iamafractal wrote:
staff participation...

well if the staff is to participate, then i say make a blind system...

mappers can submit, but anonymously.

nobody knows whose maps belong to whom, and therefore there won't be any bias... names are revealed at the end of voting.

I don't know if it's true but one thing people can do is to give their identity to their map. I don't mean adding a huge board with your nickname on but give a design style that belongs to you, I'm sure everyone can have a design style everyone can recognize, I don't say that it's a good point nor a bad point, but you can't forbid that either.

Hurricaaane wrote:
I don't know if it's true but one thing people can do is to give their identity to their map. I don't mean adding a huge board with your nickname on but give a design style that belongs to you, I'm sure everyone can have a design style everyone can recognize, I don't say that it's a good point nor a bad point, but you can't forbid that either.

for contest maps the whole point would be that there is no identifying information, except for a random number generated entry in the contest of the map... for example, your map could say, thinkingwithportals july 2008 contest entry number 806...

of course you guys all have unique styles so i don't think any experienced users on the board would have a problem identifying who made what map... but the whole point of anonymity is to keep things fair and not have uncalled for favoritism. i'm saying all this even though i thought it was already clear...

I can't express how much of a pain in the ass doing things that way would be for me. Once again, I prefer automated processes for contests, voting, so on. I see where you're coming from Fractal but really I don't think it is going to be that big of a deal. I'm not going to hand out Supporter for anyone who votes for me or some shit, and really if I won I'd probably give the prize to whoever came in 2nd.

msleeper wrote:
I can't express how much of a pain in the ass doing things that way would be for me. Once again, I prefer automated processes for contests, voting, so on. I see where you're coming from Fractal but really I don't think it is going to be that big of a deal. I'm not going to hand out Supporter for anyone who votes for me or some shit, and really if I won I'd probably give the prize to whoever came in 2nd.

so if somebody posts a map, and you repost it with a number, that would be a pain in the ass? that doesn't seem so hard... or even with names... just you don't say who made each one......till its all over...

I think a special webpage can be coded tomanage the anonymous system, and the voting system to force the person who vote to justify their feedback of all the maps so it proves the person did not only test one or two maps out of 7. So it's an automated form with manual validation and automated count. What you can do is to have more than one validator (so not only msleeper).

It requires a bit of work but that may satisfy some of the discussion here.

Hurricaaane wrote:
I think a special webpage can be coded tomanage the anonymous system, and the voting system to force the person who vote to justify their feedback of all the maps so it proves the person did not only test one or two maps out of 7. So it's an automated form with manual validation and automated count. What you can do is to have more than one validator (so not only msleeper).

It requires a bit of work but that may satisfy some of the discussion here.

that would be cool. want to write it? open source so there's no strange bias in the results?

I'm not good with PHP forms security, and more, it needs a login system to avoid duplicate votings or be linked with the forum database.

i'm sure that somebody around here can write a beautiful script that lets the posters of maps be anonymous until the contest ends...

I'm actually fine if the moderators want to post maps under their own names. As long as the voting is secure and open to everyone in the community it shouldn't be a problem.

Tigger wrote:
I'm actually fine if the moderators want to post maps under their own names. As long as the voting is secure and open to everyone in the community it shouldn't be a problem.

Ditto

ok that defeats the purpose, which is to allow moderators to also post maps, and to keep things fair.

of course the unmentioned undercurrent here is that most mapers have a recognizable style... oh well..

Although I was originaly against the idea of having twp staff enter and it not be all secret, listening to you guys discussing it makes me think:
"stuff it, we know theyre a mod/admin/god if we think their map is best we'll vote for them and they will deserve to win"

iamafractal wrote:
ok that defeats the purpose, which is to allow moderators to also post maps, and to keep things fair.

Everything is already fair. No-one has anything to gain from trying to suck up to a moderator by voting for them. Everyone will vote for whoever has the best map. If a moderator posts a bad map, people won't vote for it. The only reason anyone would think that moderators would get an unfair advantage is paranoia.

The only way this system could be broken, is if someone joined a contest, and persuaded a whole load of their friends to join the forums just to vote for their map, but I think this method would be spotted quite quickly.

and that will happen so why not just keep it simple and anonymous.

This is largely a straw-man argument. I don't think that anyone really believes that they can "suck up" to a mod by voting for them. Because, you know, the votes are anonymous.

As for worry the mods stuffing the ballot box or any other form of misconduct that causes them to win unfairly: Msleeper said he would pass up the prize anyways, and I'm going to enter a map contest when hell freezes over.

its not just for mods, but for friends, or "people you like."

but lets face it. its a small enough community that anybody could say, "vote for my map! its #6"

and not only that but as i said, people already have discernible styles.

Can we stop this discussion? msleeper has already stated he will not go into this anonymous method a few posts ago.

msleeper wrote:
I can't express how much of a pain in the ass doing things that way would be for me. Once again, I prefer automated processes for contests, voting, so on. I see where you're coming from Fractal but really I don't think it is going to be that big of a deal. I'm not going to hand out Supporter for anyone who votes for me or some shit, and really if I won I'd probably give the prize to whoever came in 2nd.

Grudge wrote:
Can we stop this discussion? msleeper has already stated he will not go into this anonymous method a few posts ago.

if somebody writes the script, then it won't be a pain in the ass. it'll be easy.

This topic is getting way off subject.

No, I am not going to write an entirely new voting system when phpBB has one built in.

No, I am not going to write a whole new download database just so that contest uploads will be anonymous.

This thread is about people willing to donate money if they want a brand new video card as a prize. I am locking this thread, will unlock in a few days when people get their shit together.

Maybe we can keep this thread on topic now.