03 September 2016

Rockstar Genealogist(s) 2016 voting now open

THE POLL IS NOW CLOSED



Choose your favourites from a galaxy of stars from the English-speaking genealogy world. Let them know you appreciate their contributions.
If you've voted previously you'll see a change this year. To increase fairness voting will require access through your Google account. It will mean you can change your vote by signing in again with your account. If you don't already have an account, most of us do to take advantage of the many Google apps, sign up for one for free here.
By voting you help folks organizing a speaker program to know who is popular internationally and in different regions.
Tell your friends. Ask them to vote, suggest who to vote for and multiply the power of your vote.
What surprises will there be in this the fifth year of the survey?

Note:  The initial deployment only allowed one choice for Rockstar. That should now be fixed. You can return and edit your response to make additional choices.


21 comments:

Unknown said...

When does voting close John?

Unknown said...

When does voting close John?

Caitie G said...

Do we only vote for 1 person? I thought we could vote for multiple people? It will only let me select one person. Just want to clarify :)

Dianne Nolin said...

You say to choose as many fit our criteria, but the voting program only lets us choose one.
So do we only choose one, or can we vote for more than one?

arkessian said...

If I click on a second 'rockstar' the check mark vanishes for a previously selected one so in praxtive I can only vote for a single rockstar -- is this intentional?

DAK said...

I can't seem to select more than one person to vote for on the form. Did you intend to set it up so that we can only cast a single vote?

Double Karma said...

I posted my Rockstar Genealogist(s) 2016 choices in the comments boxes of the voting form

As the form only lets you pick ONE, even though the form says you can chose more than one

Anonymous said...

It's not letting me vote unless 8 sign in using a Google or Gmail account. Ehat about those of us who do not have or want to establish a Google account beczuse we use a different service? Are we not allowed to vote?

JDR said...

Anonymous. Yes, you need a Google or Gmail account to vote. It's easy to set up, and delete afterwards if that's what you want.

June said...

Its great that you do this, John but I have a problem with your voting methodology.

You are using what is usually referred to as Approval Voting. The problem with AV is that it does not let you indicate how much you like one candidate vs. another. The result is that that voting for anyone else besides your most favorite person can actually end up preventing your first choice from winning. AV can be modified with something called Range or Score Voting which yields a more accurate result of voter sentiment but I think Instant Runoff Voting is easier for most people to understand.

In IRV (sometimes called Ranked Choice Voting- RCV) You rank all your choices. In round 1 only first choices are tallied but if no one receives a threshold score (usually a majority when only 1 winner is being chosen), the person with the fewst votes is dropped and anyone who gave their first choice vote to that person has it transferred to their second choice. This process continues until someone reaches the threshold or until all choices have been exhausted.

I do grant that AV is a lot easier to tally. While IRV can be hand-counted it is a lot easier with a computer program several of which are publicly available. The bigger problem is usually getting the results into the computer program. If you'd like more information on IRV/RCV you can find it at www.fairvote.org.

mardi said...

I have a gmail account and signed in but the form is greyed out. Is there another website where you can vote? By requiring a certain account (in this case google/gmail) you are precluding many from voting and in my case it's just not working. People should not need to open an account they won't use and then delete in order to vote.

mardi said...

Even though I have signed into my gmail account, the form is greyed out, is there another website where people can vote? You are precluding people from voting in this method; shouldn't have to create an account and delete in order to vote. And in my case it's not working.

JDR said...

Mardi: Thank you for the suggestion. If you can point to a specific web based app which implements this type of voting, which is easy for all parties to use, protects against voting multiple times and makes the analysis of results fairly simple I'd appreciate knowing.

GeniAus said...

Thanks, John, for setting this activity up once more and for your efforts in modifying the voting process.

Unknown said...

Thanks for running this event again, John, and for your continuing efforts to improve the voting process.

Linda Stufflebean said...

When does voting close?

Anonymous said...

I went to a presentation by Janet Few this week and heard about this Rockstar thing for the first time. I am an amateur genealogist of some 28 years standing, mostly while living in Australia but am back in the UK now. I recognise many of the UK nominees and a few of those from North America. However, I barely know any of those nominated in the ANZ region which I find strange. How widely is information about this event disseminated?
Also, I don't think this is a very fair way of voting. There are several names on the list for whom I would vote if there were the option of, for instance, giving my top 3 choices. So I won't be voting. I wouldn't anyway because of the requirement to use a Google account. I do have one but feel that it's unfair and ludicrous to ask voters who don't to open a google account in order to vote.

Anonymous said...

I agree that is unfortunate a Google account is required to vote. A while ago I made an educated decision not to have a Google account and have no desire to have one now, even temporarily. Surely there is another way to control voting. I had a lot of fun voting in previous years but I guess you can count me out this year...

Hazel said...

I'm sorry that you are insisting on a Google account in order to vote. I know you say it can be deleted afterwards but it isn't that easy to escape the Google tentacles as I know from experience.
So unfortunately there is a wonderful genealogist in Kent who will be missing the vote I would have given her.

Anonymous said...

A more sophisticated ranking voting system would be good. Perhaps a way of voting against a candidate?

Jim Adams said...

Wow. Sorry I missed it. Next year Roberta