2010-02-18-15-23.txt

from:     Pam Giddy, Director POWER2010 <office@power2010.org.uk>
reply-to: office@power2010.org.uk
to:       hamish@gmail.com
date:     Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 3:23 PM
subject:  Fwd: Time for a strong finish

Dear Friend,

I've just received this email from Mark Ross - POWER2010's Head of Campaigns - and I wanted to share it with you.

As you can see from Mark's email, we've had an amazing response over the past month - we've counted more than 70,000 votes! But for POWER2010 to  represent you, we need you to vote for every issue that you support.

Please go back to our voting page and make sure you've supported all the ideas that you'd like to see in the POWER2010 Pledge. The polls close on Monday, so we're running out of time. Please vote now: 

http://power2010.org.uk/timeforchange



Thank you, and best wishes,

Pam Giddy
Director, POWER2010

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mark Ross 
Date: Thurs, Feb 18, 2010 at 13:01 AM
Subject: Time for a strong finish
To: Pam Giddy 

Hi Pam,

I'm sure you've been keeping track of the numbers, but I wanted to sum up for you how well things have been going. We're doing really well - over 70,000 votes have now been cast!

In terms of our strategy going forward, there's not much more you and I can do - it's in the hands of our supporters now. They need to vote for as many of the issues as they support and tell everyone they know to do the same.

Obviously we want people to vote only for the ideas they believe in so the Pledge will accurately represent the country's views, but raw numbers are still quite important. The more votes we get and the more supporters we have, the more legitimate we appear in the eyes of the politicians.

With only a few days before polls close on Monday, the one remaining thing for us to do is to keep our supporters engaged and energised.

Perhaps you can write them an email reminding them to keep voting?

Best,

Mark

2010-02-18-15-41.txt

from:    Hamish Allan <hamish@gmail.com>
to:      office@power2010.org.uk
date:    Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 3:41 PM
subject: Re: Time for a strong finish

Hi Pam,

I find your request to go back and keep voting very odd. If all your users voted for every proposal, it would do you no good: you'd have an equal number of votes for each proposal, so the voting would not help you choose five of them. So it's just as important for users NOT to vote for some things, as it is for them to vote for others.

Do you believe you have many users who've voted for some things, and who intend to vote for others but didn't get round to doing it? That may be actually the case, purely because of the design of your website. Each time you vote for something, it reloads the main page, and each time it reloads the main page, the order of proposals is randomised. Because there's no visual indication of which proposals you've voted for already, it's really difficult to keep track of which things you've voted for and which you haven't. In fact, it's difficult to imagine how you could design a system that makes it *more* difficult to keep track of it (except perhaps if it didn't even inform you that you've already voted for something when you try to vote for it a second time).

Basically, the way you've designed your site means you can't really derive that much useful information from it. This email you've sent out -- requesting your users to go back and vote more -- is a tacit admission of this. You can't distinguish between a vote which has not been made because the user got fed up with your website, and a vote which has not been made because the user doesn't care about the issue.

Why not just have all the proposals in a list, with two buttons next to each -- "I care about this" and "I don't care about this" -- which visually indicate any votes already taken? Better yet, allow people to fully order the proposals according to their importance.

It's a great shame because I think your heart is in the right place, but your voting system is just plain unusable, which leaves your results statistically invalid.

Best wishes,
Hamish

2010-02-19-16-37.txt

from:    the Power2010 team <office@power2010.org.uk>
to:      Hamish Allan <hamish@gmail.com>
date:    Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 4:37 PM
subject: Re: Time for a strong finish

Dear Hamish,

Thanks for your feedback.

We are just letting people know they may wish to vote for additional reforms other than those they have already voted for. 

If people wish to have a record of what they have voted for, then we can send this to them.

Kind regards
Ghazal
Power2010 team

2010-02-19-17-15.txt

from:    Hamish Allan <hamish@gmail.com>
to:      the Power2010 team <office@power2010.org.uk>
date:    Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 5:15 PM
subject: Re: Time for a strong finish

Hi Ghazal,

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 3:37 PM, the Power2010 team <office@power2010.org.uk> wrote:
 
> We are just letting people know they may wish to vote for additional reforms other than those they have already voted for. 

One of my main points is that if people don't already know that, then your voting system is not actually recording what you want it to record.

Do you have anyone on your team who knows anything about statistics? If so, could you please forward my email to them?

Best wishes,
Hamish

2010-02-23-12-57.txt

from:    the Power2010 team <office@power2010.org.uk>
to:      Hamish Allan <hamish@gmail.com>
date:    Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 12:57 PM
subject: Re: Time for a strong finish

Dear Hamish,

Thanks for your feedback, it has been duly noted.

Thanks
Ghazal
Power2010 team

2010-02-23-13-23.txt

from:    Hamish Allan <hamish@gmail.com>
to:      the Power2010 team <office@power2010.org.uk>
date:    Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 1:23 PM
subject: Re: Time for a strong finish

On Tue, Feb 23, 2010 at 11:57 AM, the Power2010 team <office@power2010.org.uk> wrote:
>
> On 19 February 2010 16:15, Hamish Allan <hamish@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Do you have anyone on your team who knows anything about statistics? If
>> so, could you please forward my email to them?
>
> Thanks for your feedback, it has been duly noted.

Yeah, didn't think so ;) Good luck anyway!

H