$1500 Stretch Goal B - Community Group Song - Poll Up!

[Will Guide 21,360]

@Jeric

So wait. Who will be singing the winning song?

[Cloudz 40]

8 hours ago, Will Guide said:

@Jeric

So wait. Who will be singing the winning song?

We all will  be.  Time to tune up those vocal chords!

[Jeric 46,851]

Smile ran away with it. I’ll be catching up on MCM reward posts over the weekend and will have a detailed explaining of how to record and deliver audio files. 

[Feather Spiral 1,892]

....Bruhhhhhh how did Smile rush right ahead by 20+ votes within literally a day? Winter Wrap Up was still in the lead when I last checked, just yesterday morning

[Courageous Thunder Dash 7,824]

Everyone wants to do Smile...I can volunteer to do the instrumental if need be

[Ganondorf8 11,298]

The Smile Song ended up taking it. Can't say I'm surprised given that it took the lead and ran away with it.

[Feather Spiral 1,892]

On 1/4/2019 at 10:40 PM, Ganondorf8 said:

The Smile Song ended up taking it. Can't say I'm surprised given that it took the lead and ran away with it.

I can't be the only one who was shocked to see it take the lead to begin with, in no more than one day

[Ganondorf8 11,298]

7 hours ago, Feather Spiral said:

I can't be the only one who was shocked to see it take the lead to begin with, in no more than one day

The song is very popular amongst the fandom so seeing it win isn't a surprise. What would have been surprising is it not having been one of the options.

[Quinch 1,120]

Hmmm, so where do we go from here? 

[Feather Spiral 1,892]

8 hours ago, Ganondorf8 said:

The song is very popular amongst the fandom so seeing it win isn't a surprise. What would have been surprising is it not having been one of the options.

I get that, there even was a charity collab of it already, if memory serves me right.

What I meant is, Winter Wrap Up is both more (obviously) in theme with winter and was in the lead for a very long time just a day before. I wasn't surprised to see it win, I was flabbergasted to see it rush ahead within the last day of the vote after lagging behind for so long.

This whole thing between Winter Wrap Up and Smile is like The Tortoise And The Hare, but in this case Mr Bunno wakes on time and beats Mr Shello... by a large margin.
(if it'd been a narrow win, I would've said "by a hare's breadth" ...I am not sorry)

[Jeric 46,851]

On 1/10/2019 at 12:24 PM, Feather Spiral said:

I can't be the only one who was shocked to see it take the lead to begin with, in no more than one day

I’m shocked it took as long as it did to swing. That last period I shifted the poll to the main page where people can vote without having to read posts. The casual community voters typically vote that way and aren’t swayed by posts within the topic, but that isn’t main reason that vote shift happened. There are two concurrent reasons that played perfectly into each other to change the outcome (as it has in the past). 

There is a phenomenon related to small sample size bias: the smaller the sample size, the less accurate a measurement of data becomes. Since I pushed this to the front page to increase the sample size I suspected the final data would change. 

Finally, this was a multiple choice poll, which never favors the first selection. It sidesteps first choice popularity and typically elevates the most popular second choice as the winner. 

I have a feeling that if this was set up any other way then the winner would be very different. 

[Feather Spiral 1,892]

2 hours ago, Jeric said:

It sidesteps first choice popularity and typically elevates the most popular second choice as the winner.

...Wait, hold on, I'm confused by this bit.

Is that something built into the poll's code, putting the second highest-voted option on top? Or do you mean, the voters' subconscious pushes them to (partially) "go against the herd", so to speak, and not vote for the most popular?

[Jeric 46,851]

4 hours ago, Feather Spiral said:

...Wait, hold on, I'm confused by this bit.

Is that something built into the poll's code, putting the second highest-voted option on top? Or do you mean, the voters' subconscious pushes them to (partially) "go against the herd", so to speak, and not vote for the most popular?

It’s a statistical phenomenon when you have pools of 6-12. Imagine a population of voters. In a single or first past the post type system you have one option so you vote your fav and that’s it. In a multiple choice ballot people vote their fav and next favorites. More often than not the most popular one doesn’t win, it’s the one that most people can live with. 

 

[Jeric 46,851]

Another way of looking at it is the early voting for the World Cup. People voted for three characters out of a group of 16. In a few cases the obvious winner of a head to head came in second or third of this type of poll. It’s because while the secondary character would win 35% of a vote in a head to head she may actually get 80% of all voters picking the character in a multiple choice as their personal second or third favorite. Same thing happened here. It wasn’t noticeable or applicable until more people voted which is why I put polls on the front page of they don’t have enough votes to create a statistically significant sample of active users. 

[Feather Spiral 1,892]

Alright, I'll hide the "rambling on" part of my post to avoid too much cluttering (but I can't include a quote in spoilers for some reason)

Spoiler

For the record, I already know about the Small Number Bias, there was no need to explain that in so much detail. I took statistics and probabilities way back in high school, where I learned a "Rule of High Numbers" if memory serves me right. Afterwards at the uni, our professors taught us about p-values and insisted on the importance of statistical significance.

I should've specified way sooner, it was only the psychology aspect I was inquiring about...

That kinda makes sense, I can understand that it happens - though I have difficulty believing it's so common as to justify such a dramatic change, because I never do that. Maybe I'm just in a minority who actually thinks things through before making a decision. There's a lot of trends that make no sense to me for that reason, but that's another topic...

And speaking of trends, does that mean the Smile song won due to being a brony meme already? Because-

19 hours ago, Jeric said:

where people can vote without having to read posts. The casual community voters typically vote that way and aren’t swayed by posts within the topic

Spoiler

-it only just occurred to me to react to this.

I wasn't thinking about the content of posts, but rather being aware what the poll was about. Hence why earlier, I brought up Winter Wrap Up being more "in theme", not popular or liked etc.

Correct me if I'm mistaken, but putting the poll on the front page still lets you read the thread title, with the subforum underneath, doesn't it? Since voters knew this was about the Christmas event, I thought, they'd pick the song based on relevance to Christmas and/or winter. As opposed to a slew of other generosity- and kindness-related songs about being good to those in need, or being "Awesome" through rebellion (was surprised to see that one, Gala and Showstoppers in the poll)

Then again, there already was the staff group song, where the poll had Winter and Christmas/HWE titles... so maybe you guys avoided that on purpose this time?

Rambling over, more to the point now: how's this gonna go?

Roles for example - is there gonna be a poll, or a draw, to pick the soloists; assuming everyone sings the chorus?

Or the recording - am I right to assume we'll be sending a voice clip each, singing on our own, and someone will edit them together?
I don't presume it'll be possible to get all of us, living in different timezones with various schedules (and awkward family noises for some), together on the discord VC. I can presume, though, that when you set this prize for the stretch goal, you already knew who would be mixing the whole thing.

Edited January 13, 2019 by Feather Spiral

[BornAgainBrony 2,397]

So, is this still being planned?