The contest results are bullshit

Alright, let's see...
First things first: I'm not mad that I'm not in the top five. I'm just utterly disappointed and angry for these winners. I'll probably offend most of the winners in this post. I don't give a single shit.

First of all...

T-hug said:
We are kind of looking for something created for this contest. Stuff you already work on is fine but projects created just for this competition will be looked upon more favourably.
Click to expand...
EhytFA.gif

Yeah, sure. Four of the winners aren't bounty projects.
And you know, what's even better?

T-hug said:
In previous GBAtemp bounties, we have called upon our members to code projects for various devices. This however, left a lot of our fellow Tempers out in the dark, as not everyone has the knowledge or skill to code apps and games.
[...]
Projects can literally be anything; are you good with art? Draw, paint or craft something for us to see! Maybe you are creative with woodwork, an avid gardener or like photography? You can also enter!
The usual coding entries will still be accepted, but this time we wanted to make it possible for as many members to take part as possible!
Click to expand...

Anything, you say? Really? Yeah. Anything's accepted. Too bad not anything's appreciated. Four of the winning projects are coding projects. Makes you think, ey?


Alright. Now, I'm gonna comment on all the winners, and why they should or shouldn't be on the list. The first place is pretty rant-y, I know, but I'm pretty angry about it as well, and you'll see, why.

#5 newo: NewoSky - $25 Amazon Gift Card
NOT a Bounty project
This has been in the making for around two years.
Interesting idea, but still not made for the contest.

#4 Asia81: HackingToolkit9DS - $25 Amazon Gift Card
NOT a Bounty project
This is an around 1 year old project, that is already well-known and widely used piece of software. This feels like as if someone entered FBI or freeShop. It's just not right. Software like this basically gets a head start, which is really not fair.

#3 Dr.Hacknik: SimpliiU - $50 Amazon Gift Card
NOT a Bounty project
This tool, while useful, presents nothing original, and is just a programme that copies stuff to your SD card if you're too lazy to do it yourself.
This should not be on the list of winners.

#2 cracker: DIY PCB etching / Arduino controller shield - $100 Amazon Gift Card
Bounty project
The only project that was made for the Bounty. Are you fucking kidding me?!
This one's pretty good. It should honestly be first place out of these five. It's really creative and has a lot of work put into it.

#1 Voxel: Stick Magician - GBAtemp Bounty Demo - GPD Pocket
NOT a Bounty project
Oh, boy. OH, BOY! This should NOT be first place!
This is also a VERY old project. And you know, what's the worst thing about it? It has nothing to do with the Bounty! What's this? A test level made for his game, that he's already been working on for quite some time. The Bounty might've motivated him to make said test level, but this is something he would've done anyway in some time. Not only that, but (according to unnamed sources) it mostly just uses Unity's built in stuff, and excluding the art assets, this can be made in a couple of hours. Also, according to my experience, said art assets can be made in ~30 minutes!


Now, what can we do to avoid this in the future?
More attention to stuff other than programming
If you're gonna advertise this "anything, not just programming" shit so much and then ignore it for most of the list, we need a different system. There shouldn't be five winners from any category. There should be a couple of fixed categories, and there should be one winner per category. This would not only encourage people to make more varied submissions, but would also prevent shit like THIS.

Fuck the mods and Patrons-only system
It should either be
Just mods: so we can have some responsible adults thinking about the distribution of basically 700 US Dollars,
or everyone: if we're gonna have normal people voting basically just for stuff they like, it shouldn't be just a couple of them.


I'm actually angry at this contest. Even by just looking at the first two places you can see the problems. One is clearly much better and more creative than the other one, yet it didn't win. What the fuck?!
I'm so furious, I could literally flip my table with my laptop, phone and Wacom tablet on it. Fuck this shit!

Also, wow. I've apparently taken more than an hour to write this shit. Phew.
View attachment 103426 View attachment 103427
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Comments

B
1 Year sounds a bit restrictive, 3 months should be good enough.
 
ThoD
You know people, I feel kinda insulted by all the "don't let newcomers vote" posts... I haven't been on here for even two months but at least I have made a fair few quality posts and helped others out. I know the vast majority of newbies is just shitposting and making duplicate (if you even call something that's been asked 100+ times a "duplicate" at this point), but still, just make it 150-200 posts and above or something. I don't care I couldn't vote, but there may have been others like me that wanted to! Making it something like "your account must be x months old to vote" when including regular users in the voting, then you are excluding all newbies who are actually active and contributing. Requiring a high amount of posts should be enough if you ask me.

PS: About those democracy comments, in a democracy all people vote, even ones in positions of power, otherwise it wouldn't really be a democracy!:P However, for those running for elections and only those, the voting for them is made so it's impossible to vote themselves (eg: no selection for their party in the booth if it's a political election).
 
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_Chaz_
I come here so infrequently anymore that I didn't even know there was a new contest going on.

While the blog post was a bit disrespectful in its wording, it does bring up quite a few good points.
- For instance, projects made for the contest being favored but only making up 20% of the winners. The fact that existing and ongoing projects were even eligible to be entered isn't something I personally agree with. Projects with months, or even years of prior work being compared to those with a few weeks at best (I don't know how long the contest was up) seems incredibly unfair, regardless of how "favored" original content was claimed to be.
- I'm also not too keen on the patron and moderator exclusive voting system. Requiring people to pay money or be in a position of power in order for their opinions to matter is pretty sleazy. I could understand if it were a raffle and you had to donate to receive a ticket, that'd be fine, but in this case the ones paying don't stand to gain anything. It just seems like a thinly veiled attempt to profit off of the community's efforts.
- The claim that all types of entries would be accepted and be judged equally doesn't appear to have held true either, but that's more an issue of appealing to those eligible of voting and would be almost impossible to combat.

But I think what I find most appalling is that when someone brings these things up, quite a fair bit of the "community" try to silence them and shut them down for having the gall to speak out against flawed or unfair practices.
Quite a few posts in this blog are people trying to discredit smileyhead by calling them a sore loser, rather than anyone actually disputing the arguments they brought up. The staff have responded respectfully for the most part, but that doesn't excuse the behavior of everyone else.
Would smiley's argument be better received had they not entered the contest at all? It certainly doesn't, or rather shouldn't have any bearing on the validity of the argument. And no one should be vilified for providing criticism.
 
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WeedZ
@_Chaz_ again. We get voting privileges because we paid for the prizes. This isn't like a wololo bounty or the bounties of the old dashHacks days where anyone would donate to a pool. We exclusively vote because we exclusively contribute to the contest.
 
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DJPlace
i entered a contest never won but it was fun entering my GBATEMP looking chicken wing dip. (do i still have that image up there?) i have to look.
 
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0
The problem with everyone voting is that they have tried that and there was total corruption. Its set up about the best it can be IMOP, its just that the programming types of entries are going to interest the types of people that visit, and run this site more. Its going to be difficult for them to vote indifferently, your basically asking them to put there personal opinions aside.
 
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SonyUSA
I don't think we have to worry about staff voter fraud, if that was the case I would have won, but I didn't even make it on the board. Opening it to the public is tricky, too, since they could be influenced just to vote for their friends. New accounts are a very bad idea and it would be impossible to add all the votes by hand without a third party system which may not be transparent enough to be able to determine if any sort of foul play is going on.
 
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ThoD
@SonyUSA If public votes were accepted, then I think it could have been done so accounts existing from before the start of the contest and with a significant amount of post would get a chance to post, rather than exclude all new accounts...

Also, for a simple voting method, it could have been done with something like the poll voting system, but preventing the people who are new with too low a post count from viewing the page and/or voting. It's not like you can change your vote or vote multiple times unless it's set up that way.
 
Issac
ThoD: Sounds good, doesn't work. We tried that with the previous Tempmas competition, and it crashed and burned due to members spamming other members via PM to vote for them (and urging them to vote on them for first place, and the 2-5th place on the LEAST voted entries, to not boost any close competitors...).

Staff + Patrons is a good enough system in my opinion, we just have to make sure the patrons are aware that they're needed, either via an email from a patreon update, a mass PM here, or any other way. But to call for their attention.
 
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ThoD
I didn't say Staff+Patreons is bad, just gave a suggestion for allowing everyone... As for the members spamming PMs, I see how that would be a problem and you can't exactly block all PMs for a month for everyone just to avoid that, so we don't have much of a choice I guess.

And yes, what ensures people patreons won't vote just for their friends? Sure, one of them has no friends, but the others may do:P
 
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WeedZ
@Issac that's a good point. I had no idea voting was going on until it was over. I think the reason is that I spend most of my time on the site in the forums, and even then only certain sections of the forums. The announcements were posted on the portal (which I never go to) and the patreon subforum (which I almost never check because of lack of activity)
 
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WeedZ
@SpiffyJUNIOR we discussed that. Post count has nothing on join date. I can make 20 alts and have them all at 500+ posts by the end of the day
 

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