[Archive] Forum Competitions, rules and self-voting (now with poll)

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1

Bloodbeard:

Disclaimer: This post is written by me as a CDO user and is only with my views of the issues descriped. It is not that off the Staff in any way.

Background

While running the just finished Artisan’s Contest XVI, I had my first logins to the user Staff (where we cast votes). Locking at your entries, votes and how stuff looks behind the scenes. I was also logged into the Golden Hat user. A nice way of getting some CDO history as well.

By mere coincidence I noticed some users votes for themselves during the competition. And then while browsing the old competitions, I noticed that this is a general thing.

Let’s make it clear however, that it’s not against the competition rules to self-vote, but it is “generally frowned upon”. Well with my new knowledge of the extend of self-voting - this thread is me generally frowning! And after that making some suggestions.

Extend of self-voting

Not against the rules for sure, but I just personally had an idea that it wasn’t done. Yet it’s done more than I could imagine. In Golden Hat XX just over 1/3 of the participants self-voted. With nearly 20 entries and roughly 35 people casting votes that is a lot.

Why it’s a problem

In our competitions the top entries is often very close in votes, with 4th and 5ft places often missing one or two votes. Voting for ones own entry presents two problems as I see it.

  • You are raising your entry above your competition and that 1 vote can be crucial to the final results.



What makes me sad

I enter competitions in order to push my skills, to be creative and make something that makes my fellow hobbyists go “wow! That’s genius!”. And I have never felt bad about losing to my peers - because their entries have obviously been better. And I like my fellow Dawi Zharr.

But CDO is a community build upon a great and helpful spirit. Everywhere people get constructive criticism and good words on their projects and ideas. It’s sad if this is not the case with competitions. I can vote for and acknowledge the work of three of my fellow hobbyist. Even if I tried being objective and looked at my own entries as best - I would never vote for myself. It makes me sad to see hard working guys, with veteran medals, never winning and never voting in their own favor. Would people also vote for them self in the “Yearly Member Medals” polls?

Because summarizing my above points: I find self-voting to be bad sportsmanship and ungentlemanly conduct - despite not being against the rules. And a medal ain’t worth that to me.

Pro self-voting

I ain’t losing no respect for my fellow members and hobbyist. And there are some arguments for why self-voting is okay.
  • It’s not against the rules. Absolutely right - only frowned upon.

  • It’s common practice in a democracy for people to put their vote on them self. Yes. Yet this is not politics. This is a hobby community, for people to help and inspire each other.

  • It’s a competition - it’s about winning. Anybody could do it. That’s absolutely right. I could vote for myself, but I don’t want to do that. I want something else from the competitions.


My suggestion

This is a large wall of text. Based on my above points. I would like to suggest a changing of the rules from the current rubber sentence “voting for yourself is not against the rules - but generally frowned upon”. And change it to “you are not allowed to vote for yourself - this is about showing appreciation of your fellow hobbyists”. Because I don’t think “generally frowned upon” is good enough, seeing the extend of the issue.

Now I would like to hear your input on the matter, especially from all the hard working members entering our competitions. Please share your thoughts and whether or not you would like the rules changed or kept the same. Depending on your responses, I’ll bring some or the other to the staff section.

The last couple of words

Please keep a civil tone in the following discussion, this is be a sensible issue. Please try and get all your thoughts into one post. I would like to turn this thread into a poll - but first when people have read and written - as to not make a hasty vote.

Please try to refrain from ‘spamming’ your points, as to not get 10 posts in a row between two members. I would like to hear from as many as possible. Agree, disagree.

Thanks for reading. I needed to get it off my chest - at least let my fellow members know. If we don’t change the rules, come the next competition, you might reconsider how you vote. No matter the outcome - I’ll not self-vote.

//Bloodbeard

2

Thommy H:

I never vote for myself. It’s pretty gross imo.

3

Zanko:

I have no problem with the rule of “non-voting-myself” (not sure maybe I voted once for myself …).

I have another suggestion - it should be up to three votes! Cause sometimes I would only vote one or two entries so why must I vote for another one?

What do you think?

                      :hashut

4

Fuggit Khan:

My suggestion
I would like to suggest a changing of the rules from the current rubber sentence "voting for yourself is not against the rules - but generally frowned upon". And change it to "you are not allowed to vote for yourself - this is about showing appreciation of your fellow hobbyists". Because I don't think "generally frowned upon" is good enough, seeing the extend of the issue.

//Bloodbeard


Bloodbeard
I fully agree and support this change...the rules should state that people can't vote for themselves.
I also understand that some people may think "Well, that's what a Chaos Dwarf would do, vote for themselves, I'm just keeping in the spirit of a Chaos Dwarf". Well, that is true...but Chaos Dwarfs also own slaves and view other peoples as inferior. And naturally nobody here on this forum acts in that manner, right?
So I strongly believe that common held beliefs of good sportsmanship, respect and showing appreciation for our fellow CDO compatriots should prevail over any thoughts of "acting in character" of a Dawi Zharr.

Obviously nobody broke any official rules, so no hard feelings. But please, let's keep this a community oriented forum...so please support your fellow Dawi Zharr for their efforts and contributions by giving them your votes :hat off

And for what it's worth: I have never voted for myself in any of the CDO competitions
5

Admiral:

Yeah. I was surprised when I scanned the competition rules in preparation for Scribe’s Contest. But I simply thought it must have some reason of administrative smoothness, and didn’t ponder more upon it. After all, who would like to vote for himself?

If it won’t be too much of a hassle for the rest of the Staff to check that no one votes for himself, then I can see no reason to keep the allowance of voting for yourself. I imagine there is only a technical reason for that rule’s existence. There is nothing competitive about foul play.

6

Dînadan:

I’m surprised that people self vote - I’m agreed with Bloodbeard on this. Personally it’s not something I’d do, even if I thought my entry was the best on offer O.o

The problem may come from the need to make three votes and how varied the entries are; I can’t speak for everyone else, but I usually struggle with voting because there’s usually one or two entries which are of a noticeable higher quality than the others and it’s a tough call on which to vote for to round out the three votes. I always try to make the effort to chose which is the ‘best of the rest’ but maybe some just vote for themselves to get that ‘spare’ vote out of the way because they don’t think they’re going to win anyway and think by voting for what they see as a ‘no hope’ it’ll give their fave a better chance at winning?

7

Abecedar:

This has been mentioned in passing sometimes. And quite frankly I am disappointed that people have been voting for themselves.

8

Zanko:

This has been mentioned in passing sometimes. And quite frankly I am disappointed that people have been voting for themselves.

Abecedar
I think this much too hard!

There might be personal and reasonable causes to do so!

In my opinion it's no question of "good", "bad", "of being honorable" and so on!

It was legal and so it's ok! Like always mentioned perhaps I only like two entries and before giving my vote a "bad" entry I will give it to myself! That's not condemnable!

                      :hashut
9

Malorndk:

Change the rule, but let’s not shame and condemn the user’s who took time and effort to make and submit and entry and followed the rules :slight_smile:

10

TheHoodedMan:

Without judging self-voting good or bad I would prefer a clear ruling that self-votes do not count and also that you can vote for 1 - 3 entries (although my problem until now was more that I liked to give more votes than 3 ;-)).

11

Grimstonefire:

This might be a more common thing now, but for most of the first 10 or so golden hats I did the vote crunching and it was maybe 10 votes for themselves across all of those.

12

MadHatter:

I’ve been following this thread since it was posted to prepare my response. I’ve had a few drinks as it’s a tough topic (yeah, that’s the level you affect me on Zharr-Naggrund, deal with it).

First I would like to stress that there should be no shaming here, that’s not who we are or what we do. Not that anyone did so, and many said this already. If there should be anyone who should be personally condemned it should be the personal condemners and it was in the rules so the rules are to blame. Shame on you rules.

Second, the rules has to be fixed for future contests and if that’s to big a work-load for Staff to fix I volunteer for the job. I’ve never voted for myself in any of these contests and I want to compete in a fair environment.

Third, I’ve never been close to winning or even a honorary mention but I still put money, thought and time into these contests. The thing is that being able to enter these contests, among you guys, for a guy at my inferior level is awesome and a real honor. Disqualifying self-voters in the future would restore the sense of fair play I’ve always felt here which was robbed from me after reading this tonight. We’re all gentlemen, this kind of problem doesn’t belong here.

Good thing you brought it up Bloodbeard, slaves for you for your courage, in my opinion it’s indeed a serious issue that needs to be handled prior to any new contest what-so-ever.

For the discussion about putting down some of the 3 votes… Seriously I don’t even understand that kind of reasoning, contrary the decision is hard because there’s such a high level on the entries generally. This artisans was really hard and the GH prior was horrible and don’t even get me started on Scribes. There’s so many different variables to consider, from paint job to overall feel and creativity that only a fool would have an easy time voting.

13

Mivrash Faz:

Hear, Hear Bloodbeard!

I never understood the rationale behind entering a contest and voting for yourself. Although not a “violation of the rules” what’s the point? Shouldn’t a person win based on the opinion of their peers? Personally, I could care less if I enter a contest and not win, or even get a vote. This is a hobby for me and my motivation for submitting my entry was simply due to the fact that I had an idea which I thought was funny. That I didn’t win anything, or even recieve any votes is truly irrelevant. I painted a mini and I was happy with how it turned out. For what it’s worth I agree with what many of the others have said so far. People should not be able to vote for their own entry. If it means so much for someone to win all of the time that they have to vote for themselves, well then…   Just my two cents worth.:cheers

14

Kamphre:

I’m totally opposed to self-voting in future contests.

Number of votes : I don’t have problems to give 3 votes. I see this opportunity to reward people for their work.

15

tjub:

I haven’t had the time to enter the contests lately and haven’t thought much about it. But as you all say it should “common practice” not to vote for yourself. It will be extra work for admins to make sure its done correctly in the future, but if you are willing to do it I fully agree on your thoughts Bloodbeard. As a BB commiss myself I know that it can be a lot of work done behind the scenes that never gets any credit and people usually only give feedback when things don’t work. So thanks for running stuff and feel free to run it however you feel comfortable with. :slight_smile:

16

Mivrash Faz:

Number of votes : I don't have problems to give 3 votes. I see this opportunity to reward people for their work.

Kamphre
Precisely. I feel the same way about votes.
17

Bloodbeard:

Thanks for your input gentlemen, I nice decent tone going on here. And i understand and respect the people geting disappointed or 2generally frowning". It’s okay - but don’t think less off your fellow members. No rules were broken.

This might be a more common thing now, but for most of the first 10 or so golden hats I did the vote crunching and it was maybe 10 votes for themselves across all of those.

Grimstonefire
The competitions I checked bavk on - this numbers was way higher.

Regarding 1 to 3 votes
I have another suggestion - it should be up to three votes! Cause sometimes I would only vote one or two entries so why must I vote for another one?

Zanko
…that you can vote for 1 - 3 entries…

TheHoodedMan
I don’t think this is a good idea. The reason is somewhat the same as an argument I made above - “vote stealing”.

There’s usually 3-5 entries pretty close to on another when all the voting is done. Some of these might be 2the best of the rest". These competitions are a gentleman sport (I find them to be at least).

By allowing (changing voting procedure) that user only cast 1 or 2 votes - I would fear that the close race between some entries will get lost. And there’s the whole tactical business of guessing winner chances, then not casting as may votes, bla bla. If truly in doubt about the third vote - choose an entry randomly.

We had two members only casting 2 votes this time. Both wre asked to cast the third vote. Upon doing so, they both gave some votes that made the race closer.

So the third vote matters.

On the matter of - is it hard administrating

in the making of the voting thread, i check in on it every day, add entries as the come to the staff. I know the numbers in the post and the members entries. So when votes come in - I saw it instantly. So it’s no problem.

And further more. … if the rules are changed, no one are going to self vote - because it would be against the rules. And surely nobody would cheat.

18

Bloodbeard:

It’s been a few days. So good points have been brought to the thread. I’ve now added a poll, to get something concrete.

You can vote for.

Yes - change the rules.

or

No - keep them as is.

Before the voting thread for Scribe’s Contest 2, the results of this poll will be brought to the Staff.

19

DAGabriel:

My vote is in, clear rules, no self-voting.

20

Grimstonefire:

Can I add a third suggestion here. Allow people to self vote just ignore those votes?