This seemed like a good idea on its face, so I voted pretty quickly, but I’m beginning to worry a little bit more in retrospect. Will is unlikely to win because he’s on balance the most popular of these figures, but due to this post it is possible that he could win because of vote splitting and plurality dynamics rather than on the merits. In particular I worry that with a lot of these online polls, plurality dynamics sometimes lead to a winner who:
Pretty obviously did not win in a way that was actually reflective of their relative belovedness, and
Because of this, their win winds up leading many people to have more negative feelings towards the subject or at least its fanbase
Off the top of my head I believe something like this happened both with the video game Undertale and the prog rock band Dream Theater. Both are still quite popular but in their relevant spaces face a sort of vague scorn from what people see as an illegitimate listicle victory. Organizing votes in a public space like this may seem like something innocent everyone can do so it’s fair game, but I think you’d be surprised how much it can distort the results, and how much no one benefits when this distortion happens. Now I want to emphasize that I think this is only one consideration, and the vote may be worth it for other reasons anyway, but I’m more concerned now on reflection.
This seemed like a good idea on its face, so I voted pretty quickly, but I’m beginning to worry a little bit more in retrospect. Will is unlikely to win because he’s on balance the most popular of these figures, but due to this post it is possible that he could win because of vote splitting and plurality dynamics rather than on the merits. In particular I worry that with a lot of these online polls, plurality dynamics sometimes lead to a winner who:
Pretty obviously did not win in a way that was actually reflective of their relative belovedness, and
Because of this, their win winds up leading many people to have more negative feelings towards the subject or at least its fanbase
Off the top of my head I believe something like this happened both with the video game Undertale and the prog rock band Dream Theater. Both are still quite popular but in their relevant spaces face a sort of vague scorn from what people see as an illegitimate listicle victory. Organizing votes in a public space like this may seem like something innocent everyone can do so it’s fair game, but I think you’d be surprised how much it can distort the results, and how much no one benefits when this distortion happens. Now I want to emphasize that I think this is only one consideration, and the vote may be worth it for other reasons anyway, but I’m more concerned now on reflection.