Use a graphic for vote-count | |||||||||||||||||
Instead of, or in addition to, the four items currently given in a line of text for the vote count (total / for / neutral / against), I suggest a graphic consisting of a horizontal line with three colored segments: green / yellow / red. The length of each colored-segment would be in proportion to its percentage of the total votes cast. I like this because it's more important to give readers an instantaneous sense of the proportion of voters in favor vs. neutral vs. opposed than it is to give them an exact numeric count. (All readers do with such a count is compute the mental equivalent of the proportionate graph I'm proposing in their mind's eye. Why not spare them the tedious effort of that computation, and its and often-inexact result? Why not instead give them the mental-image end-result they really want in the first place? (Aside from the programming difficulty.)) The actual numbers could also be provided thus, to the right of the line: nn/nn/nn. The first number would be green, the second yellow, and the third red. This would be self-explanatory. If thought necessary, another item could follow, namely = nnn, which would represent the total (in black). It also would be self-explanatory.
Roger Knights, May 25 2008
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PS: The height of the colored line could grow as more votes were cast. It would only need to have four to six settings. This would incorporate all the information in a single grasp-at-a-glance image.