December Tour 2025 - Rules & Discussion

[Robyklebt]

Pretty sure yes. Started in 2007 as a competition I think, leso always made 2 rounds.
Why 2 rounds? Ask him... he's not here. But from my point of view: It sort of makes sense.
- In the first round similar tours take votes away from each other.
- A tour with high "likes" might have equally high (or even higher) "dislikes"=Risk of ending up with an unpopular tour)

We changed the first round from single vote as it used to be, to the multiple vote system we have now. Thus eliminating some of the problems the first round posed, you could say the second round became unnecessary. But on the other hand by allowing multiple votes in round one, you're not looking for the "most popular" anymore, but for multiple acceptable ones. Second round is there to find the "best" (most of the time we don't find the best though)

[flockmastoR]

Pretty sure yes. Started in 2007 as a competition I think, leso always made 2 rounds.
Why 2 rounds? Ask him... he's not here. But from my point of view: It sort of makes sense.
- In the first round similar tours take votes away from each other.
- A tour with high "likes" might have equally high (or even higher) "dislikes"=Risk of ending up with an unpopular tour)

We changed the first round from single vote as it used to be, to the multiple vote system we have now. Thus eliminating some of the problems the first round posed, you could say the second round became unnecessary. But on the other hand by allowing multiple votes in round one, you're not looking for the "most popular" anymore, but for multiple acceptable ones. Second round is there to find the "best" (most of the time we don't find the best though)

Well, I dont have historic knowledge but the idea behind it is quite easy to get. When I made it, I also thought about a change of the voting system. My idea was something like a ranking system where you can give points for the different tours. Fixed for rank 1,2,3 etc. or even user defined (you have 10 points which you can distribute among all or just your favorite proposals).

Advantages:
+ Just one voting round
+ Better reflects your real preferences, if there are 3 more or less equally interesting tours I can give 4 points for my favorite and 3 points for the other two
+ less prone to manipulation if everyone is voting transparently under its user name

Disadvantages:
- If you need to post, less participation is realistic
- more prone to manipulation, as awarding 10 points shortly before the deadline can be used to eliminate your archrival's chances for winning
- You would need to control the rules/deadlines yourself, what happens when someone posts 1 min after the deadline? what if someone changes his post shortly before the deadline, the polling system is a lot easier for that

[cataracs]

- In the first round similar tours take votes away from each other.
- A tour with high "likes" might have equally high (or even higher) "dislikes"=Risk of ending up with an unpopular tour)

This whole point is ruined. In round one similar tours share the votes since we allow multiple ones. In round two (as you can see Australia and New Zealand) they take votes away from each other.

We should only give one vote on the first round for this to work properly in my opinion.

Well, I dont have historic knowledge but the idea behind it is quite easy to get. When I made it, I also thought about a change of the voting system. My idea was something like a ranking system where you can give points for the different tours. Fixed for rank 1,2,3 etc. or even user defined (you have 10 points which you can distribute among all or just your favorite proposals).

Advantages:
+ Just one voting round
+ Better reflects your real preferences, if there are 3 more or less equally interesting tours I can give 4 points for my favorite and 3 points for the other two
+ less prone to manipulation if everyone is voting transparently under its user name

Disadvantages:
- If you need to post, less participation is realistic
- more prone to manipulation, as awarding 10 points shortly before the deadline can be used to eliminate your archrival's chances for winning
- You would need to control the rules/deadlines yourself, what happens when someone posts 1 min after the deadline? what if someone changes his post shortly before the deadline, the polling system is a lot easier for that

It's not a bad idea, but in our barely active community in the forum, anything that requires "posts" can't really be considered.

[Radunion]

There is no perfect solution for a election if there are more than 2 candidates. There are always scenarios where it is beneficial to vote against you favorite. Making results open, tactical voting is much easier. Ranked voting is a solution but you have to take your time to think about what happened when you get the results.

If we really care about it and are not okay with getting one of several good choices, we have to move the vote outside the forum. Either implement it in-game (which would mean more work) or find a platform that already implemented it. Forum vote is based on trust that nobody wants to manipulate anyways.

[Gipfelstuermer]

Secret in-game vote would be the solution. (Could even be limited to teams with at least X races).

Could be a nice feature, but not sure it's really a priority unless there are more things to vote about than once a year the Dec Tour

[Robyklebt]

There is no perfect solution for a election if there are more than 2 candidates.

This.

That said IMO the more votes in round 1 is much preferable to the single vote we had in the beginning. We had a case where a tour that clearly was going to lose 1 vs 1 against every other proposal win most votes in the first round. Very specialized, had something like 9 or more sprints. Really really really really borderline if that proposal really fulfilled the requirements for a Dec tour, at least one user even proposed to disqualify it. Which actually probably would have been the right thing to do, it was just too sprinty. But hard to actually do.. the rule is more there to prevent such Tours to be designed in the first place, once they are somehow hard to tell somebody "you're disqualified". Anyway, lots of sprint, very specialized, completely different from the rest, due to that got many "first votes", but was the most disliked proposal as well. as could be expected then lost clearly in the second round. With the multiple votes system we have now it's likely that that tour wouldn't have made it to the second round, many of those that voted for it might have voted for another one too. Many of those that voted for the final winner, might have voted for one of the tours that didn't make it to the second round. Many of those that voted for one of those tours, might have voted for either the final winner or another finally non-second round tour. None or very very few would have gone for that sprint tour. And then we would have had a more open 2nd round, with 2 "real choices". The right one won in the end, Yemen, but the other Tour shouldn't have been there. And again, I think with the multiple votes option in the first round I think it's likely it wouldn't have been.

Now Taka wants to avoid the "losing tours take votes away from each other" in the second round by introducing it in the first round? Where the effect is guaranteed? Unlike in the second round where we ideally have only 2 tours. This year was 3, happens, not the first time, will happen again, but it's not every year either.

And btw, are we sure the NZ votes would have all gone to Australia? I know of one, mine, that wouldn't. My vote was 1 NZ 2 Atzeca 3 Australia. Best Tour IMO Atzeca, but didn't get my vote. I'm a bit tired of the stupid gravel/pavé that has to be in everywhere it seems. Was in all proposals. Lack of creativity at this point. "Open race", while it does the opposite, in most cases it just make the GC more predictable, the opposite effect of what is often claimed. So I simply looked where it would have the least effect on GC and came to the conclusion it's NZ. Biggest effect Australia. Atzeca still the best Tour overall for me, the pavé is nice in the sense that it's actually pavé, real pavé, nicely researched, IMO the rating ok too, in some parts could even have been harder actually (yes, I actually looked at stuff with google street...) so can live with it somehow, but wasn't enough to get my vote, don't see why we need this stupid highly predictable thing in a "winter GT". It's only unpredictable to newcomers who then get fucked by it. Or really dumb managers, (no, I refrain from naming people for once) Ok, off-topic a bit. IMO the voting system as it is works well enough, (despite some voting irregularites in some years, an account of an inactive manager coming on in the forum for the first time in ages, when he goes off minutes later the tour designed by a compatriot has 1 vote more...how weird...) don't think it's necessary or worth making it ingame, (even if we would have bigger participation I guess) or another site (with less participation). The best system would be of course the olympic one, keep voting until somebody has a majority while eliminating the one with the least votes, but at some point voting just becomes annoying....IMO fine now. If Taka wants to think about changes for next year.. .ok ok, think, but I hope the result will be that the system now is fine.

[cataracs]

Congrats to La Ruta Azteca winning the competition.

Tukh May choose a staring time if he wants (the sooner the better) so that we can complete the schedule for December.

Australian East Coast 2026 Will be in January, designer should start working on the cut to make it 11 days. (with or without rest day)

TTV if you end up second again next year you'll be banned from participating for 10 years

[Tukhtahuaev]

14h please