Changes that NEED to be made to the arena

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

A lot of these contests are ending badly, either in supposed cheating, fake votes and generally weird ego wars.

So here are some suggestions that frankly should be instigated right away.

- You need 10 posts and/or having been around for more than two weeks or so. Numbers subject to change, but this is crucial in stopping friend votes and multiaccounting.

- The host can participate as well. There is no reason he should not be able to. And besides, the site is hosting the contest, not the user.

- Any known art thief should be officially banned from competitions for either a permanent amount of time or a very long time. This is extremely important.

- An extension should always happen if there are less than 5 entries and the extension should be a set number of weeks. This is for consistency and for stopping arguments or hesitation.

- I suggest hiring a complete arena mod/contest mod, who will host every contest and post news on the front page about the new competitions. Bringing back the contests news post would be very useful in having more entries. He/she could also be the one to find whether someone is an art thief or not.

- Rethink your themes. Don't be afraid to make a list of themes to use and keeping them for future contests.

Honestly, every one of those changes need to be done if you want to stop shitstorms in the arena and make everything work smoothly. Contests are the most interesting way to get more ressources or find new talent. Art theft, arguments and fake voting is everywhere.

 

[Traxamillion]

Agree'd.

Make it happen Gilles.

 

[Pyritie]

fake voting

I want to add that it should be a requirement that all polls be made public. There is no reason why it shouldn't be.

 

[PurplePoot]

- You need 10 posts and/or having been around for more than two weeks or so. Numbers subject to change, but this is crucial in stopping friend votes and multiaccounting.

Longer. Twice the duration of the contest and 50 posts, in my opinion.

- The host can participate as well. There is no reason he should not be able to. And besides, the site is hosting the contest, not the user.

Depends if it is judged.

- Any known art thief should be officially banned from competitions for either a permanent amount of time or a very long time. This is extremely important.

Only art?

- An extension should always happen if there are less than 5 entries and the extension should be a set number of weeks. This is for consistency and for stopping arguments or hesitation.

Indeed.

- I suggest hiring a complete arena mod/contest mod, who will host every contest and post news on the front page about the new competitions. Bringing back the contests news post would be very useful in having more entries. He/she could also be the one to find whether someone is an art thief or not.

I think that's what Gilles is.

- Rethink your themes. Don't be afraid to make a list of themes to use and keeping them for future contests.

Don't they do that already?

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Depends if it is judged.

Most hosts are not judges.... actually I think they never are.

I think that's what Gilles is.

He can't make news posts, and I'm not sure how much control he has over it. Nevertheless, his activity in that section doesn't seem all that much at first glance. But this is not about Gilles.

Don't they do that already?

Not enough.

 

[PurplePoot]

Most hosts are not judges.... actually I think they never are.

They are for zephyr.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Well this is something else then. I still think hosts should be able to participate as well, unless they're judges.

 

[Devine]

Will, most of the things you say are right.
but I think you should be a member for over 3 months do be able to vote.
2 weeks isn't enough since a contest duration is 4 weeks most of the time.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

3 months is insanely long in internet time. I'm thinking 1 and a half months, 5 weeks. That's the duration of the contest.

And it should NOT be simply time, but also number of posts.

 

[Mechanical Man]

Things are simple. The voter must explain his vote. If he doesn't or his review is too bad, the vote isn't valid.

I think this was enforced on some icon contest long time ago. I don't know if it's still applies, I don't follow icon contests.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

No, that's just insanely annoying and still won't provide any protection against friend votes or other cheats.

The point isn't to annoy fake voters, but to prevent them completely.

 

[skrab]

only members with blue gems and more can vote in the poll with a small explain of his vote

 

[ike_ike]

I prefer WC3C's vote system. Which was itself a voting system with a really long name, yet seemed nice. Wherein voters had a list of entrants in order of preference, and had to explain everything and so forth. Seems better than private public polls and invisible judges ._.

 

[Linaze]

I agree with most if not all of the things you pointed out WILL.
The current arena system is a bit abused at the moment. :/

 

[Lord_T]

Agreed.

 

[Sabertooth]

I like the idea of having one person in control who hosts all the contests.
I also support the auto-extend idea.

 

[Hakeem]

You need 10 posts and/or having been around for more than two weeks or so. Numbers subject to change, but this is crucial in stopping friend votes and multiaccounting.

I think restricting the voting to people who signed up before the competition is enough for multiaccount votes, but I don't see how this stops friend votes.

Any known art thief should be officially banned from competitions for either a permanent amount of time or a very long time.

I think a better idea is that if you are caught cheating in a competition, you are banned. Period. Otherwise, as long as they aren't cheating in the competition, who cares?

I suggest hiring a complete arena mod/contest mod, who will host every contest and post news on the front page about the new competitions.

I am in complete and total agreement here.

I want to add that it should be a requirement that all polls be made public. There is no reason why it shouldn't be.

I was actually going to suggest complete anonymity in the voting. This goes for entrants and voters.

 

[Sabertooth]

Wait, on the topic of the complete Arena mod. I thought that when Gilles became the new mod he was taking on a "complete Arena mod" function? (This may sound retarded but I can't find a way to word it.)

 

[PurplePoot]

I think restricting the voting to people who signed up before the competition is enough for multiaccount votes, but I don't see how this stops friend votes.

Some people get their friends to sign up to vote for them.

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Basically it means your friends can't vote because they are not active enough in the forums (only 1 or 2 posts is not enough) or simply just registered yesterday.

This is frankly the most urgent problem.

 

[Sabertooth]

Of course if they registered during the time of the contest and made a submission they can still vote, yes?

 

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

That might be hard to implement, but we should just stick to a simple limit.

 

[Hakeem]

Some people get their friends to sign up to vote for them.

If they got them to sign up for the purpose of voting for them, then they registered after the competition had begun, and thus, their votes should be ignored.

 

[Wallshadow_]

I blame Ralle and Hive Workshop!!!