Voter-Funded Media Contest

at Simon Fraser University

This contest runs continuously, on a monthly cycle. It has been on hold since April 2008. We hope to restart when we have enough funding and administration time available. Meanwhile we're learning from other continuous online VFM contests, e.g. at Vancouver.

For March 2008: Final ranking based on votes as of 2008-04-01 12:01 am --

Check out their websites, then vote by March 31. Once you register to vote, you can see current vote standings, and return to vote any time via this link: www.votermedia.org/sfu/vote.

Entry Period: February 16 - March 15, 2008. Entry Form

Voting Period : March 1 - March 31, 2008.

Voters: Anyone with an SFU computing ID.

(Media) Contestants: Open to any person, group or organization, whether affiliated with SFU or not.

Awards: Increased to $600 total -- 1st prize $200, 2nd $160, 3rd $120, 4th $80, 5th $40.

Contest Entry Fee: May be waived for first 10 entrants with websites showing contest name and prominent link to this page. Otherwise $10.

Voting Format: Each voter can rate each (media) contestant once a month on a scale of 0 to 10. Votes are tallied monthly then cleared -- a separate tally each calendar month.

Vote Aggregation Method: Basically we take the median rating for each media contestant each month, but there are two adjustments: non-votes are counted as half a vote for 0; and medians are interpolated (see spreadsheet and entry form). The contestant with the highest adjusted median gets first prize for that month; second highest gets second prize etc.

Judging Criteria: Voters are free to rate media contestants any way they choose. Media contestants are free to appeal to voters (or not) any way they choose (of course subject to the laws of the land, like libel, copyright, pornography etc.). We use the term "media" based on what we think contestants will do, but we do not actually require contestants to act like media. This contest is designed to benefit the voting community, and many types of benefit are possible. We think contestants will win high ratings by providing such benefits as websites giving insight on important SFU issues, especially issues to be decided by vote. This includes the media contest itself -- contestants could publish evaluations of each other.

Sponsor and Administrator: Mark Latham. Once this competition proves its value to the SFU community, we hope voters will be willing to fund it themselves via community budgets. It should then be run by an SFU group (like SFSS or a VFM Club). Our broader goal is to spread VFM to larger democracies (next: municipalities) and corporations.

1-page overview of VFM: How SFU Can Change the World.

See also UBC's 2007-2008 VFM contest.