Conroy and Fielding: The Battle for Last Place
The 2010 Australian Federal Election saw a battleground being drawn – between those who advocated voting Stephen Conroy last (for his “insist[ence] on pressing ahead with a Mandatory Internet Filter for Australia”), and those advocating voting Steve Fielding last. As it turned out, voters were cool with letting them share last and second last places.
Thanks to the amazing amount of data the AEC make available, we’re able to analyse how people voted Below the Line on their senate ticket. This graph shows how many people placed these two candidates at each position (click for full-size):
There are several points of interest here. For Senator Conroy, his largest spikes by far were at 2 and 8. This suggests that a large chunk of people are voting Labor first or second, probably after the Greens. Similarly, the spike at 57 would coincide with voters putting Labor last. Senator Fielding sees a similar pattern, the spike at 1 being people putting Family First first on their preferences, the group of spikes at the end would be Family First being voted towards last, the final spike at 56 being a large group of voters putting Family First as the last party on their ballot.
Far more interesting, however, are the last few places on the ballot. If people were voting by party, this should drop off significantly. Instead, we see both candidates having a significant proportion of voters1 putting them last or second last.
As I mentioned in my previous post regarding Below the Line statistics, both NSW and Queensland saw an increase in the proportion of voters choosing to vote Below the Line, a 0.37% and 0.3% increase, respectively. As the proportion of Below the Line voters tends to increase as the number of candidates decreases, one would expect Victoria to see a similar increase. As it turns out, the push for people to vote Below the Line saw a greater effect in Victoria, with a 0.89% increase. I would attribute most, if not all, of this growth to the campaigns mentioned above, and the availability of tools like Vote Below the Line.
So, what can we take away from these numbers? First of all, given that both of these campaigns were entirely word-of-mouth based, with zero advertising, they were surprisingly effective. Contacting and convincing 7-9% of voters to vote in a particular way is no mean feat. Social media certainly played a large part of this, whether it be new media like Twitter and Facebook, blogs like Crikey, or forums like Whirlpool.
Secondly, voters should see this as clear evidence that every individual does have a voice, when put together, can add up to a shout!
Finally, both of these Senators, along with all candidates, should read it as a clear message – voters do associate particular behaviour with particular politicians, and are capable of organising to send a protest vote to them.
- Fielding: 8.9%, Conroy: 7% ↩
Voting Below the Line: It’s the New Black
Voting Below the Line. For a long time, it’s been the domain of the political nerds, the 3% of the population who know the policy of every party on any topic. However, thanks to the rise of sites like Below the Line, it’s suddenly become easier to plan your vote in advance, without the stress of standing in the little cardboard booth on election day, trying to remember the difference between the Australian Labor Party and the Democratic Labor Party, or the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Equality parties.
Pushing this new trend is the idea of protest voting a particular candidate – movements have sprung up, encouraging people to vote Stephen Conroy last (for his “insist[ence] on pressing ahead with a Mandatory Internet Filter for Australia”), or to vote Steve Fielding last (for being Steve Fielding, I suspect). So, how effective were these campaigns? Well, we can’t know quite yet – the Australian Electoral Commission are yet to release the Below the Line voting data for Victoria. However, while waiting for the AEC to make it available, I’ve checked out what’s been happening around the country:
- Victoria isn’t the only state that saw protest voting a candidate as a way to get a message across – in Tasmania, Eric Abetz (Liberals) and Christine Milne (Greens) saw an unusually high proportion of people putting them last on the ballot (in comparison to other candidates, or their own party). Similarly, Gary Humphries (Liberal) in the ACT found himself put last by a large chunk of the voting populace. Unfortunately, I’m unfamiliar with all of these candidates – perhaps someone more knowledgeable can fill me in on why they ended up like this?
- One Nation, The Climate Sceptics and Family First are generally disliked around the country. They were by far the most common parties to be put last.
- Despite the unending news reports describing the epidemic of voter apathy in NSW and Queensland, both states saw an increase in the proportion of voters voting Below the Line – up from 1.78% and 2.68% to 2.15% and 2.98%, respectively.
- Around the nation, there was a general increase in the proportion of voters going Below the Line, up ~0.47% from 3.14% to 3.61%.
- Generally, the proportion of voters choosing to vote Below the Line increases as the number of candidates decreases.
- Tasmanians seem to be the most willing to vote Below the Line, with 19.53% of people taking the extra few minutes to do it.
Hopefully the Victoria Below the Line data will be released soon. Naturally, I’ll be analysing how Senators Conroy and Fielding fared, and bringing you the results.
As a slightly less serious aside, there are no statistics on the number of polling places with sausage sizzles. As my local church hall had no such BBQ-related facilities, I will be pushing at both a state and federal level for urgent electoral reform to be enacted – the AEC should be responsible for ensuring all polling venues have fair and equal access to the appropriate equipment and supplies required to provide voters with charcoaled meat in a slice of white bread. 
UPDATE 2010-09-21: Victorian stats released, corrected total BtL statistic to match.
Job Manager Highlight: Thinc Projects
Thinc Projects just launched their new careers site, with the help of the people at Zojo. They were after a job board plugin, and after evaluating other options, came to the conclusion that Job Manager was the obvious choice.
I found Job Manager easy to work with from day one, I appreciated the way it works straight out-of-the-box and I knew my client would understand it straight away upon handover. This allowed me to set up my fields and pages as required with full knowledge that everything was working and all I had to do was apply my design.
Customizing the form layout to the final design was easy. Using CSS, I was able to style and add classes to my liking by adding code into the page templates as I required them. From a developers view point I was able to customise the layout and fields according to my heart’s content (or my clients’ I should say).
— David Gross, Zojo
They were also after particular information from applicants, so the ability to customise the application form as invaluable. And just because I like to let the users speak for themselves, here’s a little more of what David had to say:
While evaluating other options, nothing came close in terms of freedom of options, customisation and support.
So there you have it – download Job Manager, you can easily create a job board for your company!
Are you doing creative things with Job Manager? Have some time to tell me how and why you’re using it? Drop me a line, you could be the next Job Manager Highlight!
The Bedroom Philosopher @ The Northcote Social Club
After a year away from Melbourne’s live music scene, it’s taking me a little bit to get back into the routine. Last time, I forgot my earplugs and camera. This time, I only forgot my camera. Hopefully the next gig will involve me not forgetting anything! But in the mean time, you get some slightly lower quality photos and video, courtesy of my phone.
First up for the evening’s lineup was Pinky Beecroft and The White Russians. As a long time fan of Pinky’s work, it’s always a pleasure to see them on stage, tonight was no exception.
As he mentioned in the above clip, Pinky was in a good mood, so didn’t grumble too much when the traditional Melbourne request for a Machine Gun Fellatio song came up (in this case, Unsent Letter). With a little luck it won’t scare The White Russians off from performing here again in the near future!
Up next were The Boat People. Sadly, they were a bit underwhelming after The White Russians. The music was okay, but not spectacular. Girl jeans are a bad look on guys – the lack of room for boy bits makes for the rather unattractive “pocket dong” look. That said, they did finish on a strong note, their last song, Born in the 80s (from their previous album) was pretty rockin’.
Finally, the main act: The Bedroom Philosopher. I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing him live, having only heard a couple of songs on JJJ. The public transport theme was cool, with his backing band (The Awkwardstra) dressed in old MET uniforms. I’m also a big fan of any band that can bring on a brass section, even if they only managed a couple of trumpets.
Sadly, the gig was marred a little by a (Crazy fan? Jilted lover? Belligerent drunk? All of the above?), named Bridget, who felt the urge to interrupt, squeal and make a nuisance of herself, even when asked to stop by the band and the crowd. Bridget, if you’re reading this, stop doing that. You’re kind of ruining it for everyone else.
Luckily, the gig got right back on track, culminating in a magnificent “Pyramid of Power”!
A few more photos available here.
Tabs in Firefox 4 (aka, I can’t believe it’s not Chrome)
First up, if you’re not sure how, Lifehacker has a great reference on where to find your userChrome.css file.
One of the things I love about Google Chrome is that it shows all the tabs at once – even if it has to get really squishy. By default, Firefox limits them to 100px wide, then starts scrolling. Since Firefox 2.0, you’ve been able to use browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to disable this. As of Firefox 4.0b2, however, this functionality has been moved to userChrome.css. Add the following CSS to your userChrome.css to make it act the same as Chrome:
.tabbrowser-tab[fadein]:not([pinned]) { min-width: 1px !important; }
Another great feature of Chrome is having the tabs in the title bar, as it reduces wasted space. Again, you can get the same functionality very easily with Firefox 4, by adding the following to your userChrome.css:
#appmenu-button-container { position: fixed !important; } #appmenu-button { padding: 3px 18px 3px 18px !important; margin-left:3px !important; background-color: rgba(54, 121, 166, 0.2) !important; } #toolbar-menubar { margin: -25px 100px 5px 100px; } #navigator-toolbox[tabsontop="true"] #TabsToolbar { margin: 0 125px 0 95px; }
Note that I’ve tweaked this for Windows 7 – you may need to alter the values for other platforms. Feel free to post your tweaks in the comments!
As a bonus, here’s a screenshot of these tweaks in action – lets play “guess which websites Gary has open”.
UPDATE: 2010-09-08: Firefox 4 beta 5 changed how this worked a little bit, so I’ve updated the userChrome.css code.
Job Manager 0.7 Released
AKA: The “No Unifying Theme” release.
Along those lines, there are a bunch of varied new features!
- Interview Scheduling – Easily keep track of who you’re interviewing and when, with interview ratings and internal comments
- Comments – Keep internal comments on interviews and applications, so you’re easily able to aggregate and recall thoughts on each applicant
- WordPress.com Support – If you’re a WordPress.com VIP customer, and you want to bring your hiring process back in house, drop me a line, I’d be happy to discuss any features you need, or assist you setting it up.
- Application Form Templating – If you’d like to customise the look of your application form, you can. Build a mad-libs style form! (The potential benefits of which are briefly discussed here.)
- Jobs Per Page – If you’re showing lots of jobs, you might want to split them up into multiple pages.
As always, the Changelog has all the juicy details!
The big feature in the next version will be the ability to create a public job site for (optionally) charging people to post jobs on your site. If you have ideas or suggestions for how you’d like to see this work, check out the Roadmap and leave comments on the appropriate issue.
Version 0.8 will have a slightly longer development cycle than previous versions – I expect the stable release to be out in early July. I’m travelling for much of the next 6 weeks, so rather than making promises I can’t keep, I’ll push feature development for 0.8 until June. I’ll still be fixing any bugs that crop up in 0.7, of course.
There are several more translations in progress, I’ll be releasing them as they’re completed, throughout the 0.7 lifecycle. On a related note, the German translation needs someone to keep it up to date – if you speak German and have some time to translate strings, please contact me!
For now, go and upgrade to version 0.7, and let me know what you think!
Job Manager Highlight: BlueTree Search
BlueTree Search recently re-launched their site with the help of Stripe Creative, switching from plain HTML to WordPress as a CMS. Along the way, they decided to bring their job listing in-house.
Initially, this client asked us to add a job posting section to the web site we developed for them a few years ago. Our awesome programmer dude (Scotty at randomproductions.net) suggested that for the same cost of adding a custom-written application, we could re-create the site in WordPress and find a customizable job posting plug-in. This allowed us to offer the client some serious added value (easier updates and adding new functionality through plug-ins) at no additional cost. The transfer to WordPress was transparent to the end users — we kept the site’s original design — and adding/customizing Job Manager was a breeze.
— Brian Robboy, Stripe Creative
With a little bit of editing of the Individual Job Template, they were able to easily highlight pertinent information, without distracting from the content of the listed job.
And a final bonus comment from Brian:
I love working with people like you who actually CARE about the applications they’re writing…we’d never get this level of dedication, customer service and communication with a commercial product.
Are you doing creative things with Job Manager? Have some time to tell me how and why you’re using it? Drop me a line, you could be the next Job Manager Highlight!
Stats for WordPress plugins and themes hosted on wordpress.org
I am a stats addict. For all of the sites I work on, there’s a link in my Google Analytics account to show me the statistics for that site.
Unfortunately, there’s one site missing from the chain: wordpress.org. Job Manager is hosted there, but I cannot see the visitor statistics. Google Code allows you to track statistics for your project hosted there, so I think wordpress.org hosting should be able to do the same, for plugins and themes hosted there.
To that end, I have submitted a shiny new feature request. If you like this idea, go, comment, and vote for it!
Job Manager 0.6 Released
AKA: The “so many features, so little time” release.
Here are some of the major features that have been added:
- Custom Job Fields. Like the Application Form, you can now add custom fields to Jobs, so you can display the information that is pertinent to your organisation.
- Job and Job List Templates. You can now completely customise the HTML that is produced for lists of jobs, and individual jobs. (If you build a cool template that you’d like to share, feel free to send it through – I’d like to build a database where people can easily browse through and choose the look-and-feel that they’re after for their job listing.)
- Widgets. No more maintaining text widgets with links to your job categories, or lists of latest jobs.
- Highlighted Jobs. You can now highlight important jobs, and stick them to the top of any job list they appear in.
- CAPTCHA support, thanks to the excellent SI CAPTCHA plugin.
There are many more, check the Changelog for the complete list!
The development cycle for this version has been a little bumpy. Mid-way through, I decided to add Job Fields and Templates, the lack of which had been bugging me, but in order to meet the arbitrary deadline of “mid-February” for the 0.6 release (which I ended up only meeting with the first beta), I had to cut a few of the other features I had planned. That said, I think the process is getting smoother, and I’m certainly getting a lot of support from the WordPress community: we now have two complete translations (Dutch and French), more on the way, and a comprehensive user manual in the works!
So, where to next?
First up, I like having a “small features” release. It gives me a chance to attend to the tweaking that can be overlooked when implementing major features, so I’ve schedule version 0.8 as being the next small features release. I’ve already have a few listed on the Roadmap, but I’m always interested in adding more!
Speaking of the Roadmap, I’m going to have to revise the Due dates that I have listed. These dates were set in November/December last year, and it seems I made them a bit too aggressive – not allowing for beta releases, longer-than-expected development time, et cetera. I’ll be looking at them over the next couple of weeks, if you have any thoughts on it, please leave a comment below.
The next major feature I’m going to be working on is allowing anyone to post jobs. If you have any comments on how you’d like this to work, please post them in this issue.
Finally, do you have any ideas for where you’d like to see Job Manager go? Some of my best feature suggestions have come from the community – you’re the people who are using it in every day life, so I want to know how I can make your life easier. Send me your suggestions through the issue tracker.
Job Manager 0.5 Released
AKA: “The Mother of All Changelogs” release. Go on, look at it. It’s huge.
This has been the first time I’ve made beta releases on the wp.org system, and I think it’s been quite successful. I’ve had some good feedback over the past few days, and fixed several bugs, without affecting user’s production systems. Naturally, I welcome any comments on how you felt it went.
The big changes are:
- You can now allow or require users to register before they can submit an application. This will be the basis for a pile of new features coming up over the next few months.
- You could always send email to applicants – now these emails are stored, and along with records of who they were sent to.
- Application ratings – it’s now easy to keep track of who your star applicants are. You can also filter your list of applications based on their rating, for an easy list of who you need to call back.
- A lot of people were asking how to find the links to the categories, so I’ve added links to each category on the Settings page. I’ll be adding more methods to find your way to the categories in later versions.
I’ve set up GlotPress to handle my translations, if you’d like to have Job Manager in your language, please contact me, so I can create an account for you. If you’re interested, I only change or add strings in feature releases (0.3, 0.4, 0.5, etc). I don’t make any changes or additions in bug fix releases (0.4.1, 0.4.2, 0.4.3, etc).
The next feature release, version 0.6, will include lots of small features that people have requested. If there’s a small change you’d like to see in Job Manager, check out the Roadmap and see if it’s there. If not, submit a feature request!
Gary Pendergast, noun: Gamer and developer. MySQL, WordPress, web and music geek. Makes interesting things at Automattic. Can be observed in his natural habit at pento.net, or usually in Melbourne, Australia.
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