Mama mia what did I stumble across. What a wild time this board has had. I feel like someone was explaining to me the dawn of the Bionicle Revolution from sacred Onu-Metru texts
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Itās been a wild ride. Felt good, then not so great, then a bit better. At this point my eyes are pretty burned out
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Comparing a toyline contest to Imperialism is an insult to all those who have suffered under itās evil in the past. This is a tasteless remark.
We all suffer the evil of imperialism. You live under an empire but unknowingly defend it. Rome hasnāt entirely fallen. It is not a stretch to compare the TLC to an empire, it only perpetuates its bigger truth and denies other truths. It brought Bricklink. You can be brought too.
I am wondering the same thing, fine fellow. Who IS the Bionicle Community? Does the Bionicle Community enjoy slow walks at night? Does the Bionicle Community have a peanut allergy? I donāt know, but itās time for TTV to open up and tell us!!
I guess the point I wanted to take across is that out there are people who like Bionicle but donāt routinely engage with it. You can make a case that a lot of people reached out to vote sincerely sympathized and their participation was genuine. You could also argue it is a bit of stretch to call all of them persons, a person is someone recognized by another as a self, otherwise it becomes an inanimate object. I donāt know the answer either. I am far more interested in what it entails to be part of this community or if it is worth it. And what exactly is trying to come out from this dilemma.
You can continue to be suspicious of TTV for the voting system for as long as you want. IMO theyāre still the most honest, straightforward and willing admins of any Bionicle fansite throughout the themeās existence. And Iāve got complaints about the way they do things, but do you know how hard it is to get a Bionicle admin to argue with you calmly?
The disqualified votes canāt be issued publicly for multiple reasons, which have all been listed. And if you donāt like thatā¦ Too bad. I know thatās really blunt, but theyāre not releasing the votes and that isnāt gonna change.
Maybe. I donāt know. It would be great to argue with the Admins but I donāt see why I/they should care. They took a position. I am okay with that. I took a position too. Differences make us interesting, why should we not disagree? Even if these Admins are these good person as you said, they are human, they can commit mistakes, they can lie. They have more power than you and I. They are the law, they have the moral superiority to enforce and act in the way they think is the most ĀØĀØĀØ correct ĀØĀØ. Yet they are not freer than us, they have a lot more to lose.
What
Who can live in the Bionicle Universe and who cannot? I think it is an interesting question, we should ask ourselves what is our precognitive idea of the kind of critters and persons who inhabit the Matoran Universe. Miserix is not your classic grimdark Makuta neither are some Dark Hunters the most handsome folk. In this case Bendryx is also a game changer, as she expands the horizons of what could be canon. This wasnāt another BBC contest were might is right. This was a wave of culture, it stroke deeper cords. People will follow, people were impressed by Helryx, and a lot of people began to think what constitutes the principle of Bionicle, not bended upon the system nor swayed into the proportions of men. How can this work with the Toa Hagah and Toa Nidhiki? The two far more conservative builds? I donāt know but time shall tell.
If youāve made 15 accounts to bump up one entry, having to make each one look through the site for 30 minutes and read things is going to be somewhat deterring.
Yeah, yet āāāpeopleāāā still cared and put their time. And it didnāt work well.
Ok so this isnāt the most eloquent answer, but here you go:
Are you in the Bionicle Community?
[YES] - You are in the Bionicle Community
[NO] - You are not in the Bionicle Community
Itās about that simple. If you say yeah man, Iām in the community, thenā¦ You are. If you donāt want to be you arenāt. But if youāre willing to spend 30 minutes browsing with a message boards account just to vote on a contest for a characterās depiction becoming law, youāre probably a fan.
See above. TTV is part of the Bionicle Community. But it is not The Bionicle Community . I make the distinction as I think it matters how we think about canonizing. I think the Bionicle Community doesnāt have to be a self-proclaimed one, it can be your average Joe, anyone who shows initiative. We might well be speaking for others when judging, yet we must try to be more sensible.
Greg agreed to have the contests and allowed TTV to host them.
TTV has rules and regulations.
Greg ultimately can shut the contest down, veto the winner, or do anything related to the contest if he so chooses.
TTV is responsible to keep the contest orderly and handle it in a way which is acceptable for Greg.Nothing has been an overstepping of power here. Site rules have always said no duplicate accounts; this isnāt a new rule.
Nothing wrong with TTV doing their job, thumbs up for them. I must add. They over-do it. Greg is not going to get angry if the answer they get from the poll is unexpected one. They are worrying too much over the outcome. I personally donāt know the likes of Greg, or how would he take the news. Whatever it is, he shall face the answer, we must make the better of possibilities. These are the kind of interesting questions I argued before, what would happen? Maybe we are overhyping it and nothing really changes after the fact. Yet I perceive a fear of committing mistakes, of challenging the status quo with avant garde mocs, which I can understand. But there is so much you can control before you get lost inside your own idea of purity. Maybe the Bionicle Community is evolving, who knows.
What in the heck are you talking about
The OR category is clearly what you mentioned at the beginning, but barring thatā¦ I donāt know what youāre trying to say. That thereās been an injustice done?
I argue that ORs only give polarizing answers ā it is two dimensional ( e. g. you are stupid vs. no! you are stupid ). The ANDs provide three dimensions, they give you optionability (e.g. you are stupid vs. no, you are stupid vs. maybe you and I are both stupid). I think it provides a resolution to a lot of problems.
Rewrite everything that occurred, release the votes, do not enforce the rules, and let everything loose.
No.
How can you be so sure of the end of the outcome? Are you a seer? Anyway I appreciate your feedback, I am really glad you took the time to respond.
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the yearās just a neverending crisis, innit?
Congrats to entry #2ās maker, imma sit back here and watch this hell unfold
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what
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Are you ok
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Congrats to Double!
Not the entry I would have liked to see win but Iām sure Double is ecstatic their entry won.
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Because I was one of the other four finalists I need to clarify Iām not mad I lost, Iām mad because you guys tampered with the voting process and the votes themselves.
An entry that was third in the previous poll was allowed to pass instead of the actual 2nd place entry. Then it ended up second by a 70 vote difference yet it won.
During the last poll you ended up changing the rules to be allowed to be able to vote or not. You also extended the poll by a day just to make sure more votes could happen so you could sway the results to your liking.
Even though you say Hoseryx got a lot of fraudulent votes, Doubleās entry got his votes because it was pushed to second place in the first hours of the poll. And because it was in second place a lot of people jumped onto it because it was either his or Hoseryx.
You also made sure to clarify during the final day that the āsetā appearance didnāt actually matter at all and it was the art that would be used as the main image on the wiki. As a sort of damage control in case Hoseryx did win.
You dqād Hoseryx when it got entered, then allowed it back in for fun. Then it spiralled out of your control and you ended up with the situation we have now.
No matter how you look at it you guys did everything you could to make sure Hoseryx did not win the final poll. You made the final poll that way that it was a match between Hoseryx and Doubleās entry. The other four finalists had no chance to begin with.
In other contests both entries would have been disqualified due to tampering with the votes on both sides. But no, you guys got the results you wanted and Hoseryx did not win. At least the previous canon contests winners were fair and square unlike this one.
Who can guarantee us that this will not happen again. Why should any builder join the next contests if they know they can get pushed out of the contest due to tampering with either the voting process or the votes afterwards.
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I dont think entries should be disqualified on account of the people voting for them. The faulty votes themselves are what should be removed.
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Although it seems you more are interested in discussing this with him, I must applaud your articulation. It is good to see you expressing your own view in such a way.
@Mctoran While that is true, therein lies the crux of the issues, which is the āfraudulent votesā and how one tells they are fraudulent.
Keep in mind, in real life elections will openly disclose what is considered a fraudulent vote, with examples. They may hide their methods of detection, but in return they make it explicitly clear what is and is not considered a fraudulent vote, and the people running the agencies do not partake in the voting themselves.
In this instance, not only are the criteria for what makes a fraudulent vote not explicitly clear (and seemingly contradictory, in one or two cases), but we do not even know what was or wasnāt considered fraudulent, and the people who vetted the vote were those whom partook in voting.
Whether one takes such a position as @Sparky or not is up in the air, but I cannot fault their position at all. It is well informed, well articulated, and they themselves have no real stake in the two winners, moreso they care for the contestās integrity.
Also, and this is an aside, I find it strange that you believe that entries should not be disqualified because of the people voting for them, yet was quick to argue that the motivation of the voters for number 6 was grounds to remove it from the contest in your eyes. If you feel that is untrue, you can clarify, but that is from what I was able to gauge over this week.
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Iām not sure if I said that 6 in itself was the problem. My main problem was the controversial means that were possibly employed by people to incur votes for it. But as an entry, dont really care about 6 anymore if I did before.
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Luckily entry 2 won. I think the no joke entries should be kept. But at the same time, we should learn not to take things too seriously. We all knew that Bendy would never be canon. So there was no need to take things so seriously.
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70 fraudulent votes created specifically to sway the results. Not 70 legitimate individual people who voted. I want to make that clear.
We changed the requirements for accounts to be able to access the polls to discourage a massive amount of bribed vote brigading from occurring, during which we were getting bombarded by messages from members greatly concerned about it. We acted quickly and made a decision to assure that anyone serious about participating in these contests were completely able to vote. Are you aware of what we changed, exactly?
The first set of polls ran from June 23rd to June 26th. The second set of polls were from June 26th to June 29th. The third and final poll ran from July 2nd at 12:58 AM EDT to July 5th a little after 1:00 AM EDT. Only reason the poll didnāt close at 12:58 AM EDT was because I was at work and no one else realized it didnāt close automatically.
All of these were three days long. I have sincerely no idea what you are talking about.
We canāt help what gets voted when. Iām not sure what your recommended solution to this would be.
We clarified what we posted from the get-go and I made a correction on a statement I made in error.
We did not DQ Hoseryx from the start. As I said in this topic:
A moderator enforced our board rules and I made an exception. And we conducted the contest with the entry being treated like any other entry.
No, we did not. We have said this entire time that if Hoseryx won, we had every intention of sending it forward to Greg. Additionally, we will still be showing it to him.
I donāt believe that (with possibly the exception of Meso) anyone has expressed their favorite/preferred entries. We will, but the results that we have today were not āwhat we wanted.ā Theyāre just the results of the contest.
No. No, it is not.
I understand your frustration. I have been frustrated by a variety of things that occurred during this process. It was rough, it was bumpy, and it was stressful. But we did not tamper with votes. I realize that a lot of people donāt yet have our full perspective, nor understand a variety of the situations that happened. I want to explain everything from our side in full in time, but I want to wait until this contest has ended and we have some breathing room.
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Yāall are funny.
Conspiracy theories are always a laugh, mainly because theyāre pretty much always predicated on some major leaps in logic and assumed incompetence on the part of the subject.
If TTV hated Hoseryx as much as some of you are suggesting they do, it would never have been on the bracket. Heck, I think the entire contest wouldāve been significantly better if it hadnāt been there, and then hadnāt warped the entire affair into an argument about itself. But TTV didnāt. They let it stand and saved it from the fire twice over.
If they were desperate to remove Hoseryx, they had an opportunity to do so at every stage before this, and didnāt. The thing got DQād before the voting even started and Eljay went to bat for it and reinstated it.
If they were going to fake voter fraud to bin Hoseryx, why not do that in Round 2? Hell, why not just ignore the voter fraud in its entirety and let its 4th place finish in the bracket stand?
Then they get six good entries in the final, and it has a fair competition rather than driving the fanbase into a full Yes Hose vs. No Hose tribal war that ultimately damaged the chances of other entries that were, in most aspects, superior to the actual top two.
I mean, come on, people. If they were gonna remove it for false reasons, the final would be the dumbest Round to do it in.
Is it really that hard to believe that the silliest, memey-est entry would attract the most fake votes?
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Who exactly will determine what is a ājoke entryā and what is not?
A joke entry can be done by just putting many expensive parts in one build. To show the community how they value things with price in mind. You cant know the true intention of a submitted build.
So āno joke entriesā ist just another nice sounding filter you put in creativity
Clearly i am sad that bendy did not win, and i dont think this will change if we argue here.
But:
The removal of the votes of new accounts is a messy thing to do.
You cant be sure, you didnt deleted honest votes.
I think thats the only reason you dont want to release the removed votes.
If you are sure you could be a little more transparent
A list of usernames and the reasons why you removed the votes would really help
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Iām not entirely sure now if the original intent of hoseryx was for a joke/meme, as the original creator vehemently denies it.
Still, however, thatās what many of Hoseryxās supporters have seemed to turn her into.
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Bendy was joke I think there is no discussion about that. Itās a meme, a meme is a joke. The no joke entries rule should be only used in clear cases, and Bendy was definitely one of those cases.
The removal of some votes was done correctly. I made a second account and voted because I couldnāt log in with my main account and I was afraid of not being able to log in and vote before the contest was over. A mod asked me a day after if I had made a dupe account and the reason. I told him what I just told you, they understood and removed my vote and secondary account. And I voted for entry 2.
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I still do not get the joke about the council. Is that a real thing?
@Eljay To go through each one at a time
- The staff member disqualified it as a joke entry, and that was reversed out of good faith. Thatās more or less what they say.
- The main point when they mentioned the āentry that was thirdā seems more to be that Doubleās entry was moved forward twice by audit, not from the pure votes themselves. Now, whether that is simply coincidence, or that the audited votes were legitimate and Doubleās entry was pushed forward to first compete with Bendryx and then overtake it, that is up to oneās own conclusions, as obviously throughout the thread this whole thing has been discussed.
- Their statement was true. The rules for being allowed to vote were indeed changed. I do not see the issue of what they said, and although on its own such a change can be seen as one of necessity, given the fact that later on over 70 votes were removed (orders of magnitude more than the previous contest section) despite the changes being put in place specifically to prevent fraudulent accounts from being mass produced, one could instead see it as a change made to slow down new voters from tipping the polls, and one that did not work. Again, not stating my own personal views but this is a possible explanation as to why this was mentioned.
- This part you are, of course, correct in. People continue to say that the polls were extended by a day because they read the numbers a bit incorrectly. Poll Once, for instance, was closed on the 29th (according to the little date at the bottom that says so), but the votes were counted up a bit for a few days and the new poll started the 2nd as you said. Therefore the date can be explained.
5.It seems their mention of Double relates to the point listed earlier about how Doubleās entry moved up twice only after the auditing of votes. That is admittedly a bit strange, when one considers that both you and (I believe) Meso voted for Doubleās entry as well. @Sparky might be trying to say that Double was deliberately pushed forward as the build chosen to beat out Bendryx, denying the legitimate winner of Contest Nueve their place and later on winning the contest through vote manipulation, as well as being put in the finals to swiftly gain a lead and overtake Bendryx. - This also makes sense, but sort of on both ends. On the one hand, if one looks at what has happened and has the idea, one could come to the conclusion that the votes and contest were specifically attempting to beat back Bendryx the entire time, after letting it in as a simple jest and it getting out of control. On the other, your willingness to allow it throughout the whole contest (and your civility throughout the matter) indicate that it may very well be true that you had every intention of showing it to Greg and still plan to.
- While it is true that no one explicitly said their own entry preferences (as far as I am aware), it is also true that at least you yourself voted for Doubleās entry twice. One could argue that is a āred flagā.
Regardless, I still believe Sparkyās post was, for the most part, well informed, and they stated their own opinions rather fairly. I too am tired and frustrated, and I am in no position to fully understand your own position, but I canāt say that Sparkyās feelings and take on the subject is wholly unjustified or falsifiable.
@ToaArcan Werenāt you the person literally making conspiracy theories earlier? And someone who actively wanted it removed or the contest reset, stating that you felt that such contests should not continue?
And as for your argument, there is another option there. Perhaps, when it was reinstated, they did not think it would get this far. When it started to become more relevant, they began to worry it would overtake the competition and actually win. So, once the polls were nearly done in the semifinal phase, they decided on an entry to go against it, voted for it, and ensured through the auditing process that it would enter the finals. Once it did, it garnered the most votes and nearly won. At the end, they once again audit for it to be the winner. Therefore, they face no major controversy of a moderator going back on their word against a popular entry, and although there may be slight uproar at first, it goes away over time.
Now, this is evidently entering the realm of conspiracy, and might I stress that these are not the opinions I hold myself. I simply am making a hypothetical argument here. Devilās advocate, as it were.
Edited for grammar. I am incredibly tired. Also, @Albeer they said they would not release a list. I do not see a good reason yet as to why not because it would be harmless, but regardless, they will not.
Also, @Mctoran they made it decently clear it was not a joke entry, and to retroactively deem someoneās entry a joke seems, well, not okay. But, on the other hand, it is true that some voters did see it as a joke.
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So you say its a joke, and thats it?
Two can play this game:
Bendy was no joke, i think there is no discussion about that.
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