Re: Vote for 2008 Canadian Chess Player of the Year!
One doesn't have to vote many times to manipulate the vote. In fact, David himself writes:
"Now consider the fan poll which I introduced. The first year, there were 117 votes. Is a mainstream news editor going to publish a news release that is of interest to a few hundred people? No. So far this year, there are over 400 votes. Better. What I'd like is for each nominee to ask their friends to vote for them. I'd like Bob to email everyone at the CFC and ask them to vote. **** I'd like Larry to put a notice on CMA's web site asking all kids to vote. There's thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of kids across Canada who play chess. I'd like a large number of voters. **** [Tom O: asterisks mine] I'd like to show the editors that people in Canada play chess! Only then are we going to get media coverage. And only then are we going to get sponsorship."
Now, setting aside how foolish it is to have people who really might recognize at most only one or two names on the list to vote, it is obvious that manipulation would occur if someone, for example, gave the url of where to cast the votes and asked the readers of some popular website (probably not a chess website ;-)) to vote for X. It makes the votes of those like Lawrence who cast their vote carefully totally meaningless.
Incidentally, this argument that the NBA or NFL or NHL have such votes is completely off the point. The elite of these sports make millions, even tens of millions, annually. Part of their job is to put up with crap like this. Instead we get people in FIDE and the CFC wanting to put in all these professional codes of conduct without any sort of professional compensation. Rather one-sided, to say the least.
One doesn't have to vote many times to manipulate the vote. In fact, David himself writes:
"Now consider the fan poll which I introduced. The first year, there were 117 votes. Is a mainstream news editor going to publish a news release that is of interest to a few hundred people? No. So far this year, there are over 400 votes. Better. What I'd like is for each nominee to ask their friends to vote for them. I'd like Bob to email everyone at the CFC and ask them to vote. **** I'd like Larry to put a notice on CMA's web site asking all kids to vote. There's thousands, probably hundreds of thousands, of kids across Canada who play chess. I'd like a large number of voters. **** [Tom O: asterisks mine] I'd like to show the editors that people in Canada play chess! Only then are we going to get media coverage. And only then are we going to get sponsorship."
Now, setting aside how foolish it is to have people who really might recognize at most only one or two names on the list to vote, it is obvious that manipulation would occur if someone, for example, gave the url of where to cast the votes and asked the readers of some popular website (probably not a chess website ;-)) to vote for X. It makes the votes of those like Lawrence who cast their vote carefully totally meaningless.
Incidentally, this argument that the NBA or NFL or NHL have such votes is completely off the point. The elite of these sports make millions, even tens of millions, annually. Part of their job is to put up with crap like this. Instead we get people in FIDE and the CFC wanting to put in all these professional codes of conduct without any sort of professional compensation. Rather one-sided, to say the least.
Comment