Well, all right, so how can you tell whether a movie is the best possible choice for a group, if it's not the movie that best matches the preferences of the voters?
Well, first, I don't have an answer, that's why I asked. I find this question at least as interesting as the process itself. I imagine that at the very least we need to have everybody assign each potential movie a satisfaction score (say a number from -100 to 100) that would represent how satisfied they would be with that choice. Then, perhaps, look at the total satisfaction of the movie chosen by each system? I don't think that's perfect, but it at least has the potential to provide a reason to prefer one system over another.
EDIT: Actually, maybe what we ought to be measuring is how much enjoyment/satisfaction people got from parties which used method A to pick the movie vs how much enjoyment/satisfaction people got from parties which used method B to pick the movie. This would take into account how fair they thought the movie picking process was as well as the quality of the result. Of course that's going to be a more difficult evaluation method to set up (especially in this case where we logistically can't actually get together to see the movie) since every party is going to be different in ways other than the movie-picking method.
Secondly, you seem to have defined "
The Best Movie Choice"
as the choice that would have come out of a straight preference ranking vote. Isn't the point here to find a system that might work better? (If not, then why not use a straight preference ranking vote?) As you pointed out, every system has the potential flaw of making people bolt after the movie is chosen. We should be after a system that minimizes this eventuality. The question is how to measure the likelihood of each potential system choosing such a movie.
Also, getting away from evaluation, I see a potential wrench in the process: What if there are no movies left on the list when the host gets to their third turn (during and after which nobody can add any more movies). I suggest an additional rule that you can't, at any time, remove the only movie on the list.
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Progress Quest Progress
[Last edited by stigant at 11-22-2011 08:41 PM]
