Just adding my point of view (just skip ahead if you don't want to hear):
Your idea of that little “contest”, cassianna, was really nice. And the rules were thought through and capable to reduce abuse and cheating, unfortunately its still possible to cheat by having own or befriended older accounts available. But thats neither the rules', nor yours, nor anyones fault. I think there is no way to run a completely cheating-proof contest here.
The rules were clear, everyone who was willing and able to read could have seen what they were about…that posting would be the only legit way to vote here.
To my surprise however, in any contest that is set up here in that forums, some of the contestants seem to want to win at all costs. Of course trying to win is the basic idea of participating in a contest, yeah, i also wanted to win of course, but not at all costs. Why do people have to cheat? Are you afraid you cannot win in a fair vote? Then don't participate at all. Some put up votes with hypocritical comments to ruin it for others, some fuck and suck to get votes, others mobilize own and their friends fake and double accounts to put up votes. And then they even are too lazy to write a new text every time, no, they copy/paste the voting text from above. Sorry, but that was a little too obvious. And i remember that certain contestant got boosted as well in round 1 of the beauty contest…with the difference that these faked votes were even counted there…
Such behaviour of course leads to discussions, stress and comments in some way. And on that part i disagree with you, Lydia, it was NOT the comments that ruined it at all, it was the SOURCE of that comments, the obvious attempts to cheat and to influence results. Without that attempts not a single comment would have been posted here.
Nevertheless, it's over. Cassianna found a solution, and she'll do a wonderful job with her fine art. I'm looking forward to see it.
ps: The inevitable hateful comments about my words please via PM, thank you…
