This is a couple of days old, but I didn't see anyone post about it here.


For those wanting to look at the actual thread here it is, but I'll give you the heads up that the thread is a trainwreck. http://www.mastercollector.com/pforums/ ... 6&forum=31

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I've followed this on a few other boards as well and its a total flustercluck all right. I see where the club was coming from and all but they could have suspended any new non-paying accounts while the voting was going on. That would have been the only way to keep any ballot stuffing from happening.

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Situation
Normal
All
F ucked
Up

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Wow. I'm really surprised at how this is being handled.

I'll say up front, I do not have a dog in this race. I didn't submit a custom and I didn't vote (I couldn't figure out where on their site to vote at). If anyone looks up my name over there, I'm listed as a Trooper level, only because they haven't updated my account since I sent in my renewal a week and a half ago. I liked something about all of the customs showcased and thought that they were all interesting figures.

As I read it, the only reason that two customs were disqualified was because some Trooper level members registered and didn't post on the GIJoeClub boards, but instead only voted for a figure. I personally do not see this as being an issue. Here's why:

- With the "logic" that the GIJoe Club is using, if I didn't like a custom, I could have signed up for several accounts, voted for the figure I didn't like, and it would have been disqualified. That does not seem fair at all.

- What is so wrong if a new person signs up for an account and only votes? Perhaps that's what the user is interested in - customs. Besides, as I understand it from the Con last year, Hasbro was very adamant in creating the Trooper level memberships in order to give Joe fans access to a message board. Seems this contest brought in new people. Sure they might not hang around, but then again they might. I certainly can't determine that...and neither can the GIJoe Collector Club. To try to determine someone's motives over the internet would not be fair.

- I never saw any mention on their site that "anyone" could not vote. Effectively, however, the GIJoe Club is saying this. It appears that in order to vote, you had to have an account active before the vote and you had/have to be an active poster. If those were the rules, that's fine, but people have to know the rules before they can play. Changing the rules in the middle of the game is not fair.

If a customizer went to some of his/her friends and said "hey, my work is being voted on, please go sign up at this url and vote for me." how can that be wrong? If the GIJoe Club only wanted established members, then why were Troopers allowed to vote? If the club was interested in only one account per IP address, technology can assist there. There are lots of server-side technology solutions for handling votes/poles, etc. We have votes on this site very often. I don't remember us having issues like this in the past. From my perspective, it seems that the GIJoe Club started this contest with failure as a bases. As we say at my job "when you plan to fail, you usually do." That's not meant as a negative, it's a business principle that my organization works by - evaluate all known outcomes of a choice before making the choice.

Now I'm not trying to degrade the GIJoe Collector Club with my comments. I enjoy their figures each year and the new ARAH product that they produce. But from my perspective, I'm surprised that Hasbro would want this type of activity to determine figures that will be posted on the main Hasbro website.

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All BS my Bombstrike should have won!

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so since i am a trooper level guy, who signed up solely to vote in this contest, does that mean my vote was thrown out?

if not who's vote was and which figure were Dq'd?

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That is exactly what I was thinking. IF there was any true stuffing of the ballots then it would be a peice of cake to check the IP address (The message I am getting is certain contestants made multiple accounts from thier computer, then again the whole thing is rather unclear).

But still it should be a peice of cake to check it from the IP address (I am pretty sure JC can do that) and that be that. Instead of this "Trooper accounts don't count" thing that just serves to inflame the community. I am not even what one would call a "techy" and know this.

I was thinking of signing up on trooper level just to vote, now I am kind of glad I have been to busy to do so.

From the way I read it, they found two cases of supposed "ballot stuffing", if you will, and those two customs were DQed, namely the Battle Damaged Baroness which led voting most of the way through and the Classified Snake Eyes which had a dramatic increase towards the end. The extent of the ballot stuffing has not been stated. They tracked most Trooper level same day accounts were voting for those 2 figures and DQed them.

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That's a shame about the battle damaged Baroness. I wouldn't think that custom would have needed ballot stuff.

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This whole thing is why custom contests are not my thing. I think we've all heard stories of people on ebay who bid on their own customs to raise the price. I don't know how true the stories are or if its just jealous people complaining, but in some instances I think some of the complaints may be valid. We've all also heard of the extreme competition some customizers seem to have with...well...everyone who they see as a "threat" to their "king of the mountain" mentality. It's a hobby man chill out. I've met A LOT of really cool people in this hobby but I've unfortunately also dealt with a few who are way too two-faced for anyone's good.

First off there are some people who take customizing to a whole new level of absurdity in how serious they act about it. The Baroness custom I think was extremely well done and probably worthy of winning and not due to the fact that the Baroness was half naked. It had excellent mods and paint work done to it. However I can see if Hasbro is going to be putting this stuff on it's site where little kids are going to go how they may of gotten cold feet with that.

Secondly with how serious some customizers take this hobby I could see someone purposefully voting for a custom and "stuffing the ballot box" so that that custom would be disqualified and theirs would move up. I can also see someone really wanting a custom or their own custom to win and "stuffing the ballot box" in their own favor.

I give Hasbro credit for doing something that they thought people would enjoy doing, it's unfortunate that out of all the good people in this hobby those usual few lame-asses ruined it for the good folks.

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How exactly is it that they think they can determine which accounts were created just to ballot-stuff but the rest of us couldn't even get logged in and vote for the stupid thing in the first place? Thier message boards are a disaster which everyone knows which is why no one posts there. But then they hold a contest that relies on that message board? Ugh.

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Once again as soon as anything that might be deemed as slightly negative is posted on the MC board, the thread is locked. Really, unless name calling comes out or something along those lines they should ease on the locking of threads. How can the get a true gage of the membership reaction otherwise?

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That thread isn't locked. Maybe it was but it isn't now as I just posted a comment. Is there another thread you are talking about?

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Heck, your reply was tame compared to the onslaught going on in there. I made an obvious point of how their boards are rarely used because they are so difficult to use. It was at that point I noticed that you had nearly the same post count as me on those boards, 21. And for good reason. All the new accounts with no posts could simply be because those people never had a reason to register before except to vote. After they figured out how to vote, they went back to posting on boards that are actually usable. When the Hasbro endorsed, official GIJoe Club cannot get its own members to post on its boards, then you know there are problems.

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I didn't even vote because it wouldn't let me.

Those boards are a huge cluster. . . just like this custom contest.

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