In my personal opinion as a Tournament Organizer, and not in any official capacity, I would say that if 16 players did not express their opinion in the poll, then they should be considered as voting for no change whatsoever. It is only fair to assume that, and that has been the case in many, many tournaments I have played in.
With 3 players saying that they wish to have no point transfer whatsoever, and 2 saying that they wish to have no point transfer for future tournaments, and 3 saying to leave things as it is then it appears that the voting is split pretty much evenly, thereby giving the final say to the organizer himself as he is the one in charge.
My more OFFICIAL opinion would be this:
In the end, the tournament organizer has the final say on what changes need to be made during the play of a tournament. However, if the players in the tournament have a majority vote stating that they wish for a change to be made differently than the organizer wishes, he should do his best to abide by the wishes of the players.
With that said, there is no majority vote at the moment in this "point transfer" dilemma and so at the moment I would say that AndrewB has the power to make a change to the system or to leave it the way it is and the players will need to abide by his decision.
The only option I can see at the moment is to send an ACTUAL PM to all players in the tournament, stating that a vote is NEEDED to make a good decision, and then record who votes which way here in the thread. After that take whichever option wins and use it with no argument from the players.
My final verdict would be this:
As there is no clear cut majority, I think that if AndrewB is willing to cut the percentage of points transferred from 50% to 25%, he should do so. That keeps the original idea that he wished to use intact, as well as provides some appeasement to the players who are not in as much favor.
With future tournaments, be sure to outline the system from the beginning so that there is no confusion, and the players will know what is going on from the start.
Everyone forgets to include a detail in their tournament description from time to time, and it shouldn't become a heated topic.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
Hopefully that helps,
Regards, Optimus Prime