I think all of us at FT would appreciate an explanation of exactly why votes were tossed out. Unless I failed statistics in college, <which I didn't, even though I slept through most of it> I believe doing this essentially invalidates the Freddy Awards.

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Hell hath no fury like that of an elite frequent flyer in coach.

I am not real smart, but I can lift heavy things.

I agee Seth.

What gives InsideFlyer? Are we going to throw out 2's and 3's next year, because everyone knows the 1's will be thrown out?

Reminds me of a market research study I did for a client. He wanted us to "lose" a couple of the questionairres to skew the results. Deja Vu.

A SOLID explaination is needed for this one.

This is, of course, ignoring the fact that the Freddies have been ridiculous for reasons beyond throwing away all "1" votes.

Is there any weighting the votes based on the size of the airlines? If not, how can you expect the very minor players to ever win a real award? Any what value are the awards to those who aren't in a market covered by such an airline? How can voters be expected to rank companies that they don't use?

What about the fact that there's no way to accurately vote over the Internet without physical verification of votes? Randy can claim anything he wants about throwing away industry e-mail addresses and dupe IPs, but as a seasoned Internet professional and a computer expert, I can assure everyone that there is no way to do this and expect reasonable results.

It is laughable to think that this is possible. Just for fun, I like to tell my colleagues about the voting process and hear their humorous reactions. Everyone gets a real kick out of it.

What about the fact that InsideFlyer employees manage the Freddies and vote-counting without an independent authority meanwhile having a financial stake (advertising) in the companies that win the awards?

The whole thing is ridiculous. I won't expect an explanation from Randy because there's no way to take this whole thing seriously.

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daniel baker -- [email protected]
Reliable, fast, and unmoderated forums at ITYT.

[This message has been edited by dbaker (edited 04-26-2002).]

I believe Randy Petersen has indicated that an outside accounting firm verifies the results and the co-sponsors of the Freddie Awards are able to monitor the votes.

For what it's worth, I don't think the Freddies are a joke. I enjoy reading about the annual awards on WebFlyer.com and have a great amount of respect for not only InsideFlyer, but also the namesake Sir Freddie Laker.

Who does this auditing? Arthur Anderson?

The presence of an auditing firm that would sign off on the results after watching 18,000 legitimate votes get tossed on the floor simply because they didn't support the desired outcome adds zero credibility to the affair.

Should I be surprised?

et's reely arturo andersen, an et shuld be cawled the shreddies.

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Loving, Caring, Honest, Intelligent, Empathetic, Creative, and Giving.

Can we give Randy time to get back in town and catch up on the controversy here?

I have no reason to question Randy's integrity and have to believe his intentions are on the up-and-up.

Give him a chance to respond (if he chooses) before you pass judgment.

William

Smoke and mirrors.

These were audited 4 times. I'd like to know which ballots were tossed out and what the results would have been (good and bad) from those ballots. About 8% of the ballots were tossed. That's an awfully high percentage.

Quote from Freddie web site:
"In 2001, 64,716 Freddie voters generously took a few minutes to complete a profile of themselves."
Quote from further down the page:
"18,419 suspect ballots were eliminated from voting."
Assuming that the 18,419 were not counted in the 64,716 mentioned then there were 83,135 ballots cast in the 2001 Freddies. Over 22% were eliminated from the counting. Wow, would they have changed the outcome of the other categories if they had been counted?

[This message has been edited by mikey1003 (edited 04-27-2002).]

[This message has been edited by mikey1003 (edited 04-27-2002).]

Removed by Poster - Adios FT

[This message has been edited by dcwcce (edited 05-09-2002).]

I'm not sure what relevance your out of context "quote" has to this issue. I must point out, however, that Randy Petersen has done a lot of coach flying in the last year. For evidence, please see the past threads on his "Come Fly With Me" adventures after September 11.

I'm not too sure what to make of all this, but let's give Randy and Insideflyer the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure he'll speak to the subject soon so let's avoid jumping to hasty conclusions.