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I was talking with my husband Anthony about these awards, and
specifically the vote counting process. He has designed websites
before and enjoys doing it as a hobby. Last year he created a website
for online registration to a conference held by a nonprofit
organization I volunteer for, which was a big sucess. We both agreed
that a website designed specifically for voting would save huge
amounts of work and hassle when it came to counting votes.

Our idea, which is just preliminary based on a little bit of
discussion, and could be tweaked however necessary, would be a website
where voters would go, enter their votes on a form, and the website
would perform the necessary calculations of characters without spaces.

If desired, the site could automatically post to the group once each
day all the votes cast that day. Or all votes could be posted to a
database on the site. It would also be possible to allow nominators
to nominate directly on the site. Lots of different things would be
possible, and Anthony would want to have extensive discussion with
Ainae and the rest of the group to make sure it was just the way we
wanted it.

Anthony is willing to do the work involved. I know Ainae has server
space, so hopefully she would be able to host it.

The major benefit I see to this is cutting down the workload for Ainae
and all the staff. It would be a fair bit of work building it, but
once finished it would automatically take care of most of the tasks
that took so much time and effort this year. I know as one of the
counters, that pretty much all the errors came from human mistakes
such as typing a vote score onto the wrong line in a spreadsheet, or
making an error in transferring a total from spreadsheet to database.
We are already relying on a computer tally of the votes (throught the
Word character counting function), this would just eliminate all the
middle steps where the errors creep in. And if any questions arose
about the accuracy of the counts, we could always go in and hand count
as a backup.

So, Ainae, if you are interested in pursuing this idea as a
possibility, let me know, and I can have Anthony sub to the list and
talk to you directly about what he can and can't do.

Elana

How loud should I shout it? YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just a) didn't have the know-how, and b) don't have any money to pay
someone who does. Didn't want to ask and burden anyone, but if anyone
offers......I'd love it!

And yes, I have space to host it. (Though today that computer is being
obstinately offline, so banners are not available--as they are the only
thing presently hosted there exclusively. Didn't know it was offline 'til I
got to work, so can't fix it 'til I get home.

I'd have one concern: fraud. Does Anhtony know how we can better guarantee
that people aren't stacking the vote? There have been a lot of very smart
web developers at ASC working on making their awards secure when voting
online. It *could* be an issue.

Oh, and one other thing, which ASC does and we would want: votes done online
would also be forwarded onto the list. Is that workable?

Would Anthony like to join our group here? Find me on IM? Or join the Staff
group?

--Ainaechoiriel
MEFA Admin and Founder

"This evil cannot be concealed by the power of the Elves," Elrond said, "for
it is Windows-compatible, and freeware at that." --H.F.

http://gabrielle.sytes.net/mefa The Middle-Earth Fanfiction Awards
Blog: http://www.ainaechoiriel.blogspot.com



-----Original Message-----
From: angelabrooks@yahoo.com [mailto:angelabrooks@yahoo.com]
Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2004 1:39 AM
To: MEFAwards@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [MEFAwards] An offer from my husband



I was talking with my husband Anthony about these awards, and specifically
the vote counting process. He has designed websites before and enjoys doing
it as a hobby. Last year he created a website for online registration to a
conference held by a nonprofit organization I volunteer for, which was a big
sucess. We both agreed that a website designed specifically for voting
would save huge amounts of work and hassle when it came to counting votes.

Our idea, which is just preliminary based on a little bit of discussion, and
could be tweaked however necessary, would be a website where voters would
go, enter their votes on a form, and the website would perform the necessary
calculations of characters without spaces.

If desired, the site could automatically post to the group once each day all
the votes cast that day. Or all votes could be posted to a database on the
site. It would also be possible to allow nominators to nominate directly on
the site. Lots of different things would be possible, and Anthony would
want to have extensive discussion with Ainae and the rest of the group to
make sure it was just the way we wanted it.

Anthony is willing to do the work involved. I know Ainae has server space,
so hopefully she would be able to host it.

The major benefit I see to this is cutting down the workload for Ainae and
all the staff. It would be a fair bit of work building it, but once
finished it would automatically take care of most of the tasks that took so
much time and effort this year. I know as one of the counters, that pretty
much all the errors came from human mistakes such as typing a vote score
onto the wrong line in a spreadsheet, or making an error in transferring a
total from spreadsheet to database.
We are already relying on a computer tally of the votes (throught the Word
character counting function), this would just eliminate all the middle
steps where the errors creep in. And if any questions arose about the
accuracy of the counts, we could always go in and hand count as a backup.

So, Ainae, if you are interested in pursuing this idea as a possibility, let
me know, and I can have Anthony sub to the list and talk to you directly
about what he can and can't do.

Elana





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