"Best In" Contests = Popularity Contests

exactly! and yes you do !


ahh yes the "not a sex club dance club sex club" gotcha, where they vote for the highest tipper, whether he/she is in costume or not. it's rare that you find places where employees are not allowed to enter contests, and when ya do, you have to worry about the second biggest scam in those contests, vote padding, where you tp in your friends just for the vote during the last minutes of the contest. those are the ones that should be immediately disqualified.

I'm sorry but that made me laugh. It's what we call "sod's law".

Trout, that is exactly what we did when we owned HogWild, since turned into something completely different. lol. We hated the best of contests. They are SOOOOO overdone. We never did them, but we did do a costume contest or two....Halloween, Mardi Gras and a few, um....Titty contests...hey we were a biker bar. BUT, we never let the general public vote. In FACT I refused to allow, and won't in our new place either, a voting board.

Instead, we had a few people we trusted, who were themselves, NOT in costume and the employees judge. The voting was done via IM so nobody had to know if only one person voted for them or 10 had. Saves hurt feelings. AND you could NOT enter the contest if you were not in costume. The Best Of contests might bring people into your place once or maybe even twice, but we are more interested in developing a following for our place and those contests are generally NOT conducive to that.

-Blu-

These "favorites contests" bothered me as a non-club owner, so as a club owner, I took certain precautions...

1. Employees are not allowed to enter the contests.

2. There isn't one large prize, rather, there is one prize distributed according to votes to the people receiving votes. For instance, if there are 5 people on the board, and 10 people voting, and person A receives 6 votes, and person B receives 3 votes, and person C receives 1 vote, they will receive $150, $75, and $25, respectively. I actually asked my core group if they wanted a "one winner" board...and they resoundingly said NO.

3. Some clubs, and I'd really prefer to become one, make it clear that you must be dressed according to the theme to enter the contest. Frankly, my regulars tend to handle it themselves...if someone isn't dressed according to theme...they don't get many, if any, votes. I may decide to get pretty stringent on this at some point.

Your experience sounded, sadly, only too typical.

Edit: I also wanted to mention - my regulars (bless them!) also tend to vote heavily for newcomers! They're just awesome folks

I think I remember Hogwild! I went there a few times when we were looking for building ideas for the Hangout. That was a pretty cool place!

Your solution is the right one, I think. It saves people's feelings, avoids the problem of people tping their friends in to vote, and takes the popularity aspect out of it. There is always going to be subjectivity, because the judges will have their own personal preferences as to whose outfit is the best, or whatever, but at least it won't be judged on that stupid high school popularity crap.

I learned that the first time I went to a club in SL over 3 yrs ago. Friends vote for friends, alts vote for alts, partners vote for partners. It also has to do with drama and jealousy as well. Are you gonna vote for the girl who has been rumored to be tryin' to hook up with your man behind your back but who honestly does look better than anyone else in the contest, or vote for your bestest friend? There are also the rare people who vote for the best in their mind regardless of who they are voting for and what relationship they have, if any.

There's lots of reasons why people vote the way they do. But I think it's human nature to want to stick up for your friends/family.

/me hands you a prozac and xanax for good measure

Hmmm, every time I've been around for one of those contests the nakedist chick won, no matter the actual category.

Actually LOL'd RL over that one. And how true! /still laughing

My scheme is far more heinous.
In contests where you have to vote if you want to be elegible for a prize I vote for the person least likely to win, which will improve the odds of me (or my friend/date/whatever) winning.

Mwahahaha.

I occasionally go in for these contest for a bit of fun. I've probably won a couple in my time, including a sleepwear contest, which I won by wearing nothing!!!

I won in such a contest once.

Possible reasons:
- I was the best
- It was my turn (regular crowd, and bad form to have the same winner all the time)
- I was the nakedest chick - thanks to that Digital Knickers outfit mentioned elsewhere

and now
- A majority thought I was the least likely to win

you are soooo not alone
I hated the best in contests, still do

when I had my club, I had the best in contests sure just like everyone else, however no employees were allowed to enter. It seemed that each time it was a different winner, sometimes even a newb would win, which was cool (I used voting boards, never liked the im the host your vote, the im the host is so open to rigging sheesh)

sometimes I miss running my club, but over all it is a headache to keep one going



I rarely go to clubs anymore, and when I do people rarely even greet or it is the apparent auto greet/gesture greet, exactly the same for each person who walks through the door
blech

I keep trying to find a small cosy, welcoming type place, have yet to find one (ya know the type, cheers, where everyone knows your name) well I guess technically in SL everyone does know your name LOL

If you like classic rock and the blues, come on by the club sometime. I think you just might like the atmosphere

This is why I, as my club owner, host my events, and I do all manual hosting. There's no contest board, everyone IM's me their votes, and they must vote for a guy and a girl, and if they don't vote, they're not eligible to win. If someone votes for someone not in the theme of the contest, i just throw that vote out. And if it appears someone is tping in their alts to vote, those are thrown out also. I have a small club, and alot of the times it is employees only because we're still new and our traffic is slowly growing. We don't even have events every night, just twice a week. I only have one dancer, because I don't want to be bothered with stripper drama and girls who never show up to work, but that's a different thread. Oh yeah... and if someone votes for an employee, i just tell them to vote for someone else.

I am not really sure what is classified as classic rock anymore LOL, and not really much for the blues.

I listen to 80's rock mainly

That's pretty much the only way you are going to guarantee any fairness in terms of keeping with the spirit of the theme of the contest. The overwhelming majority of club contests are nothing but a bad joke. I was at a best tattoos contest once and although there were several people with very nice tattoos the winner ended up being this girl with one tiny butterfly tattoo that was very plain and completely unimpressive. I never go out of my way to dress for theme contest because there is no point to it. I just go to listen to the music if I like the DJ and if a club lets the employees enter the contest I usually leave altogether and never come back.

As a club owner I want my Best In's to be as fair as possible. This means I would try to keep the following true to the best of my ability.

1.) Entrant are in theme, even if only remotely. (With our new board they will also have to be on club land to receive their payout.)
2.) Employees are never to join the contest with patrons.
3.) If we enact a minimum number of entrant to pay out policy, and a friend is brought in to top us up to that minimum they will receive only 1 staff vote (For appreciation in helping the contest pay out.), and if they are not in theme we would ask patrons not to vote for the. If they are in theme it would however be unfair to that friend to tell others not to vote for them.

There are other aspects I am still considering, Party Mode (All entrants with votes win a portion of the pot.) or Winner takes all, Open or VIPs only, and of course do we make it so we only pay out for a minimum number of entrants.

Point proven!