Candidate cities for EBTM05

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avij
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Candidate cities for EBTM05

Post by avij »

edit: The city has been chosen, it's going to be Helsinki. Welcome :wink:

--------

Alright, looks like we've gathered all the available the candidates for this round, it's now time to start the voting process.

The candidates are:

Leiden, the Netherlands
Helsinki, Finland
Tampere, Finland


We can't use a simple majority poll to select the location because we need to take the nationalities into consideration as well. For example, if only a handful of foreigners would be able to join the meeting if it was held in Finland, it wouldn't make sense to organize the meeting in Finland even if dozens of Finnish people would like to have the meeting here. That's why I chose to use approval voting to gather some estimates about EBTM05 participation. There's a poll for each candidate city, and in the poll you should choose whether you'd be able to participate if the meeting was to be held in that city. We'd also need to know your nationality, that's why the yes/no choices are listed for each country. These are the voting topics: Leiden, Helsinki and Tampere.

Some people are likely to vote "yes" to all the polls, ie. all the places are OK to that person, and for that reason we'll need to have a poll that collects user's preferences among the options. phpBB's polls aren't quite adequate for this, that's why I crafted together a system which collects your preferences using the Condorcet voting method (we'll use the suggested SSD method to resolve ambiguities if needed). More information about this poll can be found in the Meeting location preferences poll.

These polls will run for 9 days, meaning that the polls will close at about 00:30 Finnish time on 28th December.

It's important to note that these polls aren't binding, they are designed to give some key input for the discussion about the location for EBTM05. The location will ultimately be chosen in the discussion that follows the polls, with the goal that we'd know the city before 1.1.2005. I think we can't write exact rules for determining the "winner", that's why I prefer to reach a consensus by discussion. The unfortunate fact is that we can't please everyone, but my aim is to select a location that pleases the most and is the most appropriate for EBT's goals.

Once the location has been chosen, the control for organizing EBTM05 will be passed to the organizing team in that city. The first task for the team is to select the date for the meeting because some people are already making arrangements for their summer holidays. The organizing team has a veto right to rule out some weekends, for example Finns are unlikely to organize (or participate in) anything during our midsummer festival on the weekend of 24-26th June. I'd suggest using the same Condorcet voting method for selecting the date. You should start considering the possible dates by yourself so that once the date poll opens, you'd have a clear opinion readily available and the date poll wouldn't have to run for too long.

This topic can be used for discussion about the polls and their results. The final results will also be posted and discussed here.

Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets! Please answer honestly to the polls! Please answer all the polls so we can get accurate data.
Last edited by avij on Tue Jul 19, 2005 10:37 pm, edited 7 times in total.
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Post by Fons »

I would like to have the meeting in Leiden, just because it's close to my hometown.
But if it's going to be Finland I would really like it to come if I can get some kind of flight which is cheaper than €100/€150
And a cheap or free place to spend the night.
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Post by avij »

Clarification, personal preferences (such as the one written by Fons) can be posted to the Meeting location preferences poll, this topic is for discussing some of the bigger issues, ie. things that affect more than one person.
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Post by giberski »

What is the score more or less now, I can of course count all the votes, but I'm not sure if that's it. I would like to know which city is most popular right now? Can you already give me answer?

Giberski
Main organiser of EBTM06: Amsterdam and national meetings in Zwolle and Leiden.
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Post by avij »

The poll isn't finished yet, and in addition to that the preferences poll still isn't active (shame on me). As I tried to tell in my initial message, we'll need to take various things into account, we can't just look at the numbers and be done with it. At the minimum we'll need to combine the results of all the polls somehow.

However, I can tell you the numbers at the moment, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the "winner" is indeed going to win, we'll determine that later on. This is just my interpretation of the results, some of you may have different interpretations and you're free to express your ideas about them.

A large number of Finnish users would accept Tampere as the EBTM05 host city, but I'm more interested in how the foreigners can join the event. Here are the statistics for foreigners (ie. non-Finns for Helsinki/Tampere and non-Dutch for Leiden) who approve or don't approve the host city:

Leiden: 23 say yes, 14 say no
Helsinki: 25 say yes, 10 say no
Tampere: 21 say yes, 15 say no

By using this method of calculation, Helsinki beats Tampere but the competition between Leiden and Helsinki is a bit too close to call.

Now the preferences part, this is a bit trickier to calculate. Although the official poll isn't open yet, I collected the following list of preferences from the postings. Some of the entries might be slightly off because I had to interpret some of the messages a bit.

Leiden, Helsinki, Tampere: giberski, Ernst, lmviterbo, BogPoet, N0W1K
Leiden, Helsinki=Tampere: Elmo, jabosa2
Leiden, Tampere, Helsinki: Fons, fjon, Osku-82
Helsinki, Leiden, Tampere: groentje
Helsinki, Tampere, Leiden: HNL, Mr Euro, CCCP, imleH, BaliBennie, Dakkus, haemoglobin
Helsinki=Tampere, Leiden: hoppa
Tampere, Helsinki, Leiden: Asiamaniac, Speukes, bhoeyb, Prisje

Let's use the following symbols for the candidate cities:
A = Leiden
B = Helsinki
C = Tampere

Based on the above information we get the following preferences table:
5:A>B>C
2:A>B=C
3:A>C>B
1:B>A>C
7:B>C>A
1:B=C>A
4:C>B>A

Now if we paste that table into the handy Condorcet voting service and check the Beatpath Winner option (which is equivalent to the SSD method that I announced I was going to use), we get Helsinki as the winner.

The poll is still open for quite some time, so things may change..
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Post by avij »

Please cast your vote in the new preferences poll!
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Post by avij »

41 users have already voted in the new preferences poll, I think we're close to closing the poll so we can make the final decision. I'm planning to close the poll later this evening, does that sound fair to everyone?

I recalculated the approval results that I published in my previous message. There were no significant changes, only one "yes" vote more for Helsinki.

Leiden: yes=23, no=14 -- 62% approve this city
Helsinki: yes=26, no=10 -- 72% approve this city
Tampere: yes=21, no=15 -- 58% approve this city

As in my previous message, only foreigners are included in those numbers, ie. Finnish people who would like the meeting to be held in either Helsinki or Tampere are not included in the numbers. If we don't limit ourselves to foreigners, we'll get the following table where the differences are slightly smaller than in the previous table:

Leiden: yes=33, no=17 -- 66% approve this city
Helsinki: yes=39, no=15 -- 72% approve this city
Tampere: yes=41, no=18 -- 69% approve this city

I'll wait for some more votes in the preferences poll, then I'll post its results for further discussion.
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Post by lmviterbo »

avij wrote:I'm planning to close the poll later this evening, does that sound fair to everyone?
A ONE-DAY poll?! Isn't that a bit too fast? I guess you should wait at least one week.
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Re: Candidate cities for EBTM05

Post by HNL »

lmviterbo wrote:A ONE-DAY poll?! Isn't that a bit too fast? I guess you should wait at least one week.
avij wrote:These polls will run for 9 days, meaning that the polls will close at about 00:30 Finnish time on 28th December.
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Post by lmviterbo »

I know the polls have been running for some time now, but the new poll or voting booth was posted yesterday if I'm not wrong.
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Post by avij »

lmviterbo wrote:I know the polls have been running for some time now, but the new poll or voting booth was posted yesterday if I'm not wrong.
Yes, on Friday morning. However, starting from December 19th it has been possible to express your opinion about your preferences by writing a message to that voting topic. All those opinions are now included in the poll results. We now have 42 people who have voted (either directly or via writing a message), which is about 75-80% of all persons who have expressed interest in EBTM05 by voting in the other polls.

I agree that we should have given a bit more time, but in order to decide about the date we need to know the location first. And some people are really itching to know the date so that they can plan their holidays, that's why I'd rather do this in a somewhat faster pace. There haven't been that many new voters during this evening, it's unlikely that we'd get more than 5 votes more if we waited for an extra week. Even if all those 5 voters voted against the current leader, the final result wouldn't change because the winning margin is currently quite large. In any case, I'll see what the situation is on Sunday..
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Post by lmviterbo »

avij wrote:There haven't been that many new voters during this evening, it's unlikely that we'd get more than 5 votes more if we waited for an extra week. Even if all those 5 voters voted against the current leader, the final result wouldn't change because the winning margin is currently quite large. In any case, I'll see what the situation is on Sunday..
Ok, wise and practical as always. :)

(Just as a side-note, my main concern was in fact the date and not the place. For the date, actually, there has been, as far as I'm aware of, only one poll, the one that's now on the voting booth. If those very few dates I might be able to go weren't available, I wouldn't even have voted on the location poll. Maybe there are more people concerned with the date out there :?: )
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Post by avij »

When I wrote the first message in this topic, my primary concern was what to do if we get conflicting results, ie. what if the preferred city poll presented city X as the winner, but city Y would be the city that got the most approval votes in the other polls. Now it appears that we didn't run into such conflicts so we can safely declare the winner in the EBTM05 host city selection process. It was unfortunate that the polls were delayed for about two weeks due to technical reasons, but now we're back on schedule and all the rough edges will be smoothed out. The next thing that will be decided is the date, see the EBTM05 date topic for more information.

Here are the final results. The meeting location preferences poll closed just a moment ago. Officially the poll was open from Friday morning to Monday morning, but it has been possible to publish your opinion by writing a message to that topic since December 19th. Most of the votes were registered on Friday and some on Saturday, with only one additional vote on Sunday.

This is a summary of the votes cast in the meeting location preferences poll:

A = Leiden, the Netherlands
B = Helsinki, Finland
C = Tampere, Finland

1:A=C>B
3:A>B=C
9:A>B>C
3:A>C>B
4:B=C>A
1:B>A=C
3:B>A>C
1:B>C
10:B>C>A
1:C>A>B
1:C>B
6:C>B>A

Overall preferences winner according to the Condorcet voting method: Helsinki

If only the votes cast by Finnish persons are taken into account, the winner would be: Helsinki (no surprises here)
If only the votes cast by Dutch persons are taken into account, the winner would be: Leiden (no surprises here either)
If only the votes cast by non-Finnish and non-Dutch persons are taken into account, the winner would be: Helsinki

I won't repeat the results that I posted a few messages ago, but as can be seen Helsinki is again in the lead in the approval votes, although the winning margin isn't that large. This just means that all the candidates would have been excellent choices for EBTM05, our problem was to select the best candidate among them. Some Finnish people were concerned that foreigners wouldn't bother visiting Finland, but if the poll can be trusted it looks like we're going to get at least as many participants as last time, which I suppose is a good goal.

Based on the poll results, long-term EBTM plans, discussions on IRC and the general opinion, I think we can declare that EBTM05 will be held in Helsinki. I think it'd be foolish to try to push for some other city, based on the input we've gathered this far. So there.

I'm aware that Helsinki might not be the optimal choice for some people, but as long as Europe is (at least) as big as it is now, there will always be people who can't join the meeting due to long distances or other reasons. On the other hand, this will be a very good excuse for some of you to visit Finland. I'd suggest using this possibility, because a) Helsinki is a nice city :wink: and b) it's probably going to take quite a few years before the EBTM is arranged again in Finland.

See you in Helsinki this summer :)
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Post by giberski »

I looking forward to meet all of you in this, probably, great city. Helsinki, thanks in advance for having us!
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