I couldn’t see the poll earlier opening the bookmarked url, until I signed in. If someone even wants to see the results they at least now need an account it seems. I could be wrong though.
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I just tried to open a direct link to the vote, and it gave me a message stating the page was missing or private.
@Eljay This seems like a rather big issue. Voters could open a link to the vote and be presented with such a screen, then mistakenly assume the vote is over. Or, voters could go about their day not even seeing the vote in the first place on the site.
Limiting a voter’s capacity to vote is one thing, and nothing can be done about the new changes in terms of that. But why should new voters not even be able to see the vote at all?
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Also, just a quick thing, the new members still need to view ten topics. They can’t simply wait with a tab open for thirty minutes. This could be mentioned in an auto-message upon joining because of this bit if you ask me. Otherwise they’ll never go up a trust level.
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On the topic of notifying new users, should the post with the poll be edited to include this notification in bold, immediately above the poll? Anyone wanting to vote can’t possibly miss it then, right? (Also may not hurt to edit in the poll deadline somewhere in the post; “around July 3rd” could certainly be clarified).
Unless editing the post would cause the poll to be lost. I’m not sure how that works on here.
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No, it does not. Currently, BZPower has very little security or account regulation and would not be able to support the demands of this contest in any way.
I mean that seriously - I have plenty of facts and evidence to support that statement. However, that is off-topic, and if you wish to discuss that site further, please send me a PM.
The only thing I have to say for now is that I support the staff decision and agree that it should have been in place from the beginning. However, I do understand the argument that people are making that changing things in the middle is a bad practice, and that’s why I said as much with the ranked voting system I proposed.
I feel sorry for the staff right now with them having to deal with “the dark side of the community” as it were, and that this canonization contest has turned into such a big fluffle. I think the timing is partly to blame with the Sokoda thing, and the community really needing something to put their emotional energy into.
With that being said, I have a vote of confidence that Eljay and the staff will learn from this situation and that the next contest will be much improved.
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Just wish it didn’t have to happen with the Helryx contest of all things. 
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Yeah. If you had a particular attachment to that character, this would be rough. I mean, I like Helryx too, and I wanted something that looked decent.
idk though, which character would you rather have liked to have gone first and suffered through this? I liked Artahka and Lariska too…it’s just bad, no matter which character it is.
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Jerbraz. He would have been great meme potential. 
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Added.
They have to reach Trust Level 1 in order to access the Voting category. That’s how they’re able to vote from there.
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I’m not sure many would care about screwing up the GSB too much.
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With the benefit of hindsight, it probably would’ve been better to start these contests with complete nobody characters like Marendar or the Gold Skinned Being. Obviously I get the appeal of starting with big name characters like Helryx and Artakha, but yeah, hindsight is 2020 and all that…
EDIT: Ah, beaten by thiiiis much.
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The issue is, we already have quite a handful of people questioning the need of a Marendar contest. GSB, maybe, but there is an argument to be made that having it be a primary character helps so that a lot of people enter, a lot of eyes are focused on it, and as many perspectives are present to iron out issues. It’s a larger scale test run.
Obviously, we didn’t intend for it to be a test, but the first contest was always going to be a learning experience.
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Makes sense that they have to reach Trust Level 1 to vote, but they should be aware there is a vote going on. If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, could the notice that’s sent to each profile concerning the rules and regulations mention that the vote can only be seen and accessed once the criteria have been met?
If it’s already included, then apologies for being redundant.
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Chicken and the egg. If they’re here to vote, then they know the contest is going on. No one is joining in a vacuum.
This is what the bot tells you upon your account creation:
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Agree with all of those points. It’s a very tetchy moment (for a whole host of reasons), it’s just a bummer that this had to happen to Helryx. You guys are taking it in a step in the right direction though with these most recent requirements for new accounts imo.
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Sounds like the message tells enough then. That’s good, at least.
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So, I’ve seen all the recent discussion and I think I have to make my voice heard, especially when I don’t really think the complaints are just from a few users. I know I’m not active at all but this is important.
Since the contest started I trust the comunity and the winners on the previous polls, but I wanted to vote for the final entry that I think is the best one.
Anyway, I think the contest is not user friendly and the new measures make the problem even worse. Let me explain it to you:
I haven’t use the boards for quite some time but I came for the contest. First thing first, were is the contest? It is in a small link in the main banner. I would increase the size of the font and instead of the gradient on the background I would put in bold letters “Vote for the canon appearance of Helryx!” or something like that idk. Well, then I thought for a few minutes the poll was over or had not started yet because the page said “Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private”, the thing is, I wasn’t even logged into my account… I have experience in others forums and it will usually say something along the lines “To see this content you have to log in” but that’s not the case here. I would allow everybody to look at the contest, but to post and more importantly to vote, you need to create a user, that’s fair. Next, once I logged into my account, I couldn’t see photos of the entries, I could vote but I didn’t know what I was voting for… once again I realice I have to click in “Expand for Entry Images”, I guess this is a usuful feature but I think in this case it is unnecessary. Why are you hiding the photos? I honestly thought for a moment that I have to wait for them to properly load (my internet is slow sometimes)… Finally I cast my vote.
And now to top it off, you have to reach trust level 1… I understand the reason behind the changes and I’d say you are right but that one is clearly a joke and you shouldn’t allow it in the fist place. That makes the new measures rather excessive.
Despite the obstacles I exposed, a persistent fan could finish the process in 15 minutes or less in the case that they already plan to vote for a specific entry. But they can’t, it’s not enough time (and they have to meet the other conditions btw).
About these problems happening with Helryx: I think the most popular characters among the comunity (within the selection that was made at the beginning) are Artahka and Helryx, so you shouldn’t start with those characters if you know before hand the first contest could be a test. In this matter I don’t actually blame you because the current situation is not something you can predict.
…That’s all I had to say.
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I am on final stages of my Artakha MOC in studio, so I have 2 questions (sorry if asked):
1 Is it already decided that next canonization contest will be about Artakha? I just saw somwhere that there will be voting or something…
2 It is said on BS01that Artakha is grey and green, but may be there are some specifications on those colors, like “dark green”? Or maybe there is an another Artakha’s appearance-featured (Maybe Greg said something somwhere) info? That question is more to the comunity than to TTV cast.
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Artakha is apparently sand-green, because for some reason previous canonisations really liked to choose colours that are hard to work with for characters that fans might actually want to build,
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Just wanted to voice my support for this change.
A quick question though - would a new user be able to easily find the submission threads for the contest entries and easily see which are the finalists, given they can’t view the poll at that point?
Since there are six entry threads that hopefully everyone views before voting, that would cover most of the required threads for the trust level, if they can find them.
I also wanted to make the observation that these contests have always been advertised as allowing the community to submit a design to Greg. I would not consider non-fans sent here to brigade by offer of rewards members of the community.
(To correct the comparison some posts made to electoral politics, directly bribing someone to vote a certain way like this is also illegal in most political systems.)
I would add that if one person is bribing votes in such a blatant way that it was spotted, it is likely that many more people are doing the same thing more covertly.
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