PANSA WC Statement on Voting query
PANSA received some queries and concerns regarding the vote for the Final Byte of Cape Town Live. Obviously this is a serious issue, and we contacted the website back-end developers to clarify that our process around the moment of voting had been correct. We hope a clarification of the processes on the night will serve to clear the concerns raised.
Where PANSA fell down on the night was that the voting mechanism was not disabled after the cut off time, and so votes were collected after our designated cut off point. Since voting takes literally seconds, the line between before and after the final cut off point would have been very fine: one of the attributes of the online environment.
What is important is the procedure followed at the moment of cut off point, which is what we based our decision on, and this process is outlined below.
1. Due to technical problems during the event we could only open the voting at 7.20pm rather than 7.pm This was to ensure that all the live performances were completed before the voting opened. Ideally we would have liked ALL the performances to have been screened first, but considering the technical hitches this was not possible.
2. In discussion with the curator and technical head Sanjin Muftic PANSA extended the voting from 7.30pm to 7.50pm to accommodate this – we used the computer clock as the time keeper. The new cut off point was announced on Twitter, Facebook and the website itself.
3. At 7.51pm on the computer clock, Ronell Swartbooi, who was monitoring the PANSA web page and voting, clicked through to the results page for the vote. The results page refreshes with the votes as they stand in that moment in time. The speed of the internet connection would not have any effect on this. Sanjin and PANSA manager Brian Heydenrych were present for this step, and saw the results screen appear.
4. These votes were then confirmed by Ronell, Sanjin and Brian and added to the votes taken at the event to arrive at the final total.
In hindsight the voting mechanism should have been disabled immediately, to avoid discrepancies like this. There were further anomalies: such as the link to the voting was only removed from the PANSA homepage at 8pm, and if anyone was copy-pasting the link to the voting poll into a browser they would have been able to vote while potentially unaware that the cut off had just been called at PANSA.
As we said on the night, through these issues we learn and through this will be able to host the next festival with benefit of our experience, increasing the benefit to all the participants, and our PANSA members.
Regards
PANSA WC
Where PANSA fell down on the night was that the voting mechanism was not disabled after the cut off time, and so votes were collected after our designated cut off point. Since voting takes literally seconds, the line between before and after the final cut off point would have been very fine: one of the attributes of the online environment.
What is important is the procedure followed at the moment of cut off point, which is what we based our decision on, and this process is outlined below.
1. Due to technical problems during the event we could only open the voting at 7.20pm rather than 7.pm This was to ensure that all the live performances were completed before the voting opened. Ideally we would have liked ALL the performances to have been screened first, but considering the technical hitches this was not possible.
2. In discussion with the curator and technical head Sanjin Muftic PANSA extended the voting from 7.30pm to 7.50pm to accommodate this – we used the computer clock as the time keeper. The new cut off point was announced on Twitter, Facebook and the website itself.
3. At 7.51pm on the computer clock, Ronell Swartbooi, who was monitoring the PANSA web page and voting, clicked through to the results page for the vote. The results page refreshes with the votes as they stand in that moment in time. The speed of the internet connection would not have any effect on this. Sanjin and PANSA manager Brian Heydenrych were present for this step, and saw the results screen appear.
4. These votes were then confirmed by Ronell, Sanjin and Brian and added to the votes taken at the event to arrive at the final total.
In hindsight the voting mechanism should have been disabled immediately, to avoid discrepancies like this. There were further anomalies: such as the link to the voting was only removed from the PANSA homepage at 8pm, and if anyone was copy-pasting the link to the voting poll into a browser they would have been able to vote while potentially unaware that the cut off had just been called at PANSA.
As we said on the night, through these issues we learn and through this will be able to host the next festival with benefit of our experience, increasing the benefit to all the participants, and our PANSA members.
Regards
PANSA WC
