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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Corporate Dog" data-source="post: 73636" data-attributes="member: 2512">My Rant (longish)...Alright... here's my comprehensive rant about all things involving the contest. I'll preface this by saying that I DID enter, and my entry was NOT in the first heat.First, when it comes to the issue of formatting and whether or not something met the criteria for the contest, I think those issues should've been ironed out BEFORE giving the entries to the voting public. One person wrote the contest rules, and I think it should've been up to that one person to apply them to the entries as well. I've seen people who think reducing the margins of a page constitutes not following the rules (and I think that's an extremely strict interpretation), while I've seen others who are willing to let blatant violations slide (if you used the wrong font size, sorry, but there really isn't any wiggle room there). I think consistency is VERY important here, but it ain't gonna happen when you have the voters interpreting the rules.As a result (and I've said this before) I'm going for the most lax interpretation of the formatting rules possible when I make my votes. Twisted logic, perhaps, but I think the quality of an entry is far more important than whether or not they used 1 inch or .75 inches on the margins. We all worked hard, and even if that makes me a <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ing Pollyanna, I think it should count for something.As for whether or not the NPC can be used independently of the location, and vice versa? That's also a judgement call, but one I feel more comfortable making, and one which SHOULD be open to wide interpretation.Second, a rant directed at the cheaters. That's right... cheaters. Screw this 'voting irregularity' crap. What do you hope to gain out of this? Yeah, there's loot involved, but so what? We're talking at most $50 worth of merchandise. Do you REALLY need it that bad? If so, maybe you can put your writing skills to better use, write some reviews, and get some review material for free. If you're looking for acceptance, and maybe a few pats on the back, then that's equally sad. While I really dig EN World, and am starting to dig the forums (I'm pretty new here), it's just a sliver of a fraction of the people involved in the niche hobby we call roleplaying. Judging from the smidgeon of involvement in the one or two threads which have been about the contest, you won't even get to enjoy the standard Warholian fifteen minutes of fame from winning this thing. I'm thinking that most of us entered this contest for fun. It was fun to write our entries, and it was fun to read the other entries. I personally entered the contest because I've been wanting to gear up to writing larger pieces of RPG content. It was fun practice for me. If I win, yay, I've proven to myself that I can write something. Frankly, the prizes don't even do it for me (no offense meant towards the forum regulars who wrote them, but I've never been a fan of psionics, and most of my gaming is done online, making my use of counters negligible).I was eager to see how well I could do in the contest, and how my entry measured up to whatever entries ultimately win. Now even THAT small amout of gratification has been put on hold because a few of you monkeys thought SO highly of your own work that the votes of the masses couldn't POSSIBLY have been made out of any sort of informed opinion, and therefore had to be supplemented with your own. THAT is SO <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />ing WEAK.Finally, I think some of us have proven that we're incapable of fair and unbiased judging. Whether you stuffed the ballot box yourself, or campaigned on other websites and forums, you skewed things in your favor. Even if we relocate the voting to this forum (thereby avoiding the problem of multiple votes) there's still the issue of people who entered the contest persuading their friends to vote for their entry, and their friends voting without even reading the others. This shouldn't be a popularity contest.I think, sadly, that Morrus should appoint a committee of judges made up of people from the forum who didn't enter the contest, and who have no pre-established biases. Let them vote on each heat, and let them give reasons for why they voted the way they did (similar to the postings in this thread which 'review' each entry). That seems to be about the only fair way to do it, after the initial voting experiment failed.That's my two cents. YMMV.Regards,Corporate Dog</blockquote>

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