Well there you go! The people who were saying that weren’t even right, lol
Thanks for that. I’ve reworded the statement. 
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A variation of this disclaimer may be worth adding to the initial posts of future contest topics, if just to avoid people crying out “*Why don’t Meso/Eljay/the mods say anything about X happening!”
I was going to specifically ask about this, so I’m glad you partly addressed it here. From an outsider’s perspective, it seems like it’s just you and Eljay enforcing the contest rules, while the rest of the mods are enforcing the board rules, though I fully admit I could be way off base with this. That wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if not for the large amount of entries in these contests, and the massive amount of replies that can generate in the main canon contest thread that need to be kept an eye on. So giving the mods more authority in the contests I think would be a good thing.
If you guys are looking for alternatives though, I do recall how when BZP ran their contests they would ask members of the community to volunteer to be judges/officials and check entries to make sure they were compliant with the rules. I’m not sure how feasible that is here and now, but it might be worth thinking about.
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One of the main problem for some people wasn’t directly the shield’s placement, but rather the fact that it doesn’t even have a Rhotuka Launcher in the first place, even though the shield name is “Rhotuka Launching Shield” and every other entry had the launcher and the two rhotuka inserted on the shields.
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This is easily resolved by adding those items into the artwork. As it wasn’t something mandated by the rules, it’s gonna end up being more of a personal issue for people.
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Just to be clear, I understood and fully expected that there was going to be retrospective commentary from Meso and Eljay, but why I (and presumably others) wanted a statement about Double’s Bomonga as soon as possible was because this was something that could’ve thrown a huge wrench into the contest, and it would’ve been easier to nip it in the bud sooner than later, so I appreciate the response.
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That’s perfectly feasible; there were already many cases in this contest and past ones where people questioned the legality of entries, including the Bomonga in question:
All it takes is for someone to say “Hey Eljay and/or Meso, this doesn’t seem right”.
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Yes, I know that, it’s an easy fix, but it shouldn’t be a fix at the first place honestly. I don’t mind adding them, I’ve already done that, but it’s not something Double couldn’t do on his own to preserve the shield’s and the overall 2005 year’s launcher function. It’s just lazy.
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he can’t keep getting away with this
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Why not?
It’s no different than the Helryx moc having a Pakari and the artwork giving a unique shape to the mask of Psychometry; no different from recoloring Artakha to sand green; no different from if an entry without the official shield piece had won, as many mocs used placeholder shields. These are things the rules allow the art to fix.
Yes, it’s something he could have done, but it wasn’t mandated in the rules.
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Yes, sorry, that wasn’t meant to be directed at you specifically (and frankly I thought it was a valid concern to bring up). I was thinking more in the future, should some controversy pop up that Eljay/Meso don’t want to specifically discuss then-and-there, they could just copy-paste that disclaimer and be done with it.
That’s very true. My concern was more about, if Eljay and Meso officially endorse that idea, then bad actors might abuse the system and flag otherwise innocuous entries. Of course, that’s also rather dependent on how that idea would be endorsed.
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Here’s my thought based on what you said: basically, Meselj approve certain people to be “official” entry checkers. That’s the important part; so you don’t have just anyone flagging an entry they dislike. The admins still have the final word to approve/DQ/ask for changes, of course.
Using my own post as an example (since it’s already been brought up on the matter)
Now, since I’m nobody important, Eljso aren’t obligated to read my posts before making any decision. But if I were an “official” entry checker, then this post would carry the weight of “Jaynak should read this before approving the entry”. They can still approve/DQ/ask for changes as they see fit, but there’s less chance of missing a detail like this.
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I really appreciate this response. It might be hard for somebody to say that they’ve made a mistake in front of others by owning up to it, but I think that’s really what makes me respect TTV a lot more.
Nobody is perfect, and even TTV makes mistakes. I know that I myself have made mistakes on here before, particularly when I kept asking Eljay over and over again about whether or not he dislikes me, when we know that he already read my post the first time and I was being overly obnoxious by asking time and time again when I didn’t need to as asking once was already enough. (In which, I would like to apologize, TTV already has enough on their plates, and them having to hear hear me ask time and time again was admittedly and understandably a bit tiresome to many people).
I understand why this slipped, and don’t understand why some people would’ve thought that TTV had bad intentions on this. It was a simple mistake to look over, and wasn’t taken into account as soon as it should’ve as it wasn’t near as noticeable as other things that have been counted for disqualification prior.
Overall I’m glad that Meso took the time to respond to the situation as soon as he did. Hopefully now we can just look forward to the brighter future for the canon contests instead of stressing out over some of the minor mess-ups.
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I was thinking along very similar lines to this as well. The key is giving the contest checkers some level of officiality for what they’d be doing, assuming they’re relative randos taken from the boards as opposed to being the existing mods/admins.
Also, depending on the amount of people chosen to be contest checkers, perhaps a minimum of 1 to 3 contest checkers would need to give their approval/disapproval on a given entry (again, based on how I recall BZP doing their contests back in the day)? Once more there is the question of feasibility in that regard though.
maybe it could be all the masters?
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Eh
Being a master has less to do with the kind of criteria needed for this and more with having the most amount of time to waste. There are like, 3 masters that aren’t in highschool.
I’d say it should probably be the more canon-focused and detail oriented posters in this topic. People like Willess, TheJerminator, Hazash, Dag, etc. Assuming they’d be willing, since a lot of them are also against the contests as a whole.
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Frankly, and as a realistic opinion, if we’re going to introduce an additional contest checker, I think its members should be decided by some voting.
I’m very concerned about checkers will doing the act of “unconditionally disqualifying entries he/she don’t like”, or “Work to make the entry disadvantageous”, and I can’t say it with all my heart that there is no person who will not do it on the board.
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I doubt they’d have that kind of authority. Their job would probably be to identify minor discrepancies/breakings with the rules and letting the builder know. Grey areas, disqualification decisions, and other issues would be forwarded to the admins, I’m sure.
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I don’t think the checkers would actually have the power to disqualify an entry; they’d basically just filter out the entries that Eljay or Meso actually have to look at rather than having those two look at every single entry, and then the mods would make any final disqualification choices.
I suppose it’s still possible that the checkers could just spam-report any entries they don’t like, but I suspect they’d lose their “official” checker status pretty quickly.
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I see, thank you
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Those that disagree with the rules for each contest, if predecided, would potentially be difficult to work with as their interpretation of what does and does not qualify may differ from what the cast is expecting then to follow.
I suggest we take the discussion to the main Canon contest topic and generate some discussion to see if such an idea is feasible. Personally I think it would be a worthwhile endeavor, but the process of going about forming a community committee to silently moderate and report difficulties with entries is fraught with difficulty, and TTV has already been dealing with multiple accusations of favoritism ever since the contests began. Every site member, staff or otherwise, brings a multitude of personal difficulties and reputations to the table when involved in any official capacity, and that may be a storm TTV does not want to confront at this point. Along with the addition of choosing sides in terms of whether the contests should exist at all, the inclusion of any community members for such a position has the potential to cause unnecessary drama.
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