poll Poll Feedback / Should employee votes count?

[equity78]

As many know we have this year's Best Registrar for 2020 poll running. For the first time it's public voting, so you can click on a number and see who voted for who.

Many believe that employees votes should not count when it comes to determining a winner. Others have said it makes it useless. One person messaged me everthing on Namepros is now useless because of Epik and their many employees here.

I see it as a complex problem, I think someone like a @DanSanchez would have voted for Epik whether he was working with Epik or not. Is his vote voided because he was here and then joined Epik?

Believe it or not, whether members like it or not, winning best Registrar here has mattered to registrars.

So should we not count the votes of noted employees, meaning I can go through the finished vote tally and look at the members who voted for each, if I see Dan Sanchez for Epik I deduct it, if I see Joe Styler for GoDaddy, deduct it.

Or should all votes count and that is the legitimate winner? We have time to vote on this as the registrar vote does not conclude til the end of March.

 

[Cal2]

I would not be at all surprised if there was hidden staff members of multiple registrars here. At least Epik identifies all its employees.

Something Mod Team Bravo said on another thread, "Interestingly, we have a lot of evidence that there are hundreds of employees of these top companies on NamePros without staff badges."

 

[biggie]

Hi

Can strippers vote on which pole, they want to swing on?

now, whether they can or they can't,

biggie says "I don't give a they still gotta swing"

so, it doesn't matter.... does it?

well, it's same thing with these who da best polls

strippers gotta swing, and they gotta have poles

check online, there may be discounts at the door

imo….

 

[ResoluteDomains]

The United States democracy system allows those working for elected officials to vote. In fact, a poll candidate can vote for themselves. Other democracies also follow this model.

I see no reason to start an unreasonable movement to decide who votes and who doesn't. The whole idea of influencing, or deciding who gets to vote for what, is anti-democracy and at that point a poll really isn't painting a clear picture.

Very true! If the goal is for it to be democratic then allow everyone's vote to count.

What I am not so sure about is making voters visible. In a political election my neighbors do not know for whom I voted because they cant see my actual vote. Heck, I do not even get a "receipt" of my vote when I leave. Just a little sticker that says "I Voted" If I tell someone I voted for X, I may have just said so and really voted for Y. Many people do, that if pressed, usually to keep the peace between family members, friends, etc.. Alas, this is not a political election vote - its a vote of which company we like the best. In this case I dont think it matters if its visible or not. Lets face it: even if it were invisible, if you spend time here then you pretty much can tell who likes whom.

Allow multiple votes? Another one where I dont know for sure but lean toward yes. We likely all have domains spread around a handful of registrars. I know that I do. I would vote for a few if I could. In this way its not like voting for the President in 2020 (here in the USA) but instead for certain local elections that allow you to choose more than one candidate (its usually school board elections).

My overall 2¢:
This forum, as far as I am aware, is not stopping any other registrar from employing the same "promotional" methods as @epik does as long as it remains within the rules of the forum. No one is stopping <any other registrar> from partnering or hiring users on here to advocate for them, promote them, better their products, services, and offerings, COMPETE with each other to be better listeners of customer's needs and wants... Imagine the competition for business, the innovation for products and services to all of us. Competition is good and very healthy. I am sure Epik would welcome it and I am sure we'd all benefit from it. Lets see what happens...

 

[karmaco]

Anyone who was a member here before they became an employee should be allowed to vote. They were a member first. I don't think too many take any poll here as Gospel in the first place.

Either NamePros allows full participation to every member here no matter who employs them or they don't. That would be up to them to decide what to change if anything regarding staff. I would not be at all surprised if there was hidden staff members of multiple registrars here. At least Epik identifies all its employees.

In the end I am not sure a poll on a forum is worth censorship and basically treating employees like lesser beings here.

 

[oldtimer]

So, If I'm a Nike, Facebook, Amazon, Ebay fan and I'm using their products, I can't be hired by them? The probability to work for them is even higher, because I like them already. Also, somebody will prohibit me to leave a review for them? I never heard of any of the big players in the 'review' market to prohibit this. Even more, you have knowledge from inside and you can leave an even more accurate review. The main part will be for my review to not divulge my identity, so that I will have issues at work, everything else it's just reality.

So lets say that you are very fair and honest about the reviews that you are giving for the products or services that you are somehow connected to, but can you guarantee the same for all other employees, logic says that their opinion might be a little biased and so at the very least they should disclose any affiliations that might be involved here.

As far as NamePros goes in my opinion if a member here is giving an opinion about a certain Registrar then they need to disclose whether they are somehow connected to that Registrar or not.

Of course this just how I feel about this, you are entitled to think differently, but I am interested to know what others have to say about this issue.

IMO

 

[DanSanchez]

I previously voted for Namebright, held over 5,000 domains there for several years. Now the majority of my portfolio is at Epik after months of actively using Epik outside of my employee responsibilities. We should take into consideration the amount of usage and length of experience to qualify votes.

 

[Internet.Domains]

The United States democracy system allows those working for elected officials to vote. In fact, a poll candidate can vote for themselves. Other democracies also follow this model.

I see no reason to start an unreasonable movement to decide who votes and who doesn't. The whole idea of influencing, or deciding who gets to vote for what, is anti-democracy and at that point a poll really isn't painting a clear picture.

 

[Internet.Domains]

You are being a little bit dramatic.

Wait till I start crying, then you can call me dramatic..

This is some stupid popularity contest on a forum

If you feel it's stupid, why even engage?

 

[Internet.Domains]

I don't really feel like every thread, especially in general discussion, needs to be turned into a self promotion spam fest.

I think you are being a bit dramatic.

I don't see "every thread" is being "turned into a self promotion spam fest."

 

[bmugford]

I think you are being a bit dramatic.

I don't see "every thread" is being "turned into a self promotion spam fest."

Not being dramatic. It was just hyperbole

Brad

 

[oldtimer]

I believe in business there is a very clear distinction between customers and employees,

Employees and even their immediate family members are usually not allowed to participate in promotional contests or drawings held by their employer, also I don't believe that employees are allowed to write reviews for the products and services that belong to the company that they work for.

So I believe that employees should voluntarily stay away from voting for the Registrar that they work for or at the very least there should be a mechanism in the poll that could allow them to indicate that they were voting as an employee.

IMO

 

[lock]

I dont think so. Godaddy would be the biggest and well the results speak for themselves.

Godaddy spends a lot on TV advertising an not a lot on reps otherwise we would yell out @GoDaddy instead of @Joe Styler alone the guy that solves all our problems single handed.

 

[7363824]

What would be nice is for any user who has a staff badge of any kind gets a special color for their name when viewing the results, and when you mouseiver the tooltip could give more into like "xxxx Staff" so their votes are clearly identified in the results.

 

[Bravo Mod Team]

Democracy voice for change

It will be an option, which means that pollsters will decide whether they want to enable it.

If you disagree with how someone has created a poll, then you can refuse to participate in the poll and/or create your own poll with the options that you think are best.

We hope that helps.

 

[bmugford]

No. It obviously skews the results, especially when it comes to a company with a disproportionate amount of employees on NamePros, in comparison to their actual size as a company.

Additionally, I don't think it is appropriate to post self-promotion in a poll thread either.
That is yet another way to influence the results.

Brad

 

[Samer]

Yes.

Bad enough other registrar CEOs’ aren’t active here but want punish the one hires most within “Your votes dont count.”

Even if votes didnt —Epik still #1.

Samer

 

[bmugford]

If you feel it's stupid, why even engage?

Fair enough.

I am more annoyed with the blatant self promoting spam in the thread than the poll itself. I don't really feel like every thread, especially in general discussion, needs to be turned into a self promotion spam fest.

Brad

 

[Internet.Domains]

Not being dramatic. It was just hyperbole

Brad

Touche....

 

[7363824]

Its complicated. I think we could agree some votes like Dan's aren't really based on his employeement. I agree that I believe he would have voted for Epik even if he didnt work there. Others are harder to pin down. IMO public voting has already fixed this so you can see exactly who voted and decide for yourself if someone's vote matters to you or not.

 

[Shaan Chopra]

Why? Should Stand behind what you vote for?

We arent voting for the president.

Samer

What are you getting out of knowing who is voting for what?

 

[Peak.Domains]

I don't have a horse in this race, but I do have some thoughts to share.

I don't really like the sentiment of "Well other companies should just hire 50 more people so they, too, can skew the results of a vote."

If we can agree that we want the polls to be as useful as possible... humor me...

Then we should be able to agree that employees voting will give us less useful poll results,

Then we should be able to agree that having every other company fill up the results with their own employees doesn't bring us any closer to having useful polling results.

If we can't agree that we want the polls to be as useful as possible, well, I guess the point is moot. In that case, I'd ask what is the purpose of a poll, then? And does having employees vote bring us closer, or further from accomplishing that purpose? If the purpose is to see which company has the most employees on NamePros, we don't need a poll for that.

Even having a few employees voting early on while every other choice is still at 0 is going to skew the rest of the results. No poll is going to be perfect, most of them are already flawed from the get-go before a single vote is cast, based on how the questions are phrased (If you have even 5 minutes experience working with polls you'll understand this), but that's not a good reason to avoid fixing the parts that we can improve.

We can innovate as a community in order to use polls to empower large and small companies alike.

 

[carob]

I'm interested in a poll of consumer experience.

Yes you can be employed by a company and still use its services and have an opinion about it, but personally I prefer to see ratings results based on people who are customers only.

 

[oldtimer]

In the end I am not sure a poll on a forum is worth censorship and basically treating employees like lesser beings here.

What I said in my earlier post was a general principle that is usually adhered to in the business world, but you could be right as far as the vote on this forum better being made according to its own set of rules here since this is a close knit community and if all the employees are left out there might not be too many people left to vote.

By the way no one is thinking of the employees as lesser beings as the matter of fact the situation that they are in as far as being both an employee and a member of the forum puts them in a very special category.

IMO

 

[Ategy]

lol .. sorry @equity78 .. but this is another example of a bad poll. My vote would have been "It depends".

As for the current poll .. yes definitely 100% of NamePros members should be allowed to vote simply because there was no request for employees not to vote.

Beyond that it's up to the person starting any poll to make stipulations if they want any.

There is no absolute answer for every single poll when we don't even know what questions will be asked in the future. Just weigh the pros and cons for the particular poll and request staff not to vote if you don't want them to vote .. it's really that simple.

As for whether I think they should or not for next year .. I actually would reply with a 4th answer "It doesn't matter because the poll is going to be completely skewed either way".

Ultimately how can anyone even make a "fair" vote if they haven't actually tried ALL the registrar choices within the previous year? Some people here like to say there's going to be employee bias .. but most of those same people conveniently ignore the fact that EVERY vote is biased unless it's a vote from someone who gave ALL the registrars a fair chance in the last year.