Traditional dotmocracy, also know as dot voting, sticker voting or multi-voting, is essentially placing stickers or written marks next to ideas one likes, usually written on easel paper by a facilitator. See an article that fully explains the traditional process.

The Advanced Dotmocracy process, with its specially designed idea sheets, rules and instructions defined by Jason Diceman of Co-op Tools, improves on the traditional dot voting process in several key ways:

• Any participant can present a detailed idea in their own words without the bottleneck and filter of a facilitator. In effect, many more ideas can be posted in a much shorter period of time.
• The distribution of ideas on separate sheets allows for unlimited ideas to be presented and rated at the same time.
• The agreement scale on each sheet makes it clear the levels of agreement, disagreement and confusion for every posted idea. Traditional method of posting dots just for approval does not recognize disagreement or confusion.
• The one dot per person/per sheet provides a much more accurate representation of the participants' collective opinions. For example, using the traditional dotmocracy method, 5 people can put one dot each on an idea, or one person can put 5 dots on the same idea. Reviewing the results, decision-makers can not tell the difference between the two different scenarios.
• There is no concern of vote splitting between similar or related ideas.
• Participants can write useful comments on the sheets.
• Documented rules and guidelines promote consistency and reliability of results.
• The letter-size idea sheets can be easily photocopied and archived in a binder or folder. The traditional process uses large easel paper which is awkward to store and review.
• There is no need to purchase the dot stickers that the traditional process requires.

The main advantage of traditional dot voting over advanced dotmocracy is that it is simpler to learn and apply.