Notes for Voters

Lots of things I need to write about here:

• Who are we, and what are we doing here?
• Who are the voters, and how are they selected?
• What are the mailing lists, and how are they managed?
• Who sponsors this Poll, and what do they get for what they provide?
• How do we define a year?
• What are the categories of albums we're voting on?
• How does the website work? How should it work?
• What are "carryover votes," and how does that work?
• What are the "notes" added to the totals and ballot pages?
• What about comments?
• What is the state of the archive? Is it ever going to get updated?

There is also a Notes for Adminstators file, which goes into these matters at a higher technology level. This is stuff that only the system administrator needs to know (so why am I making it public?).

Also see the FAQ, which repeats some of this but in a form more oriented to the general public.