VOTING NO

Being permabanned from the SL forums, I'm disenfranchised.

I can't put a proposal up for vote on the features voting page.

I think I can vote -- because the system shows my votes being used up when I try to use them.

But for the longest time I couldn't write and post a proposal! (Update:  mysteriously, this just changed???!!! Vote YES for Voting No, Vote 1242!)

Imagine that! Pretty silly stuff -- I'm sure they'll correct this some day. I may have to make a formal request for a change in the terms of confinement.

Of course, one of the requirements of the voting features page is that you first put your proposal in the forums. Not sure how many people really do that, but I'm going to try putting in that "forums URL" spot my own URL here and see if it flies.

I mean, why can't we vote no on the voting thingie? I was telling my son about how I was going to propose this feature, and explaining how on the voting feature thingie, they don't have a "no".

"Well, why do they call it a 'vote', then?" he asked, innocently. Smart kid!

In fact, I'm going to try again right now to post a proposal using not a forums URL but this URL because my hope remains ever alive that the Lindens will some day see the error of their ways and unpermaban me : )

My concept is simple: we need to be able to Vote No.

Every democracy in the world has the ability to vote "no". I mean, even a class in school has the ability to vote "no". Nobody should not be able to vote "no".

Our problem is that with these California social engineers (here I go again), we are conditionalized to optimize the positivity ratio to the proposal by mouse-clicking to move our optimalized choice to a higher ratio of retina-lock-in ratio and thereby inevitably and mechanically move the other proposals down "under the bridge" with "the trolls" -- Darwinian selectivity and somebody's brain neuron project at work.

But...we need to short-circuit all this Skinner's Box stuff and be able to say hell no, we won't go. I mean, a dom might get 327 of his subs to vote for p2p -- but that doesn't mean we should go along. It's popular, p2p. But it's sometimes useful to register a "nay" vote to give a clue as to what other populations might be considered (128/128 lottery problem for example).

If the Lindens could see that 868 people might vote "no" even if there is a hugely popular thing like p2p, that might give them pause for sure -- they might think, "What are we missing?" Indeed, even 127 or 42 might make them think a little bit.

It's called "feedback". We can't be endlessly accentuating the positive. We need at the very least to be able to use up some of our "credits" on a "no" (the 10 votes we can apply to ANY proposition is another silly feature but we can try to get around it another day).

The "no" vote does not cancel out the "yes". I'd puzzled why anyone would think that. It's just registering a "no". The "yes" may still "carry it". The Lindens might still think that if they have 327 votes for a proposal, they should just do the proposal, even if there are 329 or even 462 "nos". But I think it would just help them realize that this system is flashmobbed, gamed, and most importantly -- ignored by 93 percent of the people in the world -- if they could see the "nos".

I'm thinking that even if they put in "no" tomorrow, it wouldn't be used much. Would people want to use up their scarce voting quota on a "no" when it could be a "yes". Therefore, ideally, the "no" vote has to be accompanied by a stop of 10 "nos" -- otherwise they are still pushing us and prodding us and social-engineering us into going up the ladder of the positive.

Comments

[Prokofy Neva]

WOW! It worked! I knew I ought to give it a try when they re-did the website, who knows, maybe my ban at least on that part dropped out.

So here it is, vote Prop 1242

Prop: 1242 1 votes/1 voters/1 applied
Name: Voting No
Category: miscellaneous
Subcategory: other
Author: Prokofy Neva
Prop Date: 2006-04-09

Feature Detail:
We need to be able to vote "no" on this very voting feature. "No" votes are important to express -- and for game devs to collect -- for *feedback*. Many ideas appear popular but are flashmobbed or turn into popularity contests by people with agendas. There must be a way to express dissent. We need to have 10 "no" credits to apply to proposals we disagree with; this will be an important source of corrective for LL in implementing features they want and are seeking validation for in this imperfect and gameable system. Voting "no" is an important antidote to the gaming of the system by alts and groups under people's control. Vote Yes for Voting No!

Linden Notes:

You have 1 votes allocated to this proposal.
set votes to 0 set votes to 1 set votes to 2 set votes to 3 set votes to 4 set votes to 5 set votes to 6

[Squeedoo S.]

Whoohoo, good for you!

That's a pretty reasonable proposal there, Prokofy. (Yes, I agree with you on this idea XD)

Heck, I'll even vote on this thing, it doesn't make sense not to be able to vote against a proposal, and makes it a whole lot easier on the psychology! *thumbs up*

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I am tempted to open a vote to complete your ban ^^ not risking a lot of things since you can't vote no ^^

[Kanker Greenacre]

You could add your votes to this proposal:
http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=368

(Allow negative votes in the voting system so that we can vote against a feature being proposed.)

Not that it would make any difference.

[Prokofy Neva]

Kanker, one of the problems with this ridiculous voting system with its thousands of proposals is that even trying to study it, which I do occasionally, you can't see that perhaps you might be duplicating someone else's proposal.

I'm glad you made that proposal back when it was numbered 368, but how could I know that? You didn't advertise it in world -- and even if you did, maybe I'd miss it. I can't post to the forums so I couldn't post that I was putting this.

I'm not going to withdraw mine, simply because I have a different concept slightly -- to have a stack of 10 no votes to use in addition to the stack of 10 yes votes.

You have just one line in your proposal, and it's not clear how you'd do the negative vote -- to be using up one of the 10? to negate other people's yes? to be separate?

I'm not going to take the attitude that we should just assume "it wouldn't make any difference." This is very important, and we saw from the last town hall that Philip not only asks for proposals and their numbers, he references them by heart as if he's sat and studied them or at least made notes before the town hall. Scary!

I managed to get my question about why we can't have a "no" vote in -- and Philip read it and answered something about how they'd "consider" it.

Right now, you have 54 votes and mine has 11.

It's too bad they can't let you combine them more effectively -- but I suppose that's the subject of yet another proposal

[Prokofy Neva]

Wow, and look at this:

http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=615

Prop 615 says he was "rejected" when trying to propose the no vote and has a long essay about it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Oh, and this, too:

http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=326

Once I thought to search on the word "negative" rather than "no," I found this. Also proposal for equal number of votes for "no" to yes.

[Squeedoo S.]

Wow, ya know what? It looks like the "voting no" idea isn't even that new. I wonder why it wasn't put out into the public as such? There are at least three "voting no" proposals...

So strange. (For the public knowledge part, anyways.)

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, I suspect that of the literally THOUSANDS of proposals up there, there are lots of dupes, dupes that don't know about each other, don't have an opportunity to consolidate, and don't have a ready-made way to do that.

Like, if the tool itself enabled you to do bloc voting as in a RL parliament: "I will bring my 58 votes in my resolution over to you ". This might require all the 58 voters re-voting, not sure how to work this, but there are more possibilities here for cooperation and making it more like a RL parliament if they contemplate this.

You say it's not brought to the public.

Well..WHO would bring it? I've jumped up and down doing this myself. I used to offer completely free rental space to anybody who wanted to put up their proposition and illustrate it with a poster. I had few takers. I tried to convene meetings about this. Like all SL stuff, in this atomized society, it needs steady, persistent work. I had trouble finding the reason to bother with it. Now I have a reason, because I have my own proposal. So I'll work it to some extent.

The Lindens were shamed at the first couple resident meetings during our surge of independent political activity this summer, and put staff on the voting proposals thingie and they now answer it, and even do the things, if you study it.

They were motivated to do this to show "political democratic support" for p2p. They wanted that tool to be used -- misused, really -- to prove that it was "popular" so they could step on the powerful -- and legitimate! -- lobby of telehub owners and try to muscle them.

So, fine, do that,but put in no. I could have mustered 327 nos for the p2p proposal, too. That might have made them at least think, duh, let's leave at least those blue landing pads in, in those sims where they existed, i.e. in Infohubs, but then TAKE OUT the 128/128 lottery, forcing any one who typed in that sim's name to land in the Infohub at least. This would have been a fair and reasonable compromise.

For extra credit, they could have even found a way to deal with the 128/128 lottery on other sims equitably.

[Squeedoo S.]

Ugh, P2P. I hate that thing. It's embarrassing and awkward. :P

Anywho, hmm, that sounds a bit clearer about the "no" proposal. Hopefully, your present proposal wil get alot of ,um, "yes"es. XD (Because how can they vote against that?)

[Cenji Neutra]

See prop #639 - Change user voting system to allow rating of all proposals (no limited votes)

Which also suggests a scale from shrongly disapprove to strongly approve.

[Prokofy Neva]

I like that idea in some respects, Cenji, but I still think that "ratings" gives us too much of this tekkie-induced "rule of links" instead of "rule of law" -- whoever can get enough clicks gets to rule. A no is a no. I'd like it to count on a separate scale as a full-throated no, and not be washed out by a range on a spectrum that will merely be filtered out.

[Kanker Greenacre]

If you read carefully the proposal that I linked to, you might notice this line: "Author: Eric Eisenberg." I only pointed it out because I had some votes applied to it, and it's been there for a while.