July/August 2011 Contest: THE WINNERS!

[DeletedUser]

#13

 

[DeletedUser]

#2

poster #2

 

[DeletedUser]

#13. odas1

 

[DeletedUser]

Design #2

 

[DeletedUser]

#5

 

[DeletedUser]

poster #12

 

[DeletedUser]

My vote's on Becca Lee. Partly because it's awesome, but also in an attempt to make the ending results at least a bit more fair.

 

[DeletedUser]

Suggestion to the voting process

OK, call me crazy (and some will) but instead of putting up splash screen redirecting players to vote why don't you (whoever oversees the entire poll/voting process) just change the splash screen and conduct the vote there one-time only at the time of login?

They have the splash screens for special events on W6 english so this shouldn't be any more difficult and your response would be 100% of all active players too (but there should be an option for "none of the above" or "I don't participate in silly polls" just so people don't automatically vote for #1 or the item in the lower left corner (both of which are statistically skewed because of where a persons eyes tend to look). By doing it at login it could also limit the vote to 1 per player, you wouldn't give people time to "lobby for votes" as was discussed earlier in this poll and the entire polling process would proceed much quicker as well.

BTW, I popped in not knowing that this process was over because my splash/popup in the game that redirected me here didn't disappear once this process was complete (a foolish oversight on the popup designer I'm sure).

OK, flame on! Let's hear why this is such a bad idea?

 

[DeletedUser]

PS - If you really wanted to make the voting harder to influence then you could design the splash screen to rotate the choices (similar to the way a school teacher will give tests with the questions in a different order so that students can't cheat off each other during an exam). When a person selects an item then the description or an event number for the item is stored along with the vote so that #1 isn't the same for everyone (so a person can't claim the voting is skewed and also people can't lobby the voting process as easily to say "vote for me #4 in the poll")

 

[DeletedUser]

The splash screen is not as flexible as you think. Anyway, part of the reason for these contests is to bring people to the forums. As to the post limit, ifthey're not assed to make a minimum of ten posts, then the point of getting them here to the forums is somewhat lost, plus it cuts down on vote tampering. Now, even assuming we could setup a random numbering sequence on these forums, it doesn't stop vote tampering, as a person could simply provide a link to his graphic in-game or indicate a word or identifying marker, so people know what to vote for. If you're going to argue the first-gets-most argument, these particular polls don't seem to have that flaw, particularly since it's not forced on people and, instead, requires they go out of their way to participate.

Hope that answered most of your questions.

 

[DeletedUser]

Thanks for the feedback

If part of the object is to get people into the forums then the Splash screen would be counter productive to that.

As for the vote tampering, it still could happen but the splash screen would appear for everyone at the same time (their next login) and many would make an instant choice before they are spammed with the attempts to lobby them to vote for a specific item. It wouldn't totally eliminate the skewing by spamming but it's as close as I can think of on how to keep the spammers from influencing the vote.

The difficulty with designing such a splash screen is also minimized by the point that you already have a window that displays multiple items and allows you to select only one (the inventory window in The West). Pop open a redesigned version of that window, insert the "inventory" or in this case thumbnails of the posters in a random order, then allow the user to select only one.

Thanks again for your response,
TJ

(I don't think outside the box, I live outside it )

 

[Diggo11]

Anyway, part of the reason for these contests is to bring people to the forums. As to the post limit, ifthey're not assed to make a minimum of ten posts, then the point of getting them here to the forums is somewhat lost, plus it cuts down on vote tampering.

Three posts or one obtained rep point.*

These contests are indeed meant to be by and for the community, where people can share and enjoy artwork. Having the polling done through the private means of the interstitial is not somewhat but completely counter-intuitive, as the all important community aspect is lost. Advertising them is merely a way of promoting this community activity, not because we need a quota of votes but because we want them to join in the community, specifically the forum that it has. As Hellstromm pointed out, if someone couldn't be bothered to make a few posts or one esteemed post to begin with then they are evidently not interested in participating in the community and have no need to vote.

Not to mention that vote rigging, i.e. disrupting the "fair sense" of this community activity, would be more easily achieved by registering multiple accounts as well as votes for the pure sake of favouritism. We'd either end up with the same problem that the vote limitation was implemented to resolve or have to invent a new solution such as a level ten requirement to vote.

 

[DeletedUser]

Just to cover the programming end of your recommend: the CM and Co-CM do not have access to that part of the script, nor would it be well received if they stared hacking into such. The interstitial (flash screen as you call it) is developer-provided, a fixed window that allows for limited HTML use, restricted by scope, dimension, and at most a display of an externally hosted page. While the envelope can and has been pushed, that is simply too restrictive, too time consuming to setup and, as our CM Diggo indicated, completely misses the mark. If you can present additional (or alternative) solutions to bring people into the forums, to participate and become active socialites within this forum community, and that won't require a dependency of requesting an Innogames developer's cash-time, "then" we have a conversation.

 

[DeletedUser20688]

Thanks to all that participated in the contest!

Congratulations to the winners!

Hellstrom, Entry #5 - First place: 200 Nuggets
odas1, Entry #13 - Second place: 100 Nuggets
Becca Lee, Entry #2 - Third place: 50 Nuggets

I have been informed that the winners have been sent their rewards as well.

Thank you again to all for your participation. I hope to offer another competition in October. Please stay tuned for more information!