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Manual voting: You vote for each article category on home page
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We had a lot of votes for "use an automatic system to pick the shortlist and then get members to vote on them".
This is exactly how we already do it.
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This is a tricky problem to solve.
Here is a personal example where I was disappointed with the results because it felt like a popularity contest more than the content of the article:
Winner:
Visual C++ and WinRT/Metro - Some fundamentals[^] By Nish Sivakumar
Second Place:
Guide to Image Composition with Win32 MsImg32.dll[^] By Paul Watt
It was a very close voting race, so many people had nice things to say about both articles and said they had a hard time deciding.
I spent 10 weeks developing the source, getting the concepts I was trying to teach correct, reworking, polishing and finally submitting. I published towards the beginning of the month, and I was pleased that 25% of visitors downloaded the source.
I admit Nish did write a summary of WinRT/Metro Preview at a very exciting time. However it was submitted three days before the end of the month and it was a short summary.
My article has done well, however, it always nice to win and get the extra recognition.
To know and not do, is not yet to know
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It would be icing on the cake if our article could win the monthly competition. We do not need to be bitter if we didn't get the prize. I understand how you feel because someone who put in less effort, won the competition. I wrote my XML library using the 2 man weeks of the X'mas holiday. My XML article lost only when my competitor got a few more votes on the 2nd last day. That didn't stop me from writing libraries and publish them as articles. We write articles because we love to share what we know. If I write articles solely for winning prizes, I would be a very sad man by now (because I lost more times than I won).
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Im with you, I do not write to win competitions.
I write to clarify my understanding and teach others. As well as create some pretty cool stuff in the process.
Winning is the icing on the cake.
I won a competition when CodeProject first opened, I won two T-shirts. I still own one of them.
Its a Visual Studio T-shirt, on the back it reads:
// Here is a pointer
// Real programmers use C++
To know and not do, is not yet to know
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Please stick to manual voting.
How you guys choose to be best on the monthly article contest is not clear? For example, On Last month contest, I see some articles should be on the voting while other with little content were part of the category. It's not worth to mention them but it's not fair to skip this issue as well.
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Let a members choose what they like 
Higher rating resource/article may not be ALWAYS best postings. it may happen there are 8 out of 10 article are good but member rate only two article.
Really, winners should be decide with the help of manual rateings
Rating always..... WELCOME
The only reason people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory.
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I'm totally agree with you. Then only after sometimes we can have much better resources.
If you've never failed... You've never lived...
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I think manual voting is the right way to do that and i always voted when i see something interesting in the contents of article.Why i don't like automatic voting is,it might loss a competition flavor.One having an average article says some of his friends and colleagues to upvote his content and thus he will win!
One more suggestion that i think about always,CP needs to add Best Tip to encourage tip writers,because often a tip suggest good solution to a specific problem.Isn't it?
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One reason is that when articles are read, the vote is typically given solely based on the information in that particular article. This is quite different compared to the voting situation when several articles are actually compared and put into an order. So the automatic calculation does not necessarily define the order correctly.
Another thing is that one may easily miss an excellent article. When the "contestants" are clearly brought to display each one of them gets an equal chance, regardless when it is published and so on.
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I think we should consider both rating and number of votes. Perhaps also page views.
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Mostly I look at the C# and Web Dev competitions, so YMMV. I banged this drum before, but IMO we need to pre-screen the entries, before we start to worry about the voting system.
In the last 6 months we've had at least one factually incorrect article make it to competition, at one point it was running second in its category. In a more recent competition, a blog entry post made the grade because a bunch of friends/colleagues/compatriots/family/whatever upvoted it. As a blog entry it was perfectly fine, it was clear, correct, concise and useful. Not bad, not brilliant either, but it certainly shouldn't have been in the competition against heavier "true" articles IMO. Surrounding these and several other articles have been suspicious voting patterns. Not cheating exactly, but pretty obviously voting for their friends/colleagues/compatriots/family/whatever, this is at the expense of often better written articles or those with more complex topics.
I'm actually against the idea of screening, something needs to change due to unfair voting practises, and this is the least bad option that I can come up with. This is a major worry for this site IMO. We've made Q&A a kind of Stack-Overflow lite, the forums are practically dead as a result of Q&A because people want a quick-fix not a discussion. So the only thing that really distinguished this site from others is the quality of the articles, and now the it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff as the voting system is being skewed by people voting for their friends/colleagues/compatriots/family/whatever.
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When I started professional coding, this was THE place to come with questions, or to look for articles and information. Well, actually there were a few guys at work I'd ask first, but if they weren't available, I came here, and everybody I knew came here.
Now, it is not much more than 'the lounge'. Your post should go somewhere else, before it is forgotten when this thread goes off the main page. You have very relevant concerns.
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I too have noticed the disturbing voting patterns. One of my articles won best of the web category a couple months ago even though I was the second-highest voted article. I appreciated that CP watched the voting and verified the entries. However, it seems like the same thing goes on to get the articles to the competition. Assuming the best here, I understand that you want your family and friends to vote you up. I work with 17 other programmers, some of which volunteered to get accounts on CP (shame on them for not having them, I know) just to vote for me. I discouraged it because it was not in the spirit of the competition but I know not everyone feels that way.
I too don't have a perfect answer but I voted for "Other" and suggested a system that based at least part of the final "score" on how much unique and repeat traffic the article brings in. CP is about helping people. Articles that help the most people should be rewarded. Maybe that is impractical for the monthly contest but I think it should be a consideration.
Another idea would be for the team at CP to have the last say (or maybe part of the say if you had multiple factors taken into account).
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To reassure you slightly, Sean screens all votes on the voting surveys before the winners are actually announced. Voter fraud always happens and always will. There's a limit to what we can actually do, no matter which way we go, but we do try our best to mitigate it.
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A combination of the two methinks -
Zerothly they need to be top decile by votes to even be considered and then the manual voting for articles from the cream takes place.
I would be worried about vote padding at either stage, but at both I think it would be unlikely. The final ranking would then be a combination of the two vote tallies using some complinated sums.
Reality is an illusion caused by a lack of alcohol
"Nagy, you have won the internets." - Keith Barrow
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It's ok for that to be automatic, it only really depends on how to handle the metrics.
This is an authenticated site, so it's pretty hard to fake popularity.
Anyway, what I think is that users different feedback should have different weights, mostly like it's already implemented on the user points.
So, an idea, and as it's already implemented, would be that the winner article should be the one that gave the user more points in a time interval.
The only problem I see here is that View won't count for anything.
Although I agree with it, because viewing an article doesn't mean it's good, there might be a problem/disadvantage for articles without any downloadable content.
An option could be to give a 0.1 of a point weight to Views...
Anyway, trials can be done before putting the final metric in prod, giving the chance to fine tune the weights comparing with the actual manual voted winners.
Cheers!
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I love the manual voting system for many reasons. Here are some reasons why I think it should stay
1. It seems fairer/more democratic somehow (I know this illogical, but hey that's my opinion)
2. There have been many many times when a article has slipped by my radar, and I only come across it, when the monthly competition has it, and I am like wow why did I not see this one before. I am sure I am not alone in this point. Would be a great shame to miss out on some great articles. I know this happens as my own articles generally get a lot more votes all of a sudden when a competition starts, and I a lucky enough to have an article in it.
Sacha Barber
- Microsoft Visual C# MVP 2008-2012
- Codeproject MVP 2008-2012
Open Source ProjectsCinch SL/WPF MVVM
Your best friend is you.
I'm my best friend too. We share the same views, and hardly ever argue
My Blog : sachabarber.net
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I Agree.
My question is how are the Final list of articles chosen ?
That may be where some are having problems.
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Some of the past articles that were in the list I could not vote on because,
I just plain did not understand the content or had no interst in the subject so didn't test the code and could not vote for it.
I can't vote for something just because it "Looks Cool" I have to know the code is solid and the article is well written.
If I missed the article the first time around then I can go and look at it.
Perhaps the number of votes should be withheld till the end just to avoid getting votes from those that just vote and say that one has allot of votes so it must be good, with out even reading or trying the code.
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In my opinion, votes should be manual, there should be judges and the categories must be restructured.
As I see, usually C# articles are the best overall articles simply because there are more C# readers on the site. I think the Best Overall should be removed altogether.
On the other hand, I think that articles should have special categories for basic articles separated from advanced articles. But I don't really know how well those changes will work for the site in general.
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NOOoo.... Best overall competition should not be removed before I win that priceless mug!!!
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A heck of a lot of people watch "Sesame Street" - but that's not the same as the best program on TV...
A lot of people watch Nicolas Cage movies. But he's not the best actor in Hollywood.
This message is manufactured from fully recyclable noughts and ones. To recycle this message, please separate into two tidy piles, and take them to your nearest local recycling centre.
Please note that in some areas noughts are always replaced with zeros by law, and many facilities cannot recycle zeroes - in this case, please bury them in your back garden and water frequently.
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A lot of people vote for a politician. But he's not the best for the country. He will do some poor decision ruin the country and then... we all die
Anyway the survey ask fro your preferred choice not for the best method
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I wish I could up vote you more than twice for this but I'm too idle to create another sock-puppet .
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