Contest & Conflict: the Design Community needs LESS Strife

I am with Jen here... regardless how the votes are tallyed it could lead to the same outcome as the thread...
Lindens should do the voting in my opinion, or say 30 random newbs? I dunno.. but it should be by skill, and skill alone.

Very well said and agree

I agree, Selador.

I make clothing because I enjoy it. (GIMP is just like a nifty coloring book.) I choose what designs to make by what I'd like to wear or what I like to see men wearing, so I don't worry much about what would sell to a mass market. I sell for very low prices because selling is just a by-product of what I would be doing anyway. I get more of a kick from seeing someone in something I made than I do from the cha-ching.

I don't consider myself to be in competition with any other designers, because I'm not trying to outdo anyone. I just like making clothes, so everything else is extra.

Sorry for being a little behind on this...

After Hamlet's announcement of the "selectees," all I can do is sigh.

So everyone wins and they all get gold stars because suddenly competition is not fair if you can't win.

Are we all going to call for a ban on voting contests in SL?

Unfortunetly as became apparent voting in certain manners in SL are usually stacked in favor of a few. Contests even more so.


All of the 3 Main rules for the contest were pretty much thrown out the window amid controvery and to make it fair hamlet did the best he could.

Sadly I don't think so... Alot of votes should have been disqualified...

Maybe in the future make it so you can only vote at the location.. at least that way every deserved a fair chance even if some of the voters are bias.

voter bias?

The right of any person is to have their own opinion. That's the way voting works in my understanding. One person may be completely objective and analyze every option they have before casting a vote (my kind of person), or they may only stick with what they know. Either way, we set up votes in order to receive a concensus. As far as we have come as people, voting is still agreed to be the best way to guage the choice or opinion of a large group.

It's also in my understanding that unless it's an exclusive vote, the only way a vote would require a recount is if the system is tampered with. This means that voters are given an incentive to make a choice that may or may not reflect their views and opinions or if the counting system has been comprimised.

During a vote though, asking people to vote for you is not considered coersion of voters. How could it be? Is everyone who votes without a sense of self and personal opinion?

Spamming the vote -- doesn't work. Only one vote per avatar can be counted. If someone sent out a message to a list of people they know asking for those people to vote for them, it's still not coersion. Even if those people that decided to vote never saw any of the clothes in the contest, as far as this vote was concerned, it was an open vote. Those same voters could've received a message from another candidate too. As far as I'm concerned, this method is just increasing awareness.

To make an analogy, look at the US presidential election. They run around or get people to run around and tell other people to vote for X for president. They put out commercials, hold conventions, send out mailings, and everything else they can in order to get as many people as possible to vote for them... so they can win and be president. Last I checked, ANY citizen was allowed to vote and is encouraged to even. Are they required to know everything about every single candidate? No... they don't even have to know who is running, but they're still allowed to vote.

To relate this back to SL and this contest every had gotten upset about and ruined -- it was advertised as an open vote. Open to anyone in SL who wanted to cast a vote.

So really I don't think it was the uninformed voting that ruined this contest. I think it was an anti-competitive opinion that ruined the competition for everyone else and hurt a lot of feelings. IMHO competition is natural and healthy. It brings forth the best in everyone and gives us loftier goals to achieve. Competition is what drives nature foward and maintains a balance.

Perhaps this is one of the nerves that seperates a large portion of the SL society. I'm just a little disappointed this contest was ruined for Hamlet.

Ruined? There are certainly people who were not happy with it just as I'm sure there are people who were quite happy. For myself, as with a fair number of others by the comments I heard, there were things I enjoyed and things I didn't.

There is nothing wrong with competition, however, there is also nothing wrong with cooperation. Nature red in tooth and claw may be the norm, but civilization was built on cooperation. Competative success as the highest virtue has given us Walmart.

Your analogy with RL voting has another parallel. Low voter turn out: I forget the exact number, but the total number who voted was under 200.

Lastly, if vigorous discussion and disenting opinions have ruined this event for Hamlet, I'm sure he can speak for himself.

Surreal

I'm all for co-operation, and in competition there is plenty of room for it. And while your statement about Walmart is catchy, it doesn't necessarily reflect the full picture for me. Sure in one facet, competitive success has brought about companies like Walmart... there will always be a top dog; but it won't necessarily always be Walmart unless it can stay on it's heels and change with the times.

As for civilization -- I beg to differ again lol

I think that civilization is birthed of competition. What started as competition for survival between individuals became competition to survive amongst the species. It's a healthy process and much co-operation was involved, but competing is what drove innovation after innovation; evolution after evolution.



So in order to have a proper vote, we'd need x^2 + 1 voters where x is the number of candidates assuming that each voter only casts one vote. In this vote, each voter was given 3 votes for category 1 and 2 for category 2. I think that covered it pretty well.



I'm sure he can and if it was of significance to him, he would. It's significant to me because Hamlet had to change his event to suit the opinions of other people. If someone wanted to drop out of the competition, fine -- they drop out quietly and the competition goes on for the rest of the people. Instead, a select few pressed their opinions upon Hamlet's event and he changed it.

For what reasons I do not know, but given the circumstances it seems hardly fair to say that it was the right thing to do.

I don't mean to just nay-say as I do appreciate your positive response. If these were self-moderated forums, you'd be getting some good points from me for sure.

I just find that the extreme opinions posted regarding even contests in general a little unfair. This was supposed to just be a contest not unlike any other in the history of contests and instead it turned into knit-picking and moaning. Real people worked on it, and then people bashed it. It's not like this was a labour of ill-intent. Still it happens anyway. I just like to speak out about it once in a while when I can.

> if vigorous discussion and dissenting opinions have ruined this event for Hamlet,

Not at all; I welcome it, and hope to see more of it expressed here. Discussion and dissent is, after all, an important staple to NWN...

And the bloodier, the better, eh Hammy? Slow news day? Missed the scoop on acusations of exploitation and psychological domination at a certain club to the Herald and wanted to make some news? I think there's a term for a putative journalist who creates dissent in order to report on it but I forget what it is. I know that they call bored firemen who start fires to relieve the tedium arsonists; what do you call one who sparks flame fests?