SUGGESTION: Hide WA at-vote counts until voting ends

[The North Polish Union]

A somewhat common complaint among WA regulars is the "lemming effect" where nations simply vote in favor of whatever the majority is at the time of their vote. This can be a source of frustration for both proposal authors and their opponents, and a good/bad early showing can be difficult to reverse. In some cases, various major regions/delegates have intentionally voted as soon as a resolution open in order to catalyze this effect and (indirectly) have an even more outsized influence on the final vote count than their delegate's endorsements would otherwise provide.

Hiding the vote counts until voting ends would solve these problems. Nations can no longer be "lemmings" without some other input.

I see a variety of other possible benefits to this. [AT VOTE] WA threads may be revitalized as nations come to check on them. Player-run projects such as regional WA programs would become more relevant. Additionally, players may even read the resolution at times.

[The Orwell Society]

But if you hide the vote counts, the author and co authors would be unable to see how their proposal is doing.

[Haganham]

and alternative would be to hide the vote count until a person has voted, like we do on the forums. And yeah, I agree its not a helpful practice.

[The Orwell Society]

and alternative would be to hide the vote count until a person has voted, like we do on the forums. And yeah, I agree its not a helpful practice.

That could work. But the results must be visible to the author at all times.

[Scottiesland]

I don't see why the author has to see the results the whole time? I mean, if you see the results after you vote then you'll see it then. If its about running campaigns for/against proposals then you can do those without seeing if its winning or not still just to be safe?

[The Orwell Society]

I don't see why the author has to see the results the whole time? I mean, if you see the results after you vote then you'll see it then. If its about running campaigns for/against proposals then you can do those without seeing if its winning or not still just to be safe?

True

[Panagouge]

Pretty sure the admins aren't going to change what has been the status quo since the literal founding of the World Assembly. I'm not saying "change bad, no change ever," though. Just that, realistically, this is something the admins are not going to touch.

[Scottiesland]

Pretty sure the admins aren't going to change what has been the status quo since the literal founding of the World Assembly. I'm not saying "change bad, no change ever," though. Just that, realistically, this is something the admins are not going to touch.

Yeah but you can say that about a lot of the game lol - how hard would this be to actually implement is what I am wondering.

[Malicious NPU]

If authors wanting to see the vote is a major issues, then Haganham's suggestion should solve it, although I suspect it would be a of additional work to implement.

Pretty sure the admins aren't going to change what has been the status quo since the literal founding of the World Assembly. I'm not saying "change bad, no change ever," though. Just that, realistically, this is something the admins are not going to touch.

With frontiers/strongholds admins are already working on changing the way that new nations interact with the site that has been around since the site's founding, so modifying long-established practices has precedent. In this case, the change is much smaller as well

[WayNeacTia]

Why? The lemming effect is essentially what powers the WA and it isn't going to change.

how hard would this be to actually implement is what I am wondering.

It took eons for admin and the techs to look at a script and determine it's legality. How how up on the board do you think this really ranks, seeing as how we have been hearing about a new forum for forever now.....

[Sedgistan]

This has been suggested since forever. I've never been convinced by the merits of it. Yes, there is a lemming effect. Why is that a problem? It adds a dimension to "gaming" the WA - getting your big supporters to vote early, and politicking - you can see easily who you need to lobby to try and swing a vote. Taking this information away from players seems like a step backwards.

[The North Polish Union]

This has been suggested since forever. I've never been convinced by the merits of it. Yes, there is a lemming effect. Why is that a problem? It adds a dimension to "gaming" the WA - getting your big supporters to vote early, and politicking - you can see easily who you need to lobby to try and swing a vote. Taking this information away from players seems like a step backwards.

I suppose that there are multiple viewpoints on proposals getting smacked down (or up) by a small group of powerful delegates within the first few minutes of voting. Not every proposal author has the time or resources to wine and dine the 100+-endorsement delegates into passing their proposals aside from the standard campaign TG, and I think that ways to level the playing field are beneficial.

If keeping the lemming effect is desired, perhaps a compromise such as displaying vote counts but not tabulating delegate voting until the end would be an option?

[United Calanworie]

This has been suggested since forever. I've never been convinced by the merits of it. Yes, there is a lemming effect. Why is that a problem? It adds a dimension to "gaming" the WA - getting your big supporters to vote early, and politicking - you can see easily who you need to lobby to try and swing a vote. Taking this information away from players seems like a step backwards.

I suppose that there are multiple viewpoints on proposals getting smacked down (or up) by a small group of powerful delegates within the first few minutes of voting. Not every proposal author has the time or resources to wine and dine the 100+-endorsement delegates into passing their proposals aside from the standard campaign TG, and I think that ways to level the playing field are beneficial.

If keeping the lemming effect is desired, perhaps a compromise such as displaying vote counts but not tabulating delegate voting until the end would be an option?

I do somewhat like this -- displaying a total of all votes (e.g. For: 4977 Against: 2835) without displaying "Pallaith voted FOR" is a nice middle ground between blocking regions that can command thousands of votes from stacking the vote and causing a complete lemming effect, r.e. something like "Liberate Confederacy of Layem." (not that, mind you, that was a bad thing in that case, but the fact that only 1k votes were cast against it speaks strongly to the lemming effect of *all* the GCRs stacking the vote as soon as it went up)

[Hulldom]

I don’t particularly think it matters if you blocked Delegate summations until the end. Pretty much all the bigger regions have some sort of voting recommendation. I think you’d be quite hard pressed to stop those being issued in any form

[Refuge Isle]

I don’t particularly think it matters if you blocked Delegate summations until the end. Pretty much all the bigger regions have some sort of voting recommendation. I think you’d be quite hard pressed to stop those being issued in any form

Further, if it were, it would almost certainly be replace by a player-generated solution that restored the functionality unless tremendous effort were expended to hide all happenings posts, along with deleting the World Assembly API and various shards of the others.

[The North Polish Union]

I don’t particularly think it matters if you blocked Delegate summations until the end. Pretty much all the bigger regions have some sort of voting recommendation. I think you’d be quite hard pressed to stop those being issued in any form

I don’t particularly think it matters if you blocked Delegate summations until the end. Pretty much all the bigger regions have some sort of voting recommendation. I think you’d be quite hard pressed to stop those being issued in any form

Further, if it were, it would almost certainly be replace by a player-generated solution that restored the functionality unless tremendous effort were expended to hide all happenings posts, along with deleting the World Assembly API and various shards of the others.

I specifically mention in OP that this would likely improve the utility of "Player-run projects such as regional WA programs".

And sure, a player-generated solution that restored the functionality could probably be created, but for the prototypical "lemming" voter that's still further engagement with the WA.

[United Calanworie]

I don’t particularly think it matters if you blocked Delegate summations until the end. Pretty much all the bigger regions have some sort of voting recommendation. I think you’d be quite hard pressed to stop those being issued in any form

Further, if it were, it would almost certainly be replace by a player-generated solution that restored the functionality unless tremendous effort were expended to hide all happenings posts, along with deleting the World Assembly API and various shards of the others.

If anything, we should be encouraging these player-generated solutions.

[Imperium Anglorum]

We shouldn't de-feature the game just to force players to build stuff on their own to replace features that were already stripped. It's like saying that EA is right to turn 1 game into 1 game and 800 DLCs because someone got 1 mod out of it.

[Refuge Isle]

We shouldn't de-feature the game just to force players to build stuff on their own to replace features that were already stripped. It's like saying that EA is right to turn 1 game into 1 game and 800 DLCs because someone got 1 mod out of it.

Literally this.

There is no reason to force a player-generated solution when the feature already exists. Many more player-generated solutions should be native game features already so that players do not have to pick up the slack. My only comment was that the WA's vote status is not something that can just be hidden or blocked off. Players would just recreate it using scripted observation. Since that's the case, there's no reason why they should have to when it's already in place.

[Princess Rainbow Sparkles]

Could it be spoilered in some way so people could easily access the info with a push of a button if they want, but also aren’t immediately confronted with a seeming landslide supermajority before they’ve even read the proposal?

[Haganham]

We shouldn't de-feature the game just to force players to build stuff on their own to replace features that were already stripped. It's like saying that EA is right to turn 1 game into 1 game and 800 DLCs because someone got 1 mod out of it.

Making people actually consider resolutions is hardily defeaturing the game. people put a lot of work into proposals... well mostly, and deserve to have them considered on their merits, not on what feeder voted first; and no one's going to make a tool to see WA votes before voting. The whole value to it is that other people see you voting early and follow you. That only works when it being visible is the default.

[Comfed]

I am in agreement with IA and Sedge.

[The North Polish Union]

We shouldn't de-feature the game just to force players to build stuff on their own to replace features that were already stripped. It's like saying that EA is right to turn 1 game into 1 game and 800 DLCs because someone got 1 mod out of it.

Literally this.

There is no reason to force a player-generated solution when the feature already exists. Many more player-generated solutions should be native game features already so that players do not have to pick up the slack. My only comment was that the WA's vote status is not something that can just be hidden or blocked off. Players would just recreate it using scripted observation. Since that's the case, there's no reason why they should have to when it's already in place.

(Responding to both you and IA)

As other people are noting, this doesn't necessarily have to be a de-featuring of he game or forcing a player-generated solution. Mitigating the lemming effect could be achieved in a variety of ways discussed above while still leaving the option open for those that want to see the vote counts to do so.

As I think on this, I'm not even convinced that having the vote visible is even interesting for the majority of players, other than the author and maybe some party wholeheartedly opposed to a resolution/region-members of a possibly-liberated region. I certainly don't know of anybody doing much interesting with that data, as opposed to things like issues data etc. What, if anything, is really being lost?

[Princess Rainbow Sparkles]

*snip*

Part of the reason for the feedback you're receiving is that the title of your suggestion is "Hide WA at-vote counts until voting ends"

There have been many good points about why preventing players from knowing the votes until voting ends would be bad for the politics of the game and also probably impossible because clever coders might develop work arounds.

I do think there's room to discuss whether it would be feasible to make the at-vote count less obvious. Right now the moment you go to the WA mainpage you see what's at vote and are immediately confronted with an infographic showing you how others have already voted. That's before you've even clicked on the title of the at-vote proposal to see what it says. Many of us have independent minds, but it is very hard work even for the most independent of minds not to be extremely biased when, before you even get your own chance to look at the text of what is proposed, you already can see that the measure seems headed for victory or defeat by an overwhelming margin.

I don't think it is feasible or proper to try to hide this information from inquiring minds "until voting ends." But at least shielding it so you have to click a button to call up that information (like is done with "Show Delegate Votes") would encourage and promote reading the text and trying to come up with your own feelings on the matter without the question being immediately prejudiced by a high contrast infographic.

If players want this information (many will) it is a feature that the game provides it in such a colorful way. But we could perhaps help voters think for themselves a bit more if we also gave them the option of not having their own views immediately and profoundly impacted by the blunt force of peer pressure.

Edit: As an aside: I would love if the current FOR/AGAINST bar that is displayed on the main page could be replaced by a filling (or draining) timer bar; to illustrate how much time is left to vote. Then, after you click on the proposal name, the proposal text appears along with the field for entering your vote, and below that is a button titled "Show Current Voting Statistics" which if pressed reveals the FOR/AGAINST bar, how your region/delegate has voted, and the nifty votes over time chart.

I have NO idea how easy or hard those kind of changes would be to make to the current system.

[Quintessence of Dust]

Though I highly doubt either will happen I like the original suggestion and CP's compromise of "hiding" it one click deep under a spoiler/link. Encouraging people to read the text is no bad thing.