With the SFU Voter Funded Media contest finished until September, I thought I'd offer some of my thoughts about the contest.
I'll start by noting the VFM contest was the motivation for Patrick and I to create this blog in the first place. We figured it'd be fun to do, and the almost certain promise of cash winnings at the end of every month certainly didn't hurt either. Perhaps Mark Latham can hold up Instant Blog as a success story in some small way.
However, as Patrick discussed, the contest ultimately rewarded those who could get the vote out, rather than who had the best content. Clearly, a critical mass of voters needs to be reached before the vote is any true reflection of the quality of the content. But given how few people are interested in student politics -- if SFU voter turnout patterns are any indication, it's usually 5-8% of the student population -- it's going to be difficult threshold to reach. And until that threshold is reached, it will be difficult to find contestants willing to take the VFM game seriously.
Beyond the problem of participation is the issue of voting. The voting procedure for the SFU VFM contest is too complicated, and needs to be drastically simplified to encourage people to vote. How simple? I need to be able to cast a vote with at most three clicks, period. If we want to encourage people to vote for content they find interesting, then we must make the process so simple that it's not seen as a chore. I would also suggest ditching the 1-10 ranking scale for perhaps a 5-star rating.
Finally, I think a Voter Funder Media portal should be created in order to help promote all the contestants. I'm thinking something akin to Liblogs or Blogging Tories, where blog posts can be aggregated and contestant profiles can be featured. That way, we could promote VoterMedia.org as a brand, just like Liblogs and Blogging Tories. Having a slick, one-stop web site would be a great way for new readers to get acquainted with the system, and the contestants.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Thanks Johnny for your advice on how to improve the voter-funded media contest. Although I’m pleased that the SFU VFM contestants produced quite a bit of insightful content, I certainly agree that we have not succeeded in making enough people aware of it yet. We need to at least reach the stage where content-driven voting exceeds friendship-driven voting.
I think the dominance of friendship-driven voting is natural in the early stages of the slow-start VFM design that I’ve been trying at SFU. The prizes reward contestants for votes, and it’s easiest to get votes from your friends, so most started with that strategy. Attracting content-driven votes is harder at first, but can bring more votes in the longer run.
We can contrast UBC VFM contest, which I launched with a much bigger one-shot injection of cash awards ($8000). That immediately rewarded the media enough to make the extra effort to get more than just their friends voting. They did this not only by their content, but also by promoting their blogs with paper flyers, newspapers and Facebook promotions (groups, message campaigns etc). So more funding for SFU VFM would clearly help.
I agree we need more contest promotion in addition to what the contestants do themselves. Your blog aggregator portal suggestion looks great – I’ll learn how that works and see about implementing it. I’d appreciate any advice on this (software/web tools etc.). Also, before relaunching SFU VFM in September 2008, I plan to ask the SFSS for help in promoting the contest. (They preferred to stay at arm’s length until now, to minimize the risk of CFS legal challenges.)
I would love to simplify the voting process. I agree that’s key for increasing voter participation. But building a custom system is costly, and we need it to be integrated with SFU login control. So it’s much easier to use existing SFU tools. Finding more streamlined tools is on my to-do list; if anyone has ideas here, that would be helpful. (I’ve made a note to try 0-5 rating instead of 0-10 rating.)
Post a Comment