm(s) are mearly an exploit waiting for a fix. I will not use a voting booth at a farm unless for some reason it belongs to a person whom I know has created something I belive deserves reward.

Yes I agree. Why can’t the booths be scripted not to work in some proximity of each other?

If the economy is working, why would we be changing the vote booth system? Yes I also agree that the rating system needs to be factored in to this discussion.

And as for the reward system for time spent on land, I think that is even more unfair than booths. I see it as all new exploits waiting to be used. I see it as becoming an extreme difficulty to those who are not social creatures, and I see it as a patch and not a fix.

How about we get rid of the booths, take the money from the vote pool, add it to the total stipend, or just get rid of it too. Then change the way ratings work. Split them up to both rating someone directly and to a booth like system. So if I am flying along and I see a great build, I can rate its creator by voting at the ratings booth in front of the build. If I am engaged in something social, I can rate the person by clicking on them.

Then income would rest on barter and sales.


fen-

I agree with this. The rating system has been considered by a lot of us to be bogus for a long time. With a more useful ratings system, a vote booth system or time-on-land system might not be needed.

I see this as a real griefer tool. I don't like you, so I put my own booth down next to yours. Sure you can delete it, so I put down another, and so on. After all, you can't be there all the time, and while my booth is there, your loosing votes.

I still don't see the "time on land" as any better. So me and 10 of my buddies get together and each buy the smallest peice of land we can, right next to each other. We meet every day, wander around each others property, build our whatevers, and when we are done, put our whatevers into inventory and take it home. So instead of Voting Farms, we have time on land farms.

I really don't think the current system/economy is broke. We are just missing half of the equation. We have the resident side of the equation, we are missing the new sim side. I believe that when the new sims start coming on line, and the equation is complete, the problems everyone is having now will be moot.

If we all agree that what the Lindens have provided us so far is a great "game", then let's give them the benifit of the doubt that the monitary system will work too.

Other than the fact that I will have to start paying for my daily fix, I am really looking forward to Second Life going Gold. I want to log on one morning and see 20+ new sims with no one one them, and the bonus money that comes with them!


-TK

I've seen a lot of people claiming that the vote booths are purely to reward social interaction, but none of them (so far as I've seen) have been Lindens. Some official clarification would be nice.

As there's so much overlap between the (perceived) use of vote booths and the use of ratings, I don't see the issues as quite that distinct.

I, personally, use vote booths in place of build ratings, primarily because I can't rate someone unless they're *right there* or I have their calling card. If I happen across a nice structure that I want to show appreciation for, but the owner isn't around, the vote booth is the only way I can tell that person, "Hey, neat, I like your stuff." Perhaps we need 'rate' booths, to deal with this problem. (In which case each should have a positive and a negative option. Perhaps clicking the booth would pop up a window like the ratings selection one, but with 'behavior' and 'appearance' greyed out?) Even easier would be to enable ratings (for building only, if it's such a concern) of offline and/or unknown users.

IMO, the current rating system is a joke, and virtually useless -- funnily enough, the only feasible way to *use* the rating system is in situations many people seem to think the voting booths are for. Lots of people, small radius. Simple, just right-click and rate. When they're not there, or you haven't even met them, then what? I like a lot of buildings, but I don't like them enough to hang around for hours upon hours in the dim hope that the owner will show up.

In no particular order.....

Tracey says....

Yes I thought of this. But where as the booth farms you can get 20+ booths and it takes each person about 1 minute of their day to exploit it.... Time on land requires a much, much longer time effort. And if its only for land you own, then it is a large time effort to benefit 1 person (yea they can divide it up, but its still the equivalant of 1 booth).

If for example, totally off numbers I'm am totally making up, each 10 minutes a person stays on your land is eq. to a tenth of a vote of the old system... A 20 person vote farm will produce a total of 400 votes with about 1 minute effort from each person - 20 minutes total effort. The same 20 people need to stay on the same land for 50 hours to produce the same equivalant number of total votes (remember thats 400 votes for one person, it shouldn't possible in one day).

Yes I agree it can be exploited, I think the reward per exploiting effort though drops way down. About to the point where they are practically earning it anyways. I can think of no way to exploit it that comes even close to being as easy as vote booths.

Gail...Right click on an item someone owns, click focus on, and make sure the 'More' stuff is showing, next to the creators name is a Profile button. Clicking this brings up a profile which allows you to rate them.

I think the reason voting booths are seen as essential as they are is because they are the only reward (aside from contests, events etc) that you both get daily AND isn't limited by how much money you have. Its an immediate reward, its never chopped off. I think ratings need to be changed to be similar, in this way:

- Split it up. Give a seperate 'bonus' amount from each rating category.

- Allow all of this bonus money to be awarded even to people with over $3500. One of the primary reasons for this limit was accumulation in unused accounts (to my understanding). Well now accounts expire, and when it goes live then non paying counts will expire.

- If bonus money is more than taxes then the Stipend is not awarded. If taxes are $1500 and you get $1000 from bonuses then only get $500 from stipend. Except if you are lower than $3500 I guess, although I would like to see that number just disapear.

- Possible (not sure on this one) give an immediate reward or end of day reward for change in ratings to each category. But you would also have to take away money for negative ratings, otherwise people would rate each other up one day to get money, down the next for no loss, up the third etc etc etc.

Gah I'm gonna have to change my title to Board Spammer.

well, since this is changing into a 'how to use the rate system instead' thread, i'd like to restate something i posted a while back.

I think the rate system should be done with an average score. What I mean is, we should rate eachother on a scale of say, 1-10, in the different categories. Then our scores would be the average of these scores.

following from Ama's last point, if your rating was under 50% then you could lose some of your bonus money, and if its above you make money.

Except that the "rate" button is greyed out, and always is unless I have the calling card of that person. Don't work. Maybe it's just me.

either way, I think thats a bug!

I just logged in to check and this is my results:

If I open a profile from a calling card I can rate them
If I open a profile from a search I can not rate them
If I open a profile from a building I can rate them (whether I have their calling card or not).

I think this is how it is supposed to work.

I’ve been reading the conversation about Second Life Voting Stations and wanted to comment regarding their original intent and how they are currently being used by residents. Also, I’ll share some design thoughts on the evolution of measuring and rewarding residents for maintaining popular destinations.

The original voting stations were introduced into Second Life with three primary goals:

* Recognize and reward residents who maintain popular and well-trafficked locations
* Provide residents with the chance to give a boost to places they enjoy visiting
* Aggregate daily votes into a dynamic snapshot of interesting locations in the world

These goals roll up into something I’ll call “location-based contribution to the SL community,” the definition of which depends upon your play style. Broad social interaction, creative building, compelling events – all of these are meant to be rewarded by the voting stations, for there is no singular definition of community contribution.

Each day Linden dollars are awarded from a pool based upon the percentage of votes a particular station receives out of the total votes cast in the previous 24 hours. Over time, the voting stations have been updated on several occasions but the goals and mechanics have remained largely the same.

Based upon the feedback in the SL Forums and my observation of current voting station usage it seems that the original goals are not being fully met. Namely, there is concern about “vote farms” or other practices which increase reward to a small group without increasing contribution to the broader community.

Furthermore, this behavior is exacerbated by the fact that it takes little time and effort to use the voting stations this way. The perception exists that you can game the system and game it easily.

I’ll also commend the community on what is a very thoughtful and respectful thread – there are lots of good ideas proposed and discussed. It’s an especially complex balance because as many of you point out, the voting stations don’t just exist in a vacuum, they are part of the larger economy and reputation system which run parallel.

So let me say that we hear you and are working on some designs to help resolve these questions. A component of this design will allow us to better measure resident behaviors and activity as opposed to forcing in-world actions (such as clicking a voting station).

We will use this information to help create a reward system which meets the three goals listed above. Additionally we’ll work to balance the reputation system and other aspects of the economy to ensure that different play styles have opportunities to prosper. Trust me, it won’t come down to trapping other residents in cages just to increase their dwell time on your property. Well, maybe if you’re in the Outlands but everywhere else it’ll be civil .

In the meantime we’ll be evolving the voting station design by limiting payouts to one voting station per parcel. If multiple voting stations exist on a parcel only the top vote getter will be paid.

I would also suggest that “vote farms” comprised of a series of small parcels full of voting stations are bad form since they force all residents to either join a vote farm or be swamped by the existing groups. If “vote farms” are discovered we’ll encourage the residents involved to remove their stations.

Thanks for your time and enthusiasm – let’s continue the discussion.

Thanks for the feedback Hunter. Always nice to hear from a Linden

I've moved my vote booth away from the farm, back to its original spot in front of my lab, and i'm not voting there anymore. It was a drastic measure. I'm glad it got a point across, but unfortunately i don't think everyone else there will follow and remove their booth. So, I apologize for the continued effect its making on the economy.

I feel like Dr. Frankenstein.

Thanks for the reply Hunter.

I am really glad to hear that things are in the works to make the situation better and that you are following threads like this one.

I don't really think the 1 booth per parcel will be very effective, but as an interim solution it might help.

Another related issue is the 10k pool all this money vote booth money is split from. I had convinced myself at least that this pool would get larger the more people were in world or the more resources that were added to the world. Is this not the case? When the move from fixed amount per vote ($30) to from a $10k pool first happened votes were still worth roughly $28 to $30 with exceptions on slow or busy days. Now the average is closer to $13 or $14 a vote, if not lower.

I like the location-based contribution concept. I don't think vote booths work towards rewarding that, but I think the concept is worth rewarding.

I also think there should be some way to get immediate and/or cash above taxes from the other aspects of the game. But I don't know how to do it so they won't be taken advantage of either. If you think rate mining is a problem now, implement a $10 reward for each positive vote someone gets.

About that last item on your list of purposes for the vote booths, I dunno how pheasable it is but a dynamic tour that went to the to each of the top vote getters for the last 7 days would be cool.

Since I started this thread I too want to thank everyone for their posts and Hunter for the "whats happening" on this issue. It is encouraging that its being looked at, if not examined.

The vote payments have reached lows of 10 /vote and the stipends (bonus really) has dropped by a third. The economy is not stable enough to make long term plans of large builds. Unless there is some way to understand the economy and be able to plan for the future there will be a constant problem with this game. I appreciate the Lindens recognizing this and addressing it.