Week 3 / Topic 2 Voting!

[aggienaut]

Tribal Inequalities

   At the close of this poll, the bottem 4% of Tribe 1 will be knocked off, 2.4% of Tribe 2, 2% of Tribe 3, 5.6% of Tribe 4, and 3% of Tribe 5. This is because the last person is being knocked off of each bracket and they consist of 25, 41, 51, 18, and 33 writers, respectively.
   Now I'm sitting very pretty since all I have to do is be better than at least one of the 50 other writers in Tribe 3, but I sure am glad I'm not vying with only 24 others, or a mere 17 in the unenviable position of Tribe 4.
   What did these writers do to put themselves in such danger? Merely have smaller friends lists!!

   I submit to you that THIS MAKES NO SENSE, and that the people with smaller friends lists should NOT be penalized. If anything, the people with the bigger friends lists (which again would include myself) should be the ones things are stacked against.

   I think the contestants should be divided into brackets of 33 or 34 each, based solely on friends-of size (no moving people around just because they got a lot of votes for their friends-of size, if they're good for their size they're good for their size).

/rocking the boat


   Having read through the writers in my bracket, I would like to recommend to the commentariat that the following entries are highly worth reading:
On the Topic of Things They Don't Care About:
lifeinamarble - Apathy Alert Table
boxsofrain - E. coli and S. pyogenes
hexkitten - Donkey Noises and How to Avoid Them
ka_crow - "My Apathy, Let Me Show You It"
sabbysteg - Things Sarah Palin Didn't Care About, But Should've
mshades - Some Observations Gleaned From Time Travel
darkprism - [Some Fictive Prose]
and of course...
emo_snal - The ITS/IT'S Rule (well that wasn't my official entry but I think I liked it better)
   So go forth and read these excellent entries and then vote for them.


Note to LJ-Idolators: While I've read all of Bracket 3 I've read very few of the other brackets. I hope to get around to it but in the mean time please advise me of entries I should be aware of! And again feel free to promote yourself in the comments!
   

Completely Unrelated Picture of the Day

Fun with sepiatone at the Irvine train station

Comments

[sabbysteg.livejournal.com]

Gracias for the link!

I think I agree with you about the friends-of, not the friends list. Though I am not sure even that is a good measure, since I know about 2/3 of my list of friends-of are inactive.

To solve that, randomly assign groups of equal or near-equal numbers. Mix it up every week. Or use a scientific sampling method to mix the groups up.

It amuses me how people get so worked up about this thing. I have some thoughts about strategy that I won't share right now...but the alliance thing, I know I haven't been approached and don't know what I'd do if I were. I am halfway between thinking it's silly and seeing the possibly necessity in the end game if you care about winning.

I've seen a few posts that hinted at someone not liking another contestant. That is always interesting to watch. It should be even more interesting to see how much worse it gets. I just hope I don't get swept away, even if that means I get eliminated early.

The voting off part is always so anticlimactic IMO.

Alliances

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah this alliance thing sounds silly. I think it should always just be about the quality of entries, and anything that subverts that should be avoided (though I like the moderator ("Gary"?)'s laissez faire nonintervention stance on things).

Also apparently last year fairly early on the brackets were completely rearranged so this current arrangement might be highly temporary.

Really I don't care what its based on just for different people to have such wildly different odds of being knocked off as it is now, and particularly for it seem to make it harder for the people who are already most disadvantaged, just seems really undesirable to me.

Re: Alliances

[sabbysteg.livejournal.com]

Quality of the entries is very subjective, but I guess I mostly agree with that. I am more inclined to vote for something that is creative and not the best writing (but has an AWESOME idea behind it) than I am to vote for good writing but kinda boring or been-done, though.

Nods. I guess I'd care more if I was in the disadvantaged group or if there was some big stakes up for grabs, but as is, I don't see much disadvantage to being voted off other than maybe pride or losing readers...you can still play the home game, there's nothing to win, so...yeah. I get what you're saying though.

Re: Alliances

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah I mean, its not like I'm stressing out about it either. And I'm in the most advantaged group so I ahve no reason to be. I just noticed the wild discrepency and thought I'd start a conversation about it by posting an entry about it, in hopes the moderators would take notice and consider the opinions expressed.

Re: Alliances

[sabbysteg.livejournal.com]

Have they?

Re: Alliances

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

In the latest greenroom, which I think may have been posted before this entry actually, he says "Btw - I have seen the questions asked about the tribes and hopefully I will be posting the answers as a "FAQ" either tomorrow or Monday."

So yeah. We'll see.

Re: Alliances

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

You also friended me.*g*

Would you mind if I commented here?

I do try not to interrupt conversations about Idol among contestants but there are a few points where I think my clarification might be helpful.

Including tribes being based on mutual friendings not just people that you subscribe to in order to read. Which I obviously wasn't all that clear about before.*G*

Re: Alliances

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yes certainly feel welcome to comment!

So you're saying it WAS on mutual friendings?

Re: Alliances

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

Yes.

We recorded the number when people officially posted their declaration statements, before people started friending each other so the number wasn't inflated by Idol folk.

I looked at your "friends" list before posting and went "Whoa!" because I knew that I had your number in the 200s, not in the 900s!*g*


and thank you.

Re: Alliances

[emo-snal.livejournal.com]

Yeah if things get as vicious later as some people have been intimating, and I'm still in the game, I'd imagine people are going to be kvetching about my huge friends numbers. But hey I like my friends list and my friends list is my own business, so they can kvetch away. On any account its been years in the making, I'm just.. friendly =D

Re: Alliances

[clauderainsrm.livejournal.com]

There are people who are going to play it that way. Most of them just like complaining and some of them, based on prior experience, will do it to (1) rattle you (2) to excuse that they aren't doing as well as they think that they should be doing.

People obviously enjoy what they are reading from you, which is why they stick around.