'Pick this site’s charities for the next year.' Poll results/discussion

gomann

The voting rate remains almost linear. Has someone co-ordinated the voting even better than bombing raids on Berlin in WW2? Or has someone has been VERY clever on the IT front?
Can you honestly believe that the 3000 new supporters Shelterbox discovered since Saturday lunch-time could vote in such a neat orderly manner, at the rate of over 100 an hour?
"Fred, please vote at 1427"

Help For Heroes managed 110 votes in 3 hours
Shelterbox achieved a super 400 in the same time.

I think I'll go away now, I've made my point.

bps666

By my reckoning the (robot) voting for shelterbox will have taken over H4H by 2300 tonight. Mind you, the charity who were coming in 4th will be happy that they are not getting a fair shot at whats on offer.

It does stink that it's clocking roughly 2 votes a minute without fail. Either that or 'Shelterboxers' are more efficient than a german in engineer sauce!

gomann

And the Army Rumour Service Website [yes, I'm one of them, as it happens] has gone down ... which is quite unusual.

I have no idea what happens next, because I'm getting some support for my paranoia.
Does this affect the final outcome? Possibly not, although comments on 5th place losers are appropriate.
Does this sound real? Definitely not.

The thing that worries me is that the entire exercise is declared void, and everyone loses out.

I'll post the half-hourly figures in a minute ...

gomann

@1205
H4H 4683 ... SBox 3600
@1235
H4H 4704 ... SBox 3656
@1257
H4H 4721 ... SBox 3700
@1333
H4H 4741 ... SBox 3765
@ 1413
H$H 4764 ... SBox 3868
@1433
H4H 4776 ... SBox 3927
@ 1503
H4H 4793 ... SBox 4007
@ 1530
H4H 4808 ... SBox 4079
@ 1600
H4H 4821 ... SBox 4176

H4H got 138 votes in those 4 hours
SBox got 576.

If the Army website was working I could give you numbers from the weekend ... so I now smell IT misbehaving on 2 counts. But then I'm a paranoid Charity worker ...

Sally_Grint

Thank you to all the supporters who have been voting for ShelterBox.

We heard of the poll on Friday and were delighted to discover that out of 600 charities we were in the shortlist of 12. This is really goods news for us. As we are a small team of nine staff with 300 UK volunteers.

I can only assume it is word of mouth as we emailed our supporters and that's as much as we could do.

I can assure you that there is no IT trickery going on (we have no IT department). We're saddened that some people are suggesting otherwise.

We operate in some of the toughest places around the world from our Cornish warehouse. We've helped over 600,000 people in 46 countries in 72 major disasters - our support is worldwide.

Thank you once again for those of you that have recognised our work.
Sally - ShelterBox

JimmyTheWig

Maybe it is time to re-think this process.
Or at least re-think it for future years?

How much money are we talking about here? I'm assuming quite a bit.
I think it is wrong for a charity to focus its efforts (through trickery or otherwise) to get votes in this poll.

Maybe the voting should be by username rather than IP address (assuming that's how it's currently done). And only people who were registered in the forum (or on the weekly mailing list) before the vote was announced could vote.

bps666

gomann wrote: »

@1205
H4H 4683 ... SBox 3600
@1235
H4H 4704 ... SBox 3656
@1257
H4H 4721 ... SBox 3700
@1333
H4H 4741 ... SBox 3765
@ 1413
H$H 4764 ... SBox 3868
@1433
H4H 4776 ... SBox 3927
@ 1503
H4H 4793 ... SBox 4007
@ 1530
H4H 4808 ... SBox 4079
@ 1600
H4H 4821 ... SBox 4176

H4H got 138 votes in those 4 hours
SBox got 576.

If the Army website was working I could give you numbers from the weekend ... so I now smell IT misbehaving on 2 counts. But then I'm a paranoid Charity worker ...

And I reckon that if you had let the poll run to 1605 it would have clocked 600 (or near as damn it)

NO-one disputes the great work that shelter box carryout and no-one is accusing anyone of 'cheating', but I do smell a rat! Sorry, but the figures are just too regular to be believable

(from the figures given) 576 votes / 235 minutes = 2.45 votes / minute
(potential figures 600 votes / 240 minutes = 2.5 votes / minute


very nice and neat.............................wibble!

from 1600 - 2300 I predict that sbox will hit 5300 votes (5226 on the nose and I'll donate a tenner!.........2 H4H and shelterbox )

MSE_Martin

As a minor gripe, could I just say that it would have been helpful to have the charity's full name on the poll so that people like me who research on www.intelligentgiving.com and the Charity Commission website can easily find the information that they need? eg. CAP UK as Christians Against Poverty and Foal Farm as the Friends of Animals League. There is also the other issue which is growing in the charity sector at the moment which is people's unease if they feel that a religious charity is covering up its religious roots in order to appeal to a wider base. Christians Against Poverty (CAP UK) is one of those. Some Christians don't like the fact that a charity with Christian values is ashamed to show them by altering its name and literature, whilst some atheists and non-Christians are uncomfortable about the idea of being 'duped' into giving money for an organisation which is not making its aims transparent. So, I think that it would have been better to use its official name so that people can see what they are getting and make a properly informed decision.

We try and get it on one line as it makes it easier for people to scan, yet we put the web link there so people can read all they want.

If the website feels that they are all worthwhile, then fine.. split the money 'x' ways and distribute it accordingly and equally. But for the love of god, haven't we got enough gauche and grubby 'vote now!' programmes as it is, without being encouraged to scramble to the trough at the expense of premature babies simply because we think excluded kids are more important? The causes deserve far more than being used in such an unedifying manner.

If I want to work for, or donate to a cause then I will do so - I do not need to be spoonfed by a patriarch needing to offset a charitable tax benefit or wanting to generate profile and traffic. I happen to think that 2 or 3 of these causes ARE more worthy than others on the list, but I will not vote for them out of principle, because some of those on that list do not have the critical mass of public opinion behind them that others clearly have. It must be dissheartening in the extreme to losing out to well oiled on line campaigns designed to steer people here. Has anyone considered THAT cost?

All in all, relegating suffering people's needs to something like voting for Gareth Gates over 'that other bloke' is a grubby and tacky exercise, sorry.

I think you've totally misunderstood the aim of this.

The site gives two thirds of its money to the MSE Charity the remainder is split between five charities. Very deliberately that is decided by the users as they're the users picks - to do that users nominate, a panel of users shortlist, and users vote. The shortlist is nothing to do with my viewpoint - that's the whole point of it. IN a community site some of the decision goes to the community. If we gave money to every charity nominated then frankly it wouldn't eb a meaningful amount for anyone.

As for this being a traffic grabber, MSE has nearly 500,000 users a day, if this was being done as a traffic grabber, it would be a very expensive and unnecessary one. As for being a patriach... how lovely of you to say so!

Not a single environmental charity on the shortlist! Moneysavers aren't green? Come on shortlisters, wake up, the planet's dying.

The automatic pick is www.re_cycle.org.uk




Voting notes...

You can only have one vote per IP address, but we are monitoring any suspicious activity and will simply disqualify any votes that shouldn't be counted.

Martin

gomann

Sally_Grint wrote: »

Thank you to all the supporters who have been voting for ShelterBox.

We heard of the poll on Friday and were delighted to discover that out of 600 charities we were in the shortlist of 12. This is really goods news for us. As we are a small team of nine staff with 300 UK volunteers.

I can only assume it is word of mouth as we emailed our supporters and that's as much as we could do.

I can assure you that there is no IT trickery going on (we have no IT department). We're saddened that some people are suggesting otherwise.

We operate in some of the toughest places around the world from our Cornish warehouse. We've helped over 600,000 people in 46 countries in 72 major disasters - our support is worldwide.

Thank you once again for those of you that have recognised our work.
Sally - ShelterBox

Firstly, Sally, may I say how impressed I am with what Shelterbox does, and assure you that you would have been one of my top picks [if I were allowed more than one vote]. i worked with my brother-in-law trying to generate a similar sort of emergency response after "The Tsunami", so I know where you're coming from.

I do appreciate you coming here and posting some facts [which I will certainly not dispute]. I'm sure, however, you will understand that there was some surprise with the "0-60" times that your voting was achieving; bizarre would, perhaps, not be too strong a word! However, you are a fantastic Charity, and you well deserve a place in the top 4 for the innovative and practical work you do.

Please excuse my paranoia ... it's a product of spending some 8 hours a day, all year round, on the computer: fighting for a chip off the edge of the Charity Pound we're ALL fighting for.

Now ... even though I'm not, nor was, a soldier ...what's happened to that Army website?

gomann

MSE_Martin wrote: »

....
Voting notes...

You can only have one vote per IP address, but we are monitoring any suspicious activity and will simply disqualify any votes that shouldn't be counted.

Martin

Thanks for popping in, Boss.

I appreciate that bit above ... I know the Military guys will fight tooth and nail for their cause, but I'm delighted that their efforts to "fool the system" were a failure. And I'm equally delighted my paranoia about Shelterbox was ... paranoia.

Dammit, there are no second place winners [even though you so kindly permit them] :T