[Stilpo] Take a survey, win some gold!
Day 2,131, 09:51
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Published in Ireland 
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by
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by Stilpo
Hello again Ireland!
Do you have an opinion about the current government? Or maybe you would like a chance to win some gold? Perhaps both? If so, I invite you to take a few minutes to participate in my independent monthly national performance survey.
Anyone who considers themselves to be an active part of the eIrish community is welcome to take the survey. However only current Irish citizens are allowed to win gold (details below).
CONTENT
This survey will give you the opportunity to evaluate the recent performance of:
1) Ireland as a whole
2) The CP
3) All head ministers
4) Congress
In addition to rating government officials, each month I also like to include a unique and fun bonus section. This month you will have the opportunity to vote for a “dream team” of ultimate government ministers, as well as have your say in an utterly shameless popularity contest for the most well-liked member of the Irish community. Just remember that bonus sections such as this are intended to be for entertainment purposes only and will have no official bearing on actual public policy. So have fun with it.
GOLD PRIZES!
As always, in order to encourage maximum participation I am offering the chance to win gold prizes to those who complete this survey. This month, winners who complete the survey and elect to be in the raffle will have the opportunity to win a total of 36 gold!
8 people: 2 gold each.
4 people: 5 gold each.
Fine print: Although anybody who considers themselves to be an active part of the Irish community are welcome to take the poll, only current Irish citizens are eligible to be entered into the raffle. Winners are randomly chosen by assigning each participant a number based on the order they took the survey and then generating random numbers within that range using the random number generator at www.random.org. All winners are publicly recognized in the analysis article unless they specifically request to remain anonymous.
SPONSORS:
A very special thanks goes out to those who donated gold to help sponsor this month's survey. Donations this month were again at an all-time high, which allowed us to raise our prize totals to 36 gold (versus 20 gold last month and 15 gold the month before).
AD31: 10 gold donation
James Keiller: 10 gold donation
Mary Robinson: 3 gold donation
If you wish to help sponsor the October survey, please send me a PM! Because I do not accept government funding for obvious reasons, the prize money for each month (and thus the success of this survey) is completely dependent on private donations. The more prize money we can give away, the more people will take the survey and the more meaningful your own responses will be.
Thus far we have 13 gold collected for the October survey (I will try to update this number if/when more donations come in). All full record of past donations and prize winners is available here.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Anonymity:
In order to help prevent fraud and abuse, I require that all survey-takers provide a link to their eRepublik profile. This means that responses to this survey are not technically anonymous. I do, however, guarantee that such identifying information will never be seen by anybody but myself. I will never publicize or share anybody’s participation in this survey, much less their answers to specific questions. If I enlist someone’s help in analyzing data, it will only ever be data that has been purged of identifying information. Thus, it is my hope that survey-takers feel comfortable in the knowledge that they will never be harassed regarding their participation in this survey, and that their answers will never be used against them politically.
Survey program:
Rather than using a simple Google form, this survey makes use of a more professional-quality survey program called Qualtrics. The advantages of this program are a more flexible user interface, better analytics, and, most importantly, better security and fraud prevention (see below). More information about the program can be found here.
Fraud Prevention
One important security feature of this program is that it does not allow anyone (including myself) to alter data that has already been collected. The only way to alter existing data is to delete or filter-out someone’s entire response set. However, because I now require people to provide a unique personal identification number (PIN) along with their profile links, survey-takers can be 100% certain that their responses were counted in full in any report by the software in which they can verify the presence of their PIN.
Participants can also be reasonably certain that results of these surveys are not influenced in other ways, such as adding fraudulent responses on top of legitimate data. The detection of multi votes can never be 100% accurate, of course, but the vast majority of them can be detected using the fraud prevention tools that are imbedded within this software and a little common sense. For starters, the program collects metadata on things like IP addresses, screen resolution, and browser/flash/OS versions that I can (and do) check to make sure people aren’t taking this survey more than one time from the same computer. I also check to make sure that no two answer sets are suspiciously similar to one another, especially if one survey has been started within a minute or two of the other survey being finished. Profile links that are collected are thoroughly checked for suspicious properties, such as the use of duplicate profile links or profile links of dead citizens. Finally, starting in the current survey, verification checks will be made via PM for a randomly-selected handful of profile links to ensure that people who took the survey actually are who they say they are. In the future I would also like to start cross-checking profile links with names of suspected multi-accounts. If you have such a list, or know where to find one, please let me know ASAP. However, even without such a list, the tools and procedures outlined above already give me a significant degree of confidence in the validity of my data. If multi abuse exists at all it is extremely rare, and its final effect on results is negligible.
Oversight
Despite the professional-grade software with all of its bells and whistles, the validity of this survey is ultimately dependent on how much readers personally trust me to actually do what I say I am doing. However, this does not necessarily have to be the case. If any trust-worthy individuals from other parties/groups wish to volunteer to oversee the response verification process, I would WELCOME the help. Such a person would have full access to all of the data (including identifying information) at every stage of collection and analysis, provided we were up-front with survey-takers about who it will be BEFORE they actually take the survey. Not only would this increase the perceived validity of the survey, but it would make my own job easier!
If you wish to volunteer for this position, I encourage you to send me a PM. Please note, however, that such arrangements must be made BEFORE the 20th of each month when the survey announcement goes live, so that potential survey-takers know exactly whose eyes might be looking over their answers. Thus, the current survey is no longer eligible for such oversight as nobody responded to my requests for help prior to the release of this survey. Also, anyone who wants to help oversee the results MUST be someone that I believe most survey-takers would trust not to leak identifying information or hold anyone’s answers against them politically. Thus, this person should be someone who has demonstrated considerable respect for other peoples’ opinions in the past. If this doesn’t describe you personally but you are still worried about oversight, I would be happy to work with you to find someone that we both trust who meets these criteria. I would also be happy to accept more than one person to help oversee the results, provided that they all meet the criteria.
Thank you for in advance for taking this survey!
Regards,
-Stilpo
PLEASE DO WHAT YOU CAN TO GET THE WORD OUT ABOUT THIS SURVEY! Just taking the survey is only the first step! The more you shout and share with your friends, the more people will take this survey and the more meaningful the results will be!
LIST OF PREVIOUS SURVEYS:
[September 2013] July bonus section results
[September 2013] August bonus section results
[August 2013] National Performance Poll #4
[July 2013] National Performance Poll #3
[June 2013] National Performance Poll #2
[May 2013] National Performance Poll #1
[Nov 2012] Saoirse party performance survey
[Nov 2012] Government roles and responsibilities Survey
[Oct 2012] Policy opinion survey
[Oct 2012] Desirable traits for congress members
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Comments
Voted and done!
what he ^ said
Voted o7
Done!
Voted and done.
Voted and done!
You are probably the most valuable asset to our community. These survey's continue to be top notch each term and worth every minute spent to fill out.
Keep it up man. o7
As always, great work Stilpo 😃
The most difficult thing in the survey: Deciding wheter to put Kurgan or Krakken last in the most popular individual
I prefer to be last popular in society of british slaves, thiefs and brainwashed simpletons.
I am sure you are a winning popularity candidate
Stilpo alowing non-irish to participate his surveys are shit from beginning.
And hiding who participate in this surveys only helps orcs and their multis to manipulate result.
Will Krakken's votes be counted or erased Stilpo?
The issue of non-Irish citizens taking the survey is a valid concern. However, there are usually less than five such responses (mostly recent Irish citizens) out of 40+ total responses per month, so they don't actually have much of an impact on the final results. If that changes, I would likely reconsider my policy. In the meantime, if you really want to know how current citizens feel, I can easily can generate a report for you that has all non-Irish responses filtered out.
If I did create such a filtered report, non-Irish respondents would not be able to find their unique PIN that they provided in that particular report generated by the software. If kraken did take the survey, checking for the presence of this PIN in a report would be how he or anyone else could verify that their answers are counted for that particular report. If you want to know more about how this works, I would suggest that you go back and read the section above called "Fraud Prevention”.
And while you are at it, you might also want to go back and check out the section called "oversight". In this section, I ask (as I have always asked in the past) for help with multi-hunting and oversight from outside sources. As I say in the article, I would be happy to work with you to find a mutually-trusted individual who could have full access to all the data (including the identity of participants and how they voted) in *future* surveys to ensure that no fraud is being carried out. They just have to meet the criteria I explain in the article.
So, if you really are concerned about the validity of this study (and not just trolling), why do you and your friends keep ignoring these requests to help set up some kind of system of oversight??
there are much more then 4 non-irish you let vote.
Also for what i know you could let all Conway's multies to vote also and we all know he has many of them.
We know even Ian E Coleman had since his old acount was banned.
Do you allow votes of low level players?
90% those players are multies and in your survey should not be counted those who were just born or have low level or very little activities recorded in their profiles.
As for oversight i demanded to be in oversight many times in the past and was always rejected since i am not orc or orc muppet.
So i demand to see all datas of your surveys.
that will only prove you are not a fraud and fake.
>> "there are much more then 4 non-irish you let vote."
-Who??
>> "Also for what i know you could let all Conway's multies to vote also and we all know he has many of them."
So, you are attacking my credibility based on what you think I "could" do? That's fair :/
>> "Do you allow votes of low-level players?"
Yes. There aren’t all that many, but I do admit that you make a good point. In fact, I might actually look into changing that policy. Maybe you can help me come up with some specific definitions and guidelines (e.g. specific cutoffs for age and activity). You have good instinct for these kinds of things, and I really do want to work with you on this. Let me know if you have any other suggestions for multi-hunting, too.
>> "As for oversight i demanded to be in oversight many times in the past and was always rejected since i am not orc or orc muppet.”
You have never even once asked me to become personally involved in any kind of individual-level oversight process. In fact, you have never sent me a single PM of any kind about this survey. Your only requests, which were in the comments section of the last few articles, was to make everyone’s responses PUBLIC. For reasons we have already discussed at length, this is something I will not do under any circumstances.
If I did allow you full access to data for *next* month's survey, would you be able to promise survey-takers with absolute certainty that you would keep their answers 100% private? Could you promise that you would never harass (or even so much as casually confront) participants regarding their answers to specific questions (even if it is important to you)? Can you promise that you will never use your position of privilege to influence voting in this survey (even indirectly)? Indeed, would you promise to do everything you possibly could to make participants feel comfortable being completely honest in their answers, even if it conflicts with your own opinions?
If so, the truth is that I may actually consider allowing you to oversee next *future* survey data (especially if you promise to help me hunt for multis, which will save ME a lot of time). However, if you ever break (or even so much as bend) any one of these promises, there would obviously be serious consequences to your public reputation and credibility. So, knowing this, it is up to you whether or not this is something you want to do. But my hand is open.
Stilpo...you are one of Orcs.
That makes you corrupted by default.
As long you deny full datas of surveys from me it's clear you have something to hide.
Consider to allow me?
No you are not considering anything....you can not allow someone honest who did not took part in any kind of treason and theft of Ireland see how you manipulate datas.
Stop the crap and stop hiding behind long texts and show me full survey datas...