Scripting / Design Competition

I would like to announce a scripting / design competition with a $500US (approx. $100,000L) prize which will be decided in a democratic vote by the participants in the competition as well as other interested parties.

Which part of the forums and/or other locations should I place this announcement?

On the scripters mail-list would be good.

https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/secondlifescripters

Hm. A casual look at the forum structure shows "Scripting Tips" under the Content Creation group. But if you also mean "building" as in prim manipulation too, then "Building Tips" would work, as well as maybe Special Attractions in the classifieds.

Thanks for your suggestions!

I will announce the competition on Thursday, September 20, and I will update this thread with the competition details at that time.

If you want as wide an audience as possible to be reached then the best option is to use Secondlife Media Sources.

For example placing an advert in the Metaverse Messenger (www.metaversemessenger.com) will go out to 20,000 residents per issue and you could also investigate the possibility of the media running a story on your competition too.

This is a far wider audience than posting in the forums where, at best, a couple of hundred might read the post.

Thanks very much for that tip, Katier Reitveld!

I will certainly look into it!

I posted the following to the secondlifescripters mailing list. In the near future, I will follow-up on the other suggestions offered above! Thank you for your help!

Morbid Blackadder


I would like to announce a design / scripting competition that I am sponsoring. The contest "officially" begins on October 8, 2007 and runs through November 7, 2007, with a winning prize of $500USD (approx. $175,000L).

The contest details are:

Contest Description

SL Business Manager is a web-based application which provides various business management capabilities to Second Life® Business Merchants.

The URL of the SL Business Manager application is:

http://realmanagementinimaginaryworlds.com/slBusinessManager.php

The interface from the web-based SL Business Manager application into Second Life® will be via a kiosk in Second Life® that will send commands to SL Business Manager (URL GET), receive the application results, and then display those results to the user of the kiosk.

Designers / Scripters are challenged to create a functional, user-friendly kiosk that may include features such as customization to suit the business environment, user appeal, etc. The "open source" code modules for a basic kiosk may be viewed using the "Kiosk Code" feature provided above.

The winning prize will be the equivalent of $500USD paid in $L (approx. $175,000 Linden Dollars)


Contest Rules

1. All contestants must be legally eligible to enter the contest. In some cases you may have to be 18 years of age or older.

2. The contest will officially start on October 8, 2007 and run until November 7, 2007.

3. All contestants must register as a "kiosk vendor" with their Second Life® Avatar Name using the "Register" feature provided above.

4. The winner of the contest will be decided in a democratic vote by the Designers / Scripters and Business Merchants.

5. Each Designer / Scripter and Business Merchant will have one vote. To be eligible to win, you must vote between October 31, 2007 and midnight, November 4, 2007 (see rule 9 below), and you may not vote for yourself.

6. Any attempt by a contestant to sabotage or manipulate votes will result in an automatic disqualification from the contest. For example, you may not buy or barter for votes, create false businesses or contestants, or throw away your vote by voting for a contestant that has little or no chance of winning.

7. I will be available to answer questions or concerns on the SL Business Manager Blog. I will also work with Designers / Scripters to eliminate any initial bugs in the SL Business Manager application that may come up.

8. Designers / Scripters will have until midnight, October 30, 2007 to complete their kiosks, and must describe and upload a screenshot of their kiosk creation using the "My Kiosks" feature provided after a valid "kiosk vendor" login. Kiosk descriptions and screenshots entered after midnight, October 30, 2007 will not be elegible to win the competition.

9. Voting will begin on October 31, 2007. Votes must be cast using the "Kiosk Contest Voting" feature provided after a valid "kiosk vendor" or "business merchant" login. Your vote may be changed at any time before midnight November 4, 2007. Votes cast or changed after midnight, November 4, 2007 will not be counted.

10. The winner will be announced, following a review of kiosk entries and voting results, on November 7, 2007.

11. There are no losers in this contest, as all contestants retain full rights to their kiosk design / code and may sell, rent, or give their kiosks to anyone they like without royalties or payments to realmanagementinimaginaryworlds.com.

12. realmanagementinimaginaryworlds.com assumes no liability whatsoever for the use or functionality of any Designer / Scripter Kiosk.

Note: Some areas of SL Business Manager are still under development, but will be complete before the Kiosk Design / Scripting contest officially begins on October 8, 2007! Until then, any data entered should be considered temporary! Development testing of SL Business Manager may result in the loss of data. The SL Business Manager Database will be purged on October 7, 2007 before the Kiosk Design / Scripting contest begins!

Also note, while changes to the above rules are unlikely, if necessary, some changes may occur before the contest begins. You should review the above rules again on October 8, 2007.

For more details and to join the competition, please visit:

http://realmanagementinimaginaryworlds.com/slBusinessManager.php

Good luck to everyone who participates!
Morbid Blackadder

Couldn't you find a longer domain name?

OK, OK... I'll stop now.

Lol!

Soooo... is that all the script that you want in it?? What does each one do? I'm still a novice when it comes to scripting, but I'd love to give this a go.

The scripts provided are just to interface with my website. You are welcomed to add whatever additional scripts you like... be creative and imaginative! Try to imagine what additional in-world design / features would sell to a business merchant.

I am providing the website / database giving merchants the ability to hire employees (not just campers) and to manage their businesses, as well as a connection from sl to real world visitors and aps like google.

The challenge for designers / scripters is to provide an in-world interface (kiosk) which a business merchant would find attractive and would be likely to rent / buy from you.

So far, I have two scripts implemented: the Location Manager (which scans your business for avatars - customers and employees - and reports them to my website), and the Employment Manager (which hires and fires employees).

I also have two additional scripts in development: the Sales Manager (which will capture employee sales and report them to my website), and the Payroll Manager (which will pay employees their wages and commissions). Both of these additional scripts will be completed and published before October 8 - the day the competition begins.

It is also possible that, as this application matures, more interfaces between sl and my website application will be developed. However, for this competition, the above four interfaces will do.

Designers / Scripters are encouraged to register now and to begin testing the interfaces (scripts) that are available to see how they work. Just keep in mind that any data entered now is just for testing purposes and that the database will be purged just before the competition begins, i.e. you will have to re-register but at least you will know how things work.

I will try to answer any questions and address all concerns, as they arise, on my website blog.

Well umm... I think this needs to be addressed here... I registered, but the confirmation email is blank?

Doesn't this last clause have a big risk of skewing voters?

The implication is that someone can decide on the item they like the best, but then be obliged not to vote for it because they don't think other voters will vote for it and thus it has no chance of winning.

Katryna, thanks for registering... sorry you got a blank email! There are other people who have registered, so it must be just a fluke. Did your confirmation email have an attachment? If so, open the attachment, if not, please post on the SL Business Manager Blog and I will fix your registration for you.

Yumi, yes that clause has the potential to produce some interesting results. The voting will take place from October 31 to November 4, and your vote may be changed as often as you like. I expect that, as November 4 nears, clear leaders will emerge from the group, as people will change their votes in favor of the top contestants. My advice is that you review your vote as November 4 approaches. You don't have to vote for the top contestant, but somewhere in the top twenty (or so) percent would be advisable.

Edit: Just to be clear, voting results will be available (live) on the website, so there will be no doubt which contestants are in the lead as the voting progresses.

Forgive me for saying so, but that sounds like a dangerously flawed system. It makes the order in which votes are received critical, because earlier votes will affect later voter's choices. And there's horrible drama potential too.

Example: it's November 3rd, just before the deadline. Contestant A and contestant B are tied on (let's say) 30 votes each. Nobody else has more than 20 votes. Contestant B voted for one of the 20-vote people weeks back and hasn't logged in since, but contestant A logs into the website on the 3rd... and suddenly discovers that she is stuck! She can't vote for herself. If she votes for contestant B, she gives him 31 votes to her 30 and she loses. And if she votes for any other contestant, she's disqualified for throwing away her vote!

So you have to pick one of two choices.. either contestant B isn't penalised for not logging in (in which case A's choice _to_ log in, thereby becoming vulnerable to being penalised, causes her to lose); or contestant B _is_ disqualified for not reviewing his vote in a timely fashion and leaving it with a sure loser (really, really harsh, and gameable)

Contestant A and contestant B are at the same "disadvantage" because they both must vote, and they both may not vote for themselves. So, if there is a "tie" and one of them hasn't voted, then it really isn't a tie. There will be a review of the kiosks and the votes at the end of the contest to insure fairness.

In order to win, you don't have to vote for the top person... but, I would advise voting in the top 20% by the end of the voting cycle.

I am certainly open to suggestions re. the voting process. If you could suggest a better way, then I am open to change things before the competition begins on October 8.

The issue is that they vote at different times, and thus in different circumstances.

For the sake of the argument, suppose that contestant B is the very first person to vote, and contestant A is the very last.

When B votes, he has no information about who the potential winners and losers will be, so can vote for anyone he likes without risking being blamed for "wasting his vote".

But when A votes, the fact that A and B are the only potential winners has become clear, so A is forced to vote for B (and thus cause herself to lose) because any other vote would be a waste and cause her to be disqualified.

The only way to make both of them have the same "disadvantage" is to rule that B *must* reconsider his vote once the pattern of results has become clear. But that in itself is a big problem, because B would not be the only person needing to do so, and again, all of those people would have to do so in a particular order, so the later ones would vote into different circumstances..

(And regarding an improved system - what's actually wrong with a simple regular blind vote?)

Might be simpler just to narrow down a top 20 finalists and do a callout for a final (ie second) vote.

That's a very nice pot...is there a group you'll create to keep up-to-date?

Not at all to ride this coattail, but...I'm hosting an inaugural 'NOT JUST ANOTHER' Texturing Competition. One of the things I'm doing differently, is pre-select a panel of prestigious judges--all of which are Cloak & Dagger until the competition start. This way you know you won't have any smear tactics, bribery, or cheating.

Make sure you state who gets the finished projects, who has rights, etc...

Create a group for the event.

Good luck everyone. I hope I have time to compete.

The problem I see with a blind vote is that contestants could vote for themselves or someone who they thought would not be likely to win... either of these scenarios would not produce a good result.

A second vote could be a possibility, but that would only happen if a clear winner could not be decided in one vote.

Good comments! It's nice to get all of this out of the way so that we will have a great contest!

Edit: Everyone can be kept up-to-date on the realmanagementinimaginaryworlds.com website... there I (will) have a page listing all of the registered contestants with screenshots and narrative descriptions of of their kisoks, as well as voting results as the competition progresses. Also, please check out the blog on the website as well.

Oh, sorry, Michael Bigwig. I just got what you're saying... a group on SL! My bad! Great idea... I will look into that possibility!

I would recommend that the vote totals be hidden until the voting is complete. The requirement to not vote for someone that you might actually prefer in favor of voting for the most popular one skews the actual results. It reminds me of high school politics. Vote for the popular kid, just because he/she is popular.

As far as the 'blind vote' You should still be able to invalidate votes for people that vote for themselves, the blind part should only apply to the voters. If someone votes for an entry that has a low number of votes, that does not make the vote, or the process invalid, especially if they are unable to see the actual percentages to make that decision.

I just realized the other problem with limiting the votes to the to top 20%...

Whoever has the most votes in the first few minutes will be the only 'safe' one to vote for.

Imagine that you vote for someone below the 20% limit, and they never get higher than that for the entire vote. Will your entry be disqualified because you voted honestly? But the person who wins, only wins because he/she received a surge of votes in the first 5 minutes of voting making that entry the frontrunner, and making votes for most other entries risky.

OK, let's not get too hung up on percentages. Perhaps it was a mistake for me to even suggest a number. Let's just say that no one should throw away their vote and leave it at that.

Voters should just vote honestly for contestants having great kiosk designs.

If a clear winner can not be decided in the first vote there could be a second vote for a field of top contestants.

What if I do have a blind vote as Yumi Murakami suggested. Perhaps that would produce a better result?

It seems the easiest way to solve the problems would be to ban entrants from voting at all, and just let the business owners - ie, the customers - be the ones to vote.

*moves*