Rainbow Awards Cover Contest

[reviews_and_ramblings]

This is a warning and a request to play fair: I closed the poll for Round 14. For the last two months, and exactly from October 17, an internal fight started during the polls, week after week. I don't know if you realized it, but I think there were at least 2 opposite sides, and they continued to vote to have "their cover" ahead of the other one. Now if the votes were coming for all the covers, maybe more on one cover, a little less on other covers, that would be normal. But ALL the votes for only one cover and then ALL the vote for the other cover? No sorry, I see something that is not right here. Plus sincerely, I don't like that many of the accounts voting were opened right at the moment to vote for a cover and let it go through the elimination poll.

I kindly warned people and introduced the Jury to help me rebalancing the situation and those people got even more angrier... When I investigated on the reason, the only explanation I got was, "we want to support the author we like". Guys, this is a wrong answer for all kinf of reasons, first of all this is a COVER contest, not an AUTHOR contest, and you haven't to vote a cover for the author but for the artist. By the way I have the evidence, no questionable, that at least 4 accounts belonged to the same IP address, many cover didn't pass the rounds for less than 4 votes.

So sorry, but I'm really tired, and almost harrassed, and I decided to give it a stop. I closed the poll, the final 10 covers will be decided on the total amount of votes at yesterday night on ALL the 14 polls plus the votes of the Jury for the last 5 rounds. I will not invalidate votes, not even the ones from the same IP addresses since actually, I cannot determine if they maybe weren't using the same internet point. But please don't consider me a fool and if you are not right on your complaints, DON'T make them.

I ask you to play fair on the next poll: 10 covers, you can vote 3, but please vote the ARTIST, please help me in making this contest a serious thing, otherwise next year I will not host it. I will open the poll on Sunday, meanwhile, if you have question, comment here.

Comments

[evila-elf.livejournal.com]

Uugh :-/

And as far as people voting for the authors and not the covers, is there a way to blur out the author names? People could always look up the book by title if they wanted to, but that might help a little.

Glad to see this isn't discouraging you from thinking of doing this next year. I have found many good books from the cover contest because I really can't help byt judge a book by its cover ;)

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

> is there a way to blur out the author names?

ah well, I didn't think at that but it can be an idea for next year.

[evila-elf.livejournal.com]

It would also be fun to blur out the titles, but that would be way too time consuming

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

And sometime the titles are part of the cover art itself.

[lee-rowan.livejournal.com]

I don't think masking the author would make any difference--the people who gang-vote do so because they're going for a specific title, and they already know that.

Maybe requiring that all voters be registered before the start of the voting? That would block last-minute bogus accounts.

[elisa-rolle.livejournal.com]

The locking of the account will help me to at least avoid most of the bogus accounts.