I have noticed a disturbing trend in the "Dawn of Blackbird" machinima
contest. One entry will have a substantial lead and then all of a
sudden, will drop dramatically while a much more mediocre entry will
climb rapidly. Or in other cases, an entry will be good enough to
deserve a vote and yet still receive negative scores.

My theory is that this mainly happens from one contestant having a bunch
of friends log on, vote for their entry, and then lame all of the other contestants with
negative scores. And I doubt that they ever really watch any of them.

Yeah I know there is a $4000 PC on the line and that there are some
just frothing at the mouth to get it. So I'm probably just wasting my
breath. But it bothers me just the same that it seems more like a FFA
session and less like a contest judged by peers.

So if you are one of these "buddies" I have to ask, can you not think for yourselves?!? Have you no opinion of your own? Or do you just do whatever someone else tells you to do like a worthless spambot.

Spam must DIE!

Yours sucked

Do you read at all?  Nice example of spam there bud.

I completely agree with you Swarf. You probably noticed that I was a victim to this as well, having my score drop from +90 to +67 in less than 5 minutes. It's a little sad that we aren't being judged on our work in this competition, we're being judged by who can beg or bribe the most friends to vote for their work and downgrade other people's entries.

I refuse to ask my friends to vote down other entries, since I'm not going to employ the same tactics as others who think this is a legitimate way of promoting their own entries, by degrading others. I've submitted links on a few machinima websites, which I encourage others to do the same. Then people can come here and vote on the entries they like best, not because they feel they have an obligation to that person. Really, the biggest problem here is the negative vote button. Without that, it's a tally of votes, and not a popularity contest.

Consider this like a running race. At the moment the winner isn't who can run the fastest to the finish, it's the person who can trip and take out as many people along the way as possible.


--Edit--

Here's an example of what some people are doing to get votes. This has been spammed on a WoW irc chatroom by Ghwrin.


[ Hourly Message ] Please upvote my contest entry at
http://www.gameriot.com/contests/blackbird/kqhKfl8MPK/ and downvote
the top 2 or 3 videos in the Most Popular tab in the right hand column.
You don't need an account to vote!

Take note that he's actively asking people to downvote other people's works. I'll leave this to you guys to decide whether this is acceptable practice or not.

Yeah I saw you lose +40 points as did a few others in the top 3.  That's why I posted. It is discouraging to those of us in the middle of the ranks. -_-

I don't think I could consciously enjoy winning having known I noobed a worthier opponent.

if anything is at fault, it's the rules for making such tactics work. a vote tally contest like this encourages this ****. 

a good ruleset will reduce or eliminate the effectiveness of such tactics.

ranting at people for wanting to win is pointless and does nothing.

*edit* you want a system that is less prone to corruption and retardedness?  don't use voting tallys as the main way of determining the winner. 

if you just had a set of outside judges or something instead pick a winner you wouldn't see anything like this happening.

"if you just had a set of outside judges or something instead pick a winner you wouldn't see anything like this happening."

True, this wouldn't happen, but instead we'd end up with people like swarf still coming out and crying when they still didn't win with their mediocre entries and *****ing about that system too.

I am not ranting at someone campaigning their movie in whatever way they choose, it's a big prize and I've stated already that I'm not surprised to see such actions. I am just disappointed that people would just blindly go along with their commands without really forming their own opinions. Sure contestants can go out and flame everyone else's movie, that's the political side of the contest if you choose that path. I'm just surprised they get any respect.

"True, this wouldn't happen, but instead we'd end up with people like
swarf still coming out and crying when they still didn't win with their
mediocre entries and *****ing about that system too."

Yeah my entry is mediocre compared to a few others. I would be completely shocked if I won.

ok what the **** just happened i was at 27 and now im at -6 and those other guys were at like 88 and now they are negative something what the **** is going on-