whereas I think anything over three is a pain the ass.

Me too, but I am a total travel wuss, so don't mind me.

Do we still need to decide on the exact wording of the ballot? I thought voting was supposed to have started already....

That's what I'm waiting on.

Okay, so Jon’s suggestion is thus:

I do think we should ask people to indicate, for each city, if they
a) almost definitely would attend
b) might attend
c) probably would not attend
d) almost definitely would not attend
If a city has a plurality of the vote, but a high negative score, and another city is a close second but with a much lower negative, we should maybe consider the second place choice.

Here's what Noise laid out (although he's on record as preferring one vote for one city):

It sounds like we could do each of the four cities and then give the option for "Would Attend" "Would Not Attend" and then score from there. We could also have the each voter rank the choices from 1 to 4, or just choose one city or two cities.

If we go with ranking, how do we score that for the final choice?

Deb agrees with Noise (the one vote option), as does Hil, with one caveat:

I think I'm in favor of one vote, with a survey sort of "which cities would you be able to attend?" question, so that, if the final vote is really close (like, within a few votes), but a lot more people would be able to attend one than the other, we could see that. (I seriously doubt that would happen, but I think it would be nice to be able to see the data.)

Jessica is either for ranking or just one vote.

I'm in favor of ranking, or at least a "will/can not attend this city" option (i.e., Jon's suggestion).

No one else has stated a clear preference. I may have missed someone, though. If I did, my apologies.

It seems as if the bullshit consensus is one vote, but it's awfully close. Anyone else have thoughts?

Cereal: I hope I'm not railroading anything here. I'm not trying to, and I'm sorry if it seems like I am. I'm... well, I'm a really good terrier, which is why I'm a good stage manager.

I don't think you're railroading - I'm very thankful you've stepped up to get us on track with this.

FTR, I have no preference for ballot layout, I will vote however I am told.

I would like to have the would attend/would not attend information.

(eta: also thankful you are taking charge, juliana)

You're not railroading Juliana. I was wondering too.

I prefer one vote, but if we do first and second choice or some other form of ranking, that would be okay with me.

I was thinking (and ya'll are free to shoot me) that we could prioritize our choice of cities, 1-4, add up the numbers for each city, and then the city with the lowest number of points would win.

I don't think there's railroading going on - I was actually waiting to get the 2005 F2F voting done with, so we could maybe take a day and talk about Halloween, which is coming up PDQ.

I like the idea of single vote because I'm basing that on the old KISS principle. But, ranking first/second would make sense, and in any case, I'll vote however it's done. Just, let's set it up soon, yes? That way, everyone can relax.

I would like to have the would attend/would not attend information.

(eta: also thankful you are taking charge, juliana)

Agreeing with -t. Will not cry if we don't do the attendance survey, but it would be interesting. Am fine with ranking or with just one choice.