Costume contest that isn't a popularity contest?

I'm sure that there are people who really vote on the quality of costumes. But it does seem that most people vote for their friends, or themselves if it isn't prevented. Does anyone happen to know of a contest where the best costume usually wins?

If you are over 18 RL, then Club Carnage (mature, people there often chat in bawdy language, which is one reason I quit going actually) has contests constantly and, while they allow (or did last I went) staff to win, which I think shouldn't be allowed, people do tend to vote on best costume.

I entered some contests when a newbie because I needed the Lindens. Most places allowed people to enter the contest who were not even dressed up! And sometimes they won. I'm not naming those places here, in fact I'd be hard pressed to remember the names as I mostly never returned more than giving them another chance or two. If staff ALWAYS won or people not in costume ALWAYS won it was silly to scavenge up a decent costume and try.

I won at Carnage once and it was not an expensive costume. Best short shorts, I think. I know the owner there says she always votes for who she thinks is the best in theme. At least then, there was one winner for male and one for female, and they got all the money. Maybe if a tie among the boy or girl the prize money was split. Anyway that is one place.

A PG club that has (or had, haven't been there in ages either) good contests was Club UGC/Club Underground. They were always hard to find in search but they are in virtual London. Knightsbridge, I think.

I liked theirs because the money is split among the top vote getters, so you almost always get a few Lindens. That can be very helpful to someone brand-new although by then I was buying Linden. Only thing is, the people who run it are on London time in RL so it usually closes around 6 PM SL time if I recall correctly.

Thank you for your thoughtful answer

*sigh*

Yet another reason I miss October Country so much......they had a theme costume party every saturday night (or was it friday? lol) and it was THE best costume event. They didn't allow people to drag their friends in to vote.....you had to enter the contest to vote.....but you didn't have to be a group member. The gang at the OC took their costumes very seriously and noone ever won that didn't have an awesome costume. It just always seemed to be a very fair event. Plenty of times a new comer won...if the costume was the best, didn't matter who it was.....

Since they closed down....I haven't even bothered to look for another place like it. I've seen too many of those biased clique events where it's really all about who has the most friends....not who is the most creative with the theme. It amazes me that among adults, we are so jeuvenile about theme contests. (on the other hand, a good look at the business world will reveal the same thing )

Anywho.....the best thing to do is keep your eye on events.....pop into different places and see how you like them.....if folks are friendly.....eventually you'll find what you're looking for.

For that matter....maybe I should start holding theme parties every week at my place.... see how long it takes to crash the homestead, hehehehe

Some Club just needs to have those contests where no one is allowed to know anyone else.

Then it will be fair.

Some clubs are much worse than others, but I have NOT YET found one who's events are anything close to legit. The second you put anything of perceived value on the line.. money, recognition, anything.. and people turn just like that *snaps fingers*, which is why I haven't participated in any of those type of events in ages.

I usually vote for the best looking costume, but am guilty of voting for the newbie just because if they win they're more likely to stick around in SecondLife and come back to the club.

I also believe that most contests are rigged. People nearly always vote for their friends, and many of them tp in friends just to vote. I've also run into clubs where staff IM each other and all get together on who to vote for. This happened with a club I went to as a newbie. I didn't find this out till much later in the game, but it turns out I won a number of times because the staff liked me.

Now I rarely enter contests, and when I do, it's usually to get other people to follow suit. I really don't care if people vote for me, as I'm there to listen to the music and talk to folks. It's just a bonus if I happen to win.

I didn't know those boards allowed you to vote for yourself?

they can vote for themselves using alts..

We only used our boards to show who was in the contest..people that wanted to vote had to IM the host or dj with votes..
you had to be there when the event was over or your vote was scrapped..Also not advertising when the voting will stop helps too..
that usually stopped some of the quick in and out voters..

The club where I work does not have contests.

The club where I play on weekends has a costume contest on Sunday afternoons, and I haven't noticed any of the more egregious tactics mentioned here, like bringing in friends just long enough to vote, or seeding the place with alts. If there's clique discussion on 'who we're all going to vote for,' I've never been included. There *may* be a slight tendency of people to vote for their friends but generally, unless there's a real standout, votes seem to me to be pretty well distributed.

The club where I worked ages ago allowed off-duty staff to enter contests, but we seemed to have an unspoken agreement not to vote for each other, and wins seemed pretty randomly distributed among regulars and newcomers.

Maybe I've just had good luck with clubs.

I think in SL, where it's so easy to change clothes and appearance, and where so many gorgeous costumes are available 'off the rack,' other factors are going to come into play, whether it's voting for a friend, or voting based on attention to detail, or voting for someone who obviously created their costume instead of buying one, or voting for someone who's new to the club or to SL. Else it's really just a 'best shopper' contest.

I always give newbies the edge if they have a good costume. Also people who have not won for a long time.

This is not about any specific club. My partner and I go to at least 4 different ones each week.

I would say that the contests at Bubblegum Music Factory are handled pretty fairly. The club has a somewhat large set of regulars who are there most of the time, but I don't notice any particular pattern of one person winning more than another. To me, that argues that people aren't voting for their friends but based on the costume. Relative newbies win too; first time I won I think I had been coming for maybe a couple of weeks.

Anyone can enter who is wearing something that fits the theme. I've seen people taken off the boards for entering without matching the theme. Club staff, whether working or not, can't vote. You have to be a club group member to vote. There's a set voting period and you can't join the group during that period. The contest closes about 15 minutes before voting starts. So they make some effort to prevent people from bringing in friends just to vote, and I've never seen anything like that happen there.

It's also just a great club--PG rules enforced though it's in a Mature area; mostly an older (RL age) crowd. Lots of great conversations and great music.

I've been to one club where the winner of the event did not even bother to wear attire appropriate to the theme. Now that is sad.

When I used to be co-owner of a club (and I will be again), we did our contests exclusively through IM, no contest boards, and everybody who actually came and stayed was entered automatically, provided they decided to vote. No votes for staff members were allowed, and I would not accept or count votes from anybody who had been there less than 10 minutes at the time voting was opened. Also if it was obvious you were not "at home" (easy to tell because you won't even so much as lol at something funny, for example), you're disqualified. That seemed to work out rather well for getting a good legitimate vote instead of the friend factor being everything.

As someone who shies away from open chat and who regularily ignores much of the brainless dribble that happens at a club, that has to be THE single lamest club policy I've ever heard of...
It IS a good way to give an automatic egde to all the chatty people you like though. Seriously, the only thing worse than contestants pulling tricks to win is the club itself playing tricks to favor their favorites

Plz, Plz post the club name in your sig so I don't waste any time, and especially money there

Dana, we're not talking about a place with brainless drivel, either. Where I used to have a club at, we had real conversations. Remember conversation? Real people who had something real to say, not "woot" and some childish voice gushing "I love this tuuuuune!" when somebody triggers the right gesture. No multi-line gestures spamming ascii art. People with something real to say who aren't afraid to say it.

Perhaps you have a problem functioning in any public chat kind of environment, and that's fine, but surely you can at least express yourself well enough to type an occasional lol when something tickles your funny bone?

My favorite club announces ow many votes the winner got.

Usually, even when there are 15-20 people who voted, the winner gets maybe 3 to 5 votes total. To me that's a sign that there's not much clique or cheating going on.
- If anything, there's not -enough- similarity of opinion...


And I agree with the -if you don't participate in chat you don't get to count- rule. If you wanna IM, stay home and don't come to the club.
- I go to the place I go all the time -BECAUSE- there's constant local chit chat. If everyone's IMing, it gets very boring and anti-social.
- I can stream in music 100% to my tastes and flip on my dance HUD in my skybox... I go to a club to be around and chat with others.

I would think the idea is to attract people.So groups of friends would only make sence to try to bring in the club.and friends tend to support other friends at a event.that is the whole reason they went..to try to make a lil money and have a good time.Also we all have different views on what looks good and what dose not.So it is kind of hard to say "I look the best" when there are so many other opinions in SL fashion and style.I like goth looks,if it was a cow boy event I would be a goth cowboy.To me it looks best,to others it dose not.So really I think to try to "win" ,go in groups of friends.the whole idea here is socializing.the lone wolf in SL has not chance in winning as it is not really a even based on looks,it is a event based on socializing and numbers.

While I appreciate the intent here, I think it is too harsh. No, I would not attend a club like that.

I have been to places where there was a small group and it was obvious that the light was on but nobody was home. I stopped going there.

At the place I go most often, there is intelligent, witty conversation. At any moment, some people are mentally afk, but I still enjoy being with them because I love them. No different from sitting with your family in the living room reading.

I like good conversation and I think I do it well, but I find your attitude offensive. I definitely want to avoid in club you are in charge of.

Aww. He may have stated it a bit awkwardly (or not), but I think RockAndRoll was just basically trying to say he doesn't want people to just park their av there and try to win that way.

If someone doesn't post the entire time, or move their av or anything and then wins, it's possible the other guests will find that unfair. It's kind of like he's saying, no camping here.

That's how I interpreted his post anyway - not that everyone has to be an ebullient social butterfly. There are nights I just want to dance and not chat much, too. Although on nights I really just want to hear music and relax in SL I might find somewhere I can dance alone.

Only in the short term.

In the long run, once people start to -feel- it is fixed, word will spread, and things will turn nasty.

Well, sure, the idea behind contests is to attract people. But the club owner's overall strategy has to be to attract *and retain* people who will help support the club. Bodies alone, especially if they spend the evening in IMs and don't socialize, or TP in and back out as soon as they've voted, don't add much. Also, as Pussycat pointed out, if others think the contests are fixed, they won't be back - so having those bodies in the club may be counterproductive.

Of course, the club owners/staff who always vote for the same people or their particular group of friends are also being counterproductive. If you're not going to make your contests as impartial as possible, you might be better off not to hold them...

Thank you. That is what I'm trying to say. Brash? Offensive even? Maybe so. But you seem to be stating it better. Maybe this will help clarify things:

I've been to many a club where there is no conversation whatsoever happening unless people are sending IM's. In some cases it's dead silent except for music. In other cases it's nothing but gesture spam and nothing more, not a single sign of life, even a bot can trigger gestures off and on. I find both to be quite boring, and the ones where it's nothing but gestures are even worse than the ones where there's just nothing whatever. Both in my opinion are to be avoided, and I cannot in conscience RUN such a club.

2) No parking on the dance floor (that's a good name for the policy, since it's also a song). Interact somewhat with the people around you, to whatever level you're comfortable with. Maybe you can't be a social butterfly and talk 300 words a second with everybody around you, but some kind of sign they can see that you're there and actively listening to them goes a long way. Would be greatly appreciated.

3) If you ain't having fun then why are you here? Maybe I'm doing something wrong as a DJ when I'm playing the tunes. Maybe something else is wrong. But if somebody can come and not have a good time, something's broken somewhere. There's only one real way to tell. Is this person publicly acting like they're having fun? If not then the logical conclusion is they aren't, and something needs fixing.

So what I want to be involved with is a club where we don't have it filled with a bunch of people who do nothing more than trigger gestures allowing somebody else to put words in their mouths, or sit there and let somebody's animations move their avatar while they're busy doing something else - be it IM'ing or perhaps sitting in another window playing World of Warcraft or something. A place where people want to come be around other fun people and have a good time.

If this sounds like what you want then that's my goal when we get our club open.