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Alright, looks like we've gathered all the available the candidates for this round, it's now time to start the voting process.
The candidates are:
Leiden, the Netherlands
Helsinki, Finland
Tampere, Finland
We can't use a simple majority poll to select the location because we need to take the nationalities into consideration as well. For example, if only a handful of foreigners would be able to join the meeting if it was held in Finland, it wouldn't make sense to organize the meeting in Finland even if dozens of Finnish people would like to have the meeting here. That's why I chose to use approval voting to gather some estimates about EBTM05 participation. There's a poll for each candidate city, and in the poll you should choose whether you'd be able to participate if the meeting was to be held in that city. We'd also need to know your nationality, that's why the yes/no choices are listed for each country. These are the voting topics: Leiden, Helsinki and Tampere.
Some people are likely to vote "yes" to all the polls, ie. all the places are OK to that person, and for that reason we'll need to have a poll that collects user's preferences among the options. phpBB's polls aren't quite adequate for this, that's why I crafted together a system which collects your preferences using the Condorcet voting method (we'll use the suggested SSD method to resolve ambiguities if needed). More information about this poll can be found in the Meeting location preferences poll.
These polls will run for 9 days, meaning that the polls will close at about 00:30 Finnish time on 28th December.
It's important to note that these polls aren't binding, they are designed to give some key input for the discussion about the location for EBTM05. The location will ultimately be chosen in the discussion that follows the polls, with the goal that we'd know the city before 1.1.2005. I think we can't write exact rules for determining the "winner", that's why I prefer to reach a consensus by discussion. The unfortunate fact is that we can't please everyone, but my aim is to select a location that pleases the most and is the most appropriate for EBT's goals.
Once the location has been chosen, the control for organizing EBTM05 will be passed to the organizing team in that city. The first task for the team is to select the date for the meeting because some people are already making arrangements for their summer holidays. The organizing team has a veto right to rule out some weekends, for example Finns are unlikely to organize (or participate in) anything during our midsummer festival on the weekend of 24-26th June. I'd suggest using the same Condorcet voting method for selecting the date. You should start considering the possible dates by yourself so that once the date poll opens, you'd have a clear opinion readily available and the date poll wouldn't have to run for too long.
This topic can be used for discussion about the polls and their results. The final results will also be posted and discussed here.
Ladies and gentlemen, place your bets! Please answer honestly to the polls! Please answer all the polls so we can get accurate data.
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