namelesshere
Reader
I agree - ranking is probably more complicated than voting. All we'd have to do at the back end of that is count up...
And on that note I'm very happy to muck in with any of the "admin" needed with any of this.
WLF Prize in Literature 2021
- Thread starter Bartleby
- Start date
I agree - ranking is probably more complicated than voting. All we'd have to do at the back end of that is count up...
And on that note I'm very happy to muck in with any of the "admin" needed with any of this.
Bartleby
Moderator
in the case of ranking the entire nominations, that’s why I suggested us not being able to put our candidates on the top three
I’m sorry I don’t understand this point... I think the 3 nominations is just so we can have more options to choose from (and in case our candidates overlap with other members’ nominations we don’t end up with a very limited list of nominees).
Yeah I see this voting form the most reliable one. Except I’m not sure there needed be anonymous votings, unless that’s a general concern, so we should go for it...
And no worries about having posted similar things
Bagharu
Reader
I get that, we will nominate more to have variation and more options. I thought we should nominate those we think are truly deserving. So suppose I have nominated Carson, Adonis and Ngugi, if it is a requirement that I have to rank them, what happens if I can't rank them? What if I think all of them are equally deserving? And if I can rank them, why would I nominate all of them when I clearly see one of them is more deserving than the others? Does it not make the whole point of nominating authors whom I think should be the winner pointless?
I thought we will nominate those who we believe deserve to be awarded, not just to add more options to select from.
Edit: that's why I am opposing ranking, and trying to convince others for 5 votes of equal value.
Last edited:
Bartleby
Moderator
I get what you say. I thought of nominating 3 to make things more diverse, but also those three would be ones we thought deserving to be the winner.
As for the ranking (if that would be to happen), well, that would be a choice we’d have to make (I know my three candidates, even tho I find them all deserving, have clear ranking positions; to me that comes easy, but I can understand it not being so for you or others tho). In the end our candidates may probably not even end up in the shortlist. Compromises will have to be made...
and either way the ranking would not be for the nominating part (as I understood it) but for the choosing of the shortlist. So at first we would just name three names, without rank, so as to form a long list of nominees from everyone’s suggestions (at least that’s what I had envisioned in the beginning, but again, it can be revised).
Last edited:
Bartleby
Moderator
Ok, so since we’re just waiting for one member who had previously said was going to participate to answer that first proposal for the rules (anyone else can still join tho), and disregarding the recently raised problem about voting that we should solve soon, I’ll give my personal opinions:
1. Keep it to the living
2. Yes
3. Three
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Three
7. At least one. More would be nice.
8. Yes
1. Keep it to the living
2. Yes
3. Three
4. Yes
5. Yes
6. Three
7. At least one. More would be nice.
8. Yes
Cleanthess
Dinanukht wannabe
Since there seems to be an emerging consensus about all aspects of the process other than voting, a few thoughts about it.
When choosing the winner from the names in the shortlist, I don't think we should vote for any of our candidates if they make it into the shortlist. If I'm just going to end up voting for my proposed writer, why bother reading books by the other names on the shortlist? Also it leads to people getting personally invested in having one particular writer winning (theirs).
Second, based upon how the shortlist is going to be decided (the writers with the most nominations initially) it might be a good idea to keep secret the names of the nominated candidates until all participants have submitted their lists (or a deadline is reached, whatever happens first). Then the nominations can be tabulated. One advantage of limiting the shortlist to three is that there would be at least two, likely three, writers nominated more than once.
If there are more than three writers with enough nominations to move into the shortlist, at that point in time we can decide how to proceed with the tie-break; obviously if there is one writer with 3 nominations, say, and 5 with two nominations, the writer with 3 moves into the shortlist and we just do the tie-break process for the other five. Among the options available to settle the tie are: picking the names out of a bag, giving precedence to the oldest writers, having a popularity contest where we potentially choose the candidates moving to the shortlist based upon name recognition only (without reading their books first), etc.
The nightmare scenario when it comes to the shortlist is that we end up with 50 proposed names, all nominated just once.
When choosing the winner from the names in the shortlist, I don't think we should vote for any of our candidates if they make it into the shortlist. If I'm just going to end up voting for my proposed writer, why bother reading books by the other names on the shortlist? Also it leads to people getting personally invested in having one particular writer winning (theirs).
Second, based upon how the shortlist is going to be decided (the writers with the most nominations initially) it might be a good idea to keep secret the names of the nominated candidates until all participants have submitted their lists (or a deadline is reached, whatever happens first). Then the nominations can be tabulated. One advantage of limiting the shortlist to three is that there would be at least two, likely three, writers nominated more than once.
If there are more than three writers with enough nominations to move into the shortlist, at that point in time we can decide how to proceed with the tie-break; obviously if there is one writer with 3 nominations, say, and 5 with two nominations, the writer with 3 moves into the shortlist and we just do the tie-break process for the other five. Among the options available to settle the tie are: picking the names out of a bag, giving precedence to the oldest writers, having a popularity contest where we potentially choose the candidates moving to the shortlist based upon name recognition only (without reading their books first), etc.
The nightmare scenario when it comes to the shortlist is that we end up with 50 proposed names, all nominated just once.
Bartleby
Moderator
Thanks for the opinions.
well about the second paragraph, I personally don’t think we shouldn’t be able to vote in the end for a candidate we had previously nominated; the idea being that we should read the shortlisted writers’ works, trying to go blindly into this process, having our discussions about our readings, in which we should be able to explain to each other our takes on what we’ve read, potentially changing our minds on the way, and then voting based on that.
The third paragraph. I thought it would be nice to have us nominate publicly, so we could try to sell our candidates, as it were, trying to convince others to vote for them.
your last paragraph is why I don’t particularly see the idea of the shortlist coming from the number of nominations for a given writer alone, instead of having us vote for the shortlist based on the list of nominees.
but then again, that’s all just me, whatever’s the majority’s opinion should be fine
In the end all that matters is that we would have a chance of discussing Literature together!
nagisa
Spiky member
I must admit I'm not at all convinced by this point because I don't feel the same deep seriousness about ranking my three nominations, but we can drop the ranking if it makes things easier.
(the amateur psephologist grumbles something in his sleep about Condorcet and Arrow paradoxes)
nagisa
Spiky member
Hence the rankings... But is there seriously a case where everyone will nominate all different authors?
Last edited:
namelesshere
Reader
I'd be very surprised if so... though I suppose this possibly depends on the final number of people who actually participate. The more people the more nominations the greater the likelihood of crossover nominations.
We could always try it one way and if it doesn't really work do it again the other way.
Bartleby
Moderator
Well, I don’t know, it could happen; As I said, when you first talked about ranking, I thought you’re talking about a voting system on all the nominated names so we could end up with the three writers to read... besides, I think it’s more fair to have everyone expose their candidates, convincing others to vote for them, so they could have a chance — for instance (and this is a supposition), I remember @DouglasM talking highly of Milton Hatoum; he could go on and nominate the author; but he would probably be the only one doing so, therefore Hatoum wouldn’t even get a chance of being considered.
that’s why I thought about first nominating three authors, stating the cases for them; then gathering all these writers into a sort of longlist (the ones that were nominated more than one time would appear only once on the list); then having us all voting for them, either by three votes by member, or by ranking the entire list (and since the problem of having three votes could lead to us voting for our candidates only, we could stipulate that we couldn’t vote for the ones we ourselves nominated, or maybe not unless someone else has nominated the same writer — or that we couldn’t put them on the top of the ranking, if we are to use a ranking list; in this sense I can see ranking the list working better, even if it would be sort of a pain to count the votes hehe).
BUT
BUT
we could do as @namelesshere suggested and try the way you suggested first, then, if it proves not to work, we switch to another way.
Last edited:
Bartleby
Moderator
with 19 people having provided full answers to this and two having given some suggestions, so far the data collected from the above proposition is as follows:
Point One
Those who voted for deceased writers within a decade to be allowed to being nominated were 7 (with one going for a period of five years, but allowing for ten, so I counted the vote here).
One person said he'd prefer living authors only, but would concede to allowing those very recently deceased ("if deceased, the shortest possible period."); another said "living or recently deceased"; so I counted their votes as two: one for recently deceased, another for living.
Those who went for the living were 12
Even without the two double votes, it seems only living writers allowed to being considered is the majority opinion (if you disagree on the reading of the data, let me know).
Point two
All agreed that only writers who haven't received the Nobel Prize in Literature should be considered.
Point Three
13 (out of 20) people went for 3 nominations per member, thus creating a majority.
Point Four
13 people agreed on members being allowed to nominate writers others have already nominated, thus creating a majority.
Point five
it's about voting for the creation of a shortlist, which is still being debated.
Point six
11 people opted for a shortlist of 3, thus creating a majority.
Point seven
16 people clearly agreed one book at least should be read in order to members being allowed to cast a final vote (with a few adding more books read would be nice)
Point eight
16 people clearly agreed at least one book should be readily available in English so that writers can be nominated.
The contributions to this result, with the respective links to their votes, came from: Stiffelio, Americanreader, hayden, nagisa, tiganeasca, Verkhovensky, lucasdiniz, Bagharu, peter_d, Johnny, Uemarasan, Cleanthess, DouglasM, redheadshadz, Leemo, errequatro, kpjayan, Stevie B, namelesshere, Bartleby
And that's it so far; anyone should feel free to count the votes for themselves, in case I made some mistakes (after all I'm only human
), and again there being any disagreement on the result, let us know! Thank you all for helping in this first process; now we're in need of deciding on the creation of the shortlist. Any input about it will be greatly helpful so we can move to nominating!!
Last edited:
Bartleby
Moderator
I’ve opened up a poll about the nominating process, gathering what seemed to be the two different stances on this matter, with the following propositions:
1. At most three writers should be first nominated, with each member presenting here their case, and then, with a long list of nominees, we would proceed to voting or ranking the authors (the decision on either way will be made later in another poll if this option is to be voted by the majority) in order to create a shortlist.
2. We would each nominate at most three writers, preferably ranked, the three with most overlapping nominations being the ones making it to the shortlist.
In the poll, for concision’s sake (read I’m too dumb to narrow down the above statements into short sentences) I’ve written only Option One and Option Two, so read this post carefully — don’t worry, I’ll bebothering providing you with a DM so you won’t miss it.
And if you think there should be yet another, different approach to this whole procedure, please say, so I can reset the poll, adding your option there.
1. At most three writers should be first nominated, with each member presenting here their case, and then, with a long list of nominees, we would proceed to voting or ranking the authors (the decision on either way will be made later in another poll if this option is to be voted by the majority) in order to create a shortlist.
2. We would each nominate at most three writers, preferably ranked, the three with most overlapping nominations being the ones making it to the shortlist.
In the poll, for concision’s sake (read I’m too dumb to narrow down the above statements into short sentences) I’ve written only Option One and Option Two, so read this post carefully — don’t worry, I’ll be
And if you think there should be yet another, different approach to this whole procedure, please say, so I can reset the poll, adding your option there.
Last edited:
namelesshere
Reader
I’ve opened up a poll about the nominating process, gathering what seemed to be the two different stances on this matter, with the following propositions:
1. At most three writers should be first nominated, with each member presenting here their case, and then, with a long list of nominees, we would proceed to voting or ranking the authors (the decision on either way will be made later in another poll if this option is to be voted by the majority) in order to create a shortlist.
2. We would each nominate at most three writers, preferably ranked, the three with most overlapping nominations being the ones making the shortlist.
In the poll, for concision’s sake (read I’m too dumb to narrow down the above statements into short sentences) I’ve written only Option One and Option Two, so read this post carefully — don’t worry, I’ll bebotheringproviding you with a DM so you won’t miss it.
And if you think there should be yet another, different approach to this whole procedure, please say, so I can reset the poll, adding your option there.
Apologies for dumbness here but where would I find said poll...
edit: ignore me! I have found it hiding in plain sight at the top of the page!
Stevie B
Current Member
No worries. One morning, I looked for my car keys for five minutes before realizing they were in my hand.
namelesshere
Reader
Hopefully it wont stick at 50/50 like it is now!
Bartleby
Moderator
Well I’ve sent the messages to a total of 23 people (counting myself — others not included in the DMs can vote as well, I believe); hopefully everyone votes, in case of the need to break the tie; but maybe in the next hours/days a clear majority will be reached.
nagisa
Spiky member
I can see the appeal of collecting names with short presentations, then voting on a shortlist, but I still think a two-round voting process is unnecessarily onerous and prone to problems. Hence my proposal for an automatic shortlist of the top three. But if the majority wants otherwise, I'll still take part.
Bartleby
Moderator
I think it’s fair enough to set up a voting deadline of 5 days, to allow for a period of thinking and catching up, so the poll will be closed next Tuesday, at the time we used for our virtual meet-ups (since it seemed the most convenient for everyone):
in the meantime you may feel free to change your votes as well, if you so wish.
again, having any objections to this time limit, or any other point, please let us know
in the meantime you may feel free to change your votes as well, if you so wish.
again, having any objections to this time limit, or any other point, please let us know
Bagharu
Reader
With Google forms, voting should be a click (or a few) away. So, creating a shortlist out of a longlist should not be so problematic as you are envisioning and also, saves time with automatic counting and colorful graphs. And I think two-round voting is not unnecessary, only fair. Out of all these fantastic writers, in the end, only one will be picked. So we should at least try to judge them on equal footing, not make a long list just for the sake of diversity only. And the automatic shortlist sounds more like a popular choice than a fair sorting. Like there won't be any epiphanies or discoveries, only hey, these 3 are more popular in this forum, hence they make the shortlist. If that is what we want, then surely we can take that route.
I know, this is supposed to be a fun project and nominating, voting, discussing them, all these processes will be fun. I can see this becoming a regular event of this forum. So, as readers, we should not really rush to the shortlist so fast, let's give it, and us, some time, let us have a period of time before voting for the shortlist when the readers get to know the longlisted authors.
If this is what we want to do, select the best from the top 3 most popular, we can do that, no problem.
Edit: Just so everyone can see why we can think again before rushing straight to the shortlist, if we open the nomination window from November 1st till 15th (Though I know all of us have already decided on whom to nominate by now) and then vote on it at the end of February, we will have at least 3 months to go through the longlist. Then, we can have a 7 days (just saying) window for voting on the first week of March, and start reading the shortlist till August (6 months to read at least 1 book from 3 authors!). At the end of August or the beginning of September, we can elect our Laureate, just a month before the Nobel, which, I believe will only add to the Nobel fun, not deter it. With all these times at hand, everyone, no matter where they live or whatever the profession, I hope, will be able to find time to read the nominated authors. I really don't feel like rushing it, that's all.
Last edited: