So having done only one competition ever, and realizing just how much work it is, i feel like we could lessen the burdon these put on @Admiral by doing a bit of automation. unfortunatly automation also requires a bit of consistancy in how we handle the comp logistics.
Automating this would mean i only read the GoldenHat inbox, so entering via email and other social media would not be allowed anymore.
Automation can be done by installing a plugin that allows automation on the forum itself. The plugin is a discourse official plugin, so little risk of it causing issues.
Automation would require you to use a specific message title like “GH XL Entry” or whatever we agree upon and an agreed upon message content (images uploaded in the message, no links and stuff like that) .
The plugin can auto reply on successful entries.
Voting will NOT be done via messages to GH anymore, but by using polls where the results are that are only visible to staff. The advantage is the poll auto counts the votes, and can be closed automatically.
I can write a piece of code that then collects all the entries, and creates a new contest post draft, new voting draft, new winners draft,…
An admin would run my tool, check the post and if its deemed correct publish it.
This is all very conceptual but before i start spending time on this i’d like to know if the community would be agreeable to these changes.
I’m generally fine with these changes. Something that came up during past contests and was never really answered was the topic of image formatting, so the question whether the user or @Admiral should do the time-intensive task of arranging the images in a nice way.
Hmm, easiest would be if the users enter a preformatted 3 or 4 panel image of sufficient resolution, collecting images and kinging those took considerable time!
I’m also for anything that would make things easier to run these competitions.
I’'m sure if that if the images needed to be submitted in any certain way as long as there a link to a step by step or tutorial on what to do for anyone who might be unsure it would work really well
WHAT? NONSENSE! BACK IN MY DAYS WE - no no no it’s right to do so as we chatted already xD
We need to make some space and get rid of some manual job, we are chaos Dwarfs online, not hobgoblins online
I say yea. Great idea! It sounds like a good method of taking some pressure off the people running the competitions. I also would not expect any problems with submissions having to adhere to a specific format, as long as the instructions are very clear.
The automation ideas all sound really nice, I was already wondering why there is no automated poll at least.
Enforcing 3 votes exactly makes it a bit fairer in terms of making all opinions equally impactful.
That people can vote for their own entry would be a problem, but it is mitigated by:
Making it clear in the rules (it already is, I assume)
Making the personalized results visible to the mods or whoever administers the competition, so in theory they could see if someone is voting illegally (and subtract those votes or something). In practice, at most the winning places would need checking.
Well, on the other hand, if people want to vote less they can do that now aswel… you can just send in 1 number via dm. it doesnt matter if you vote on 1 or 3 of everyone can choose so for themselves . But i dont really care either way.
On the voting on yourself, if we need to verify votes it completely misses the point of automation. Imo we should either:
not care about people voting on themselves and also just allow it (even if its lame to do so)
state it jn the rules as noy being allowed but NOT check it
do voting.in another automated way (via dm and an external tool)
Idk, I think it would be still automated enough if it can be checked in theory. Since most users of an internet forum can read, there shouldn’t be that much to do.
Making rules that don’t even have the perspective of being enforced in any way is bad design and should be avoided.
Allowing it but asking not to because lame, I wouldn’t like either.
Allowing it and making it the standard behaviour, leaving participants with effectively 2 votes, would be alright or at least still better. (Should be made clear in the rules as well, then.)
In any case, if we allow voting for oneself, at least then making the full number of votes mandatory would be important.
(Otherwise not so much.)
