Tiebreaker, Tiebreaker, Break Me a Tie

The struggle to join Charitocracy's Top 10

Just a heads up on a tiny little update to the rules regarding tiebreakers: if the stars align and multiple causes have

  1. the same number of votes from
  2. the same number of voters and
  3. the same number of likes...

... then the first of them to have been nominated wins. First come first served.

I had to make this rule up on the fly last night. I received an email just after 1am reporting that the Vote page wasn't listing any causes any more. (Thanks, Stephanie!) I checked my server logs, and sure enough there it was, the result of the Top 10 selection process:

tie for votes AND voters *AND* likes!
need quadruple-tiebreaker?!

So I chose a 4th criterion that cannot result in yet another tie, since two causes cannot be nominated at the same time; one of them will make it into the database first. And that one will edge out any others with the same number of votes, voters, and likes.

For example, let's say there's a cause called The Nature Conservancy and another called St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and both are vying for 10th position in the Top 10. Let's also say, hypothetically, that as of midnight both have 2.5 votes from 3 voters and 7 likes. That's when a friend emails you that your server's broken, and you spend from 1am to 2am fixing the voting criteria, and St. Jude, nominated just 3 days before The Nature Conservancy as it would turn out, secures its spot in the Top 10 for March.

Usually I make my own memes. But this one I found on an old blog post about NCAA March Madness was too perfect and timely as-is. (Now pardon me, I have to go Pimp My Charity some more.)

Dawg, we heard you like tiebreakers so we put a tiebreaker in yo tiebreaker so you can break ties while you break ties