Continuous VFM Rules

How should we adapt voter-funded media contest rules from the existing annual vote framework (like UBC 2006-2007 and 2007-2008) to a continuous online vote framework with monthly awards? Here are some suggestions:

Overlapping Monthly Cycle:

1. 6-month plan -- Contest administrators should always publish their general plans for the contest for at least 6 months into the future. For example, how long until the next serious review of whether the contest should continue? A long-term plan is not a firm commitment or obligation, but it helps participants make their plans and current decisions.

[Here we assume a calendar month cycle, with the March contest as example.]

2. Publish exact rules for March by February 15, including award pool, voting structure etc. [This gives administrators 2 weeks to assess and adapt to the January contest results.]

3. Contest entry period for March -- from February 16 through March 15. (Contestants could have the option to automatically renew their entry monthly until they cancel.)

4. Links to media from main contest web page -- created promptly after entry. Flag new entries from February 16 through February 28 to indicate they're not in the February contest; ignore any votes for them at the end of February.

5. Media can publish content via their websites and other means at any time, whether in contest or not (free press).

6. Voters can log in and vote at any time, but each has only one valid vote in the VFM system at a time. They can change their vote at any time.

7. Votes are tallied at the end of each month -- midnight March 31 for the March contest. Awards are paid to winning media soon after that.

Voting Structure & Award Determination:

8. Contest administrators decide the award pool for each month. E.g. suppose they decide $1000 for March.

9. There are many possible voting structures, including approval voting (UBC 2006-2007), interpolated consensus (UBC 2007-2008), and preferential voting which is recommended here because:

- It shares many of the advantages of interpolated consensus.

- It's easier to adapt for vote persistence (point 11 below) and changing award pools.

10. With preferential voting, administrators decide how the award pool will be sliced up into prizes -- e.g. 1st prize $400, 2nd prize $300, 3rd prize $200, 4th prize $100. Each voter ranks all the media contestants. The rankings are aggregated by one of several methods; recommended here are the Kemeny-Young method and Instant Runoff Voting.

11. Vote persistence (or vote decay) -- Since the array of media contestants is unlikely to change much from one month to the next, it makes sense to carry votes over from one month to the next. Votes could be allowed to persist for a fixed length of time, and/or they could be counted with lower weight (decay) as months go by. Slower decay (longer persistence) makes it easier for busy voters -- they don't have to refresh their votes so often. Faster decay (shorter persistence) makes it easier for new media to move up in the rankings. E.g. administrators could decide to let votes persist at 50% weight into the next month, then expire completely the month after that. The decay schedule for March votes should be published by February 15.

Contestant Eligibility and Content:

12. Entry fee -- As UBC has done in both years so far, we recommend charging a contest entry fee. This helps narrow the field to contestants likely to please voters enough to win a prize, thus easing the voters' information processing task. A fee of about 2% of the prize pool may make sense, so $20 per month for this $1000 pool example. (See blog discussion of entry fee.)

13. VFM is designed to be self-regulating, with ease of entry and competition to encourage media to check and balance each other. Competing media are better positioned than government-appointed administrators to expose conflicts of interest or deceptive content in the other media. Government power over media could undermine rather than support VFM's effectiveness. So a laissez-faire style of oversight is recommended, with little or no limitation on who can enter and how they compete. (Vote-selling should be prohibited though.)

For student voting, such an online system could be implemented in WebCT (which recently merged into Blackboard), in a Facebook application, or in a university website.