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Your Elvenar Team
Contest Discussion Thread
- Thread starter Kadhrin
- Start date
Sprite1313
Well-Known Member
crackie
Chef, Scroll-Keeper, Buddy's #1 Fan
As someone who has ran an alternative contest on the forum before, I can say from experience that vote rigging still happens even with a poll, except they're trying to rig the contest for a tie. Howeverrrr, you can out-maneuver the shenanigans by explicitly stating the staff's vote was weighted in the contest rules beforehand. My contest also faced a legal challenge, though in this case, the winner tried to not win. After evidence was submitted, signature court briefly convened before being adjourned, with the objections withdrawn. Despite the judicial circus and making a farce of the entire voting process, a good time was still be had by all, proving that the contests are not really just about winning or losing. It's a break from the doldrum of complaining, a creative outlet for contestants, and a spectacle for onlookers who don't want to enter. An official contest though, not only fosters community engagement, but shows Inno hasn't forgotten about about the U.S. market to let us continue to languish on like Lord of the Flies. Like hey, a bone! Thrown our way by the people that made the game! OMG, they know we exist! Most of us are already volunteering by helping to answer the bulk of player questions here. We're not asking for much, but instead we've got an Ideas & Suggestions subforum that is dead if ideas never leave the forum no matter which way anyone decides to vote. The Bugs subforum is a dead end if bug reports go unacknowledged or unreported. Heaven forbids that we finally got a new contest after half a year and then the people we are supposed to trust to be impartial decides to insert themselves in the after hours of a contest to change the results to show us how meaningless our participation in the Contest subforum is too. I'm sorry we schemed to steal the Magic Accomplish Button and things stopped getting magically accomplished afterwards, but like, can we get a functioning community back? Pretty please?
Sprite1313
Well-Known Member
Yesssss!!!!!! More spectacles!
Queen of Snacks
Snack Hoarder
I think this cake was swarmed with Ants
Lelanya
Scroll-Keeper, Keys to the Gems
I can live with that.
Lelanya
Scroll-Keeper, Keys to the Gems
I completely support you.
BrinDarby
Well-Known Member
If you just hide the results till its over, then other than
the Mods/Dev team, noone knows whos winning, thus
pretty hard to rig the poll.....
Dreamyn2
Buddy Fan Club member
And no one knows if or how many mod/cm/dev alts voted and skewed the results
Yavimaya
Scroll-Keeper
What if there is no policy right now for that? Did anyone cheat if no policy was in place? If the mods voted before contest or after wouldn't it be the same vote? (Not trying to downplay your comment at all just an honest question)
StarLoad
Well-Known Member
Since being called out, I have left the situation alone, hoping it would just simmer down. Since that is not the case, I will address it once, and I will not reply as I will walk away from the forums after I post this.
I, as a player, can Vote for whomever I want, and I do not need to justify this ever! ( This was an Elvenar-themed birthday cake contest, so I looked only at ones that fit that description and voted accordingly)
No Mod told me to vote for a specific person, period! My votes were mine, and I used them as I saw fit.
I can ask my FS or multiple FSs to help vote for me if I have entered or even to support another entry. I can vote for myself too. Even using my ALTs, all within the rules. (And don't bother to use the logic that it is wrong to do that or that there is a moral stance not to do that. Your choice of what you do and how you act is up to you, and placing your morals goes the same way as the fair trade argument does.)
Alt accounts are allowed by Inno and must be linked to the forum accounts for access and support, which means that players may have multiple votes. This is not against the rules.
The original rules did not specify a vote cutoff point, that is a fact, and I was not the only one to bring this up. I did not see the secondary post that stated when voting closed. Notwithstanding that fact, if my votes are determined to have been outside the voting window, then that is fine with me. However, to make a claim that the votes were ILLEGAL is bunk, plain, and simple. The Forum software allows likes even years after, so is it the player's fault?
So, in my opinion, I have not broken any rules, nor did I vote with any intent to rig the voting process; I was busy and had not got around to voting until after all the submissions were in, which means voting AFTER April 5 deadline. That makes complete sense, as why would I vote before all the cakes were being shown? To have the voting end at the same time as the submissions means that only the first few cakes will have a good chance to get votes, and someone's cake posted on the 5th will likely get far fewer votes just due to the compressed time factor. And that is exactly what happened. So yes, this was flawed and screwed up, but it was not intentional, despite all the comments of Vote rigging by the mods!
Several of you, and not naming names, should not have made some of the comments you did, and a few did go back and edit out what they posted originally; however, the damage was done, and tossing more gasoline to splash over the coals was inappropriate. I didn't report any of the comments as the mods don't need the extra work, and I would rather people see the true colors of the sniping few.
I am sure I could say more and go into greater detail, but I see no point in calling out others for their actions.
With that, I say goodbye and good luck and am signing off.
Ed
I, as a player, can Vote for whomever I want, and I do not need to justify this ever! ( This was an Elvenar-themed birthday cake contest, so I looked only at ones that fit that description and voted accordingly)
No Mod told me to vote for a specific person, period! My votes were mine, and I used them as I saw fit.
I can ask my FS or multiple FSs to help vote for me if I have entered or even to support another entry. I can vote for myself too. Even using my ALTs, all within the rules. (And don't bother to use the logic that it is wrong to do that or that there is a moral stance not to do that. Your choice of what you do and how you act is up to you, and placing your morals goes the same way as the fair trade argument does.)
Alt accounts are allowed by Inno and must be linked to the forum accounts for access and support, which means that players may have multiple votes. This is not against the rules.
The original rules did not specify a vote cutoff point, that is a fact, and I was not the only one to bring this up. I did not see the secondary post that stated when voting closed. Notwithstanding that fact, if my votes are determined to have been outside the voting window, then that is fine with me. However, to make a claim that the votes were ILLEGAL is bunk, plain, and simple. The Forum software allows likes even years after, so is it the player's fault?
So, in my opinion, I have not broken any rules, nor did I vote with any intent to rig the voting process; I was busy and had not got around to voting until after all the submissions were in, which means voting AFTER April 5 deadline. That makes complete sense, as why would I vote before all the cakes were being shown? To have the voting end at the same time as the submissions means that only the first few cakes will have a good chance to get votes, and someone's cake posted on the 5th will likely get far fewer votes just due to the compressed time factor. And that is exactly what happened. So yes, this was flawed and screwed up, but it was not intentional, despite all the comments of Vote rigging by the mods!
Several of you, and not naming names, should not have made some of the comments you did, and a few did go back and edit out what they posted originally; however, the damage was done, and tossing more gasoline to splash over the coals was inappropriate. I didn't report any of the comments as the mods don't need the extra work, and I would rather people see the true colors of the sniping few.
I am sure I could say more and go into greater detail, but I see no point in calling out others for their actions.
With that, I say goodbye and good luck and am signing off.
Ed
Deborah M
Oh Wise One
@ed1960 You are correct. This was a big mess and it has become clear that includes the lack of clear rules. My comment about illegal contests was 100% corporate, not personal. I have deleted the comment. It was NEVER meant toward you! I sincerely apologize if you thought it was 
Please don’t leave over this!! I mean this. I would miss your knowledge and perspective on the forum.
Please don’t leave over this!! I mean this. I would miss your knowledge and perspective on the forum.
Last edited:
Darielle
Chef, Scroll-Keeper, and Buddy Fan Club Member
Ed, no one wants to see you leave the forum. I don't know who deleted their posts ... it wasn't me, but that's irrelevant. What is relevant is that people can have differences of opinion without falling out over it or leaving the forum. I don't believe anyone was picking on you.... several good people voted after what most people perceived as the deadline (and yes, that was a terribly written contest) But I don't think those late voters even thought about the contest; they just happened to like certain pictures. No blame to you or any of them. If the contest hadn't been badly worded then the deadline would have been clear and people could like the pictures to their heart's content after the deadline and it wouldn't have mattered ... only the votes before that would count. Things didn't turn out that way because of badly written contest rules. (As a case in point, the contest rules I wrote for the Arizona Authors literary contest are two pages long and I went over them for a month figuring out all the contingencies ... while that is not needed here, I do believe that people should devote a few minutes to really thinking about each sentence and how it can be interpreted (and misinterpreted) before actually signing off on a contest post.)
In the end, I think a lesson was learned on both sides ... on the one side, to think more carefully before writing rules, and on the other, to ask questions and have everything spelled out clearly, not just assume you know what they meant. Maybe that's a good thing in the end, so that things can work out better in the future. I wouldn't be surprised if they stop allowing mods to vote. That was always problematic in the past (I noticed recently that some of the mods have deleted their posts from past contests, so they probably realize it too).
As far as voting for yourself with many alt ids, while you and I have a difference of opinion on that, neither opinion matters and it's not worth fighting over. Maybe someday Inno will voice an opinion on this matter and we'll both have to live with it, whatever it is. But there's no reason to leave the forum.
Queen of Snacks
Snack Hoarder
Mods should not be voting, as that is participating.
Deborah M
Oh Wise One
That is exactly what I took exception to! A Mod voting what appeared to be late does not look good.
Yavimaya
Scroll-Keeper
Please do not leave. You are one of my favorite people here and I love reading your posts. The forum wouldn't be the same without you!