Thanks to all for the respectful reasoned posts. I'd like to comment on each of the points so far.
"NO new threads or posting in threads (besides your own) or signatures soliciting votes for you or other contestants"
This is something that could be done. It would require a lot more moderation time because it's pretty engrained in the culture that it's ok to do this at present.
Maybe at the end of the discussion we'll run a poll and let everyone vote on the final ideas (we've done this before and improved the
contests as a result)
Bud and Plant
contests for now on should be anonymous with the winner announced at the end of the contest.
There's a couple problems with this but we can talk about it
1) No way to stop people from campaigning by PM
2) We all follow the grow journals and would know who's picture is whos
3) A lot more work for me
Still, we can talk about it and maybe vote on it depending on what other people think
All
contests should have a posting minimum for eligibility to vote in 420
contests (such as 100 posts on 420 by a poster) to prevent the possibilities of sandbagging with new/multiple users.
We already have mechanisms to prevent the same person from taking out multiple user names and voting more than once. We've had to ban people for this in the past.
Requiring a
membership period or post count minimum is certainly an option. This will require funding to pay the programmer to make the changes. If this become a popular option, I'll get a quote, maybe we can all chip in.
If your going to start the nomations over why don't you take the good avise and start the count over with new rules....if you want an answer to the problem.
We are not considering starting the nominations over for January, but February's
contests will be posted as soon as I finish replying to this post
.
We're trying to listen to the communities ideas for continuous improvement
I don't follow the logic of how starting the contest over would be fair?
The voting Ballot should just show the 8 or 10 (or whatever) picture nominations side by side and the eligible 420 voting member can place there vote. It might create greater fairness if there isn't a name placed next to the pic on the ballot. I still think people can say vote for my bud or plant in the contest but the voter would have to look into specific grow journals to identify the entrants specific pics. Pics of the nominations grows in the contest thread would be limited to an Admin posted area only.
This is a variation of the suggestion above and is more easily executed.
I can certainly list the contest photos by number and make the poll a number to vote on if people think this is a better way to go.
It's not a bullet proof solution for the same reasons as outlined above, but we can talk about it and maybe vote on it.
Since the whole debacle stems from members who can't even PM yet, but yet voted in the contest. Maybe something could be instituted for the voting also.
This could be done by programming, another reasonable comment
I do want to clear up the misconception that the vast majority of those that voted couldn't PM yet. This isn't accurate. In order to honor oldgrowerdude's request to be deleted I had to view the voters and there were only a couple names I didn't recognize
I have seen another forum- unrelated to 420- that has 90,000 members, have one member post something about throwing a vote. So all it would take is a response there to have possible 90,000 votes. Not that I would ever do it, but with the current system, it would be possible. So there needs to be something in place.
I'm not following you here, would you please elaborate by PM.
420magazine already requires 25 posts for members to send Personal Messages. My suggestion is in-line with the same philosophy. The 25 post criteria was established to prevent SPAM. Another suggestion could possibly be that the voter needs to be a certain age (such as 3 months old as a 420 posting member) (or 3 months old and a minimum of 25 posts) before they are eligible to vote in the
contests.
This seems to be a popular suggestion. We're open minded. I will say I personally prefer changes that are one time in nature as opposed to those that require extra work each month. Great points though - please keep them coming.
It appears that there is a feeling among members that the voting in this months poll is not statistically in the realm of past elections. No doubt it would raise concerns about the fairness of the election and this election process.
I'm struggling to understand the fairness comment. The rules were followed and that should be the determinant of fairness - shouldn't it?
Every thread has someone, other than the owner of the thread shamelessly promoting themselves....and that should not be allowed.
We can discuss this and vote on it
I will say that promotion of the contest has helped make them popular. Maybe it should be ok to promote the contest but not the members personal entry? This also seems a popular opinion, let's see what everyone else thinks and maybe include this in the poll.
Please ask your friends to join this discussion. We want to prevent problems in the future and if we can improve the rules to better suit the majority of the community that's what we want to do
