Topic: Zero Fanart Contest Begins at Capcom Unity

[KoiDrake]

I really don´t think that it is a subpar picture, and you shouldn´t feel that bad about a second place, considering this time they are properly judging the entries instead of the awful public voting of the previous contests.

[Rad Lionheart]

They're both way better than anything I could have come up with, so no wasted effort.

[Rock Miyabi]

Week 2 results are up, and Gosha Dole took home the prize for his vectorish Zero and Burble Hekelot. hj and kaigetsudo round out the Top 3. Yes, apparently this week they decided to give a top 3 rather than 2. Congrats to those who got their special mentions as well.

The only major update to this week's contest is that the deadline is extended an extra day. Due to Monday being the Memorial Day holiday in the US, this week entries are due on Tuesday, June 1st. Still at 9 AM PST. Still mostly focused on Zero 3, but any Zero-related pics are welcome.

[borockman]

Damn, this week also got that high standard.

[Flame]

Oh wow. Gosha Dole is up in this too?

[borockman]

It's week 4 already.

Week 3 entries.... too many Omega vs Zero. 

[Rock Miyabi]

While, yeah, I figured there would be lots of Omega vs. Zero, in all honesty, there were more group pics and variety than I thought there would be. And heck, there was only one Omega in the top 4. So it wasn't all one-sided entries.

Results post; won this week by Khuntry.

Week 4 Deadline is back to a Monday, and still supposed to focus on Zero 4. Although, jgonzo mentioned that there will be one more week of competition next week, with "a surprise twist." Collab week again? Whatever it is, once we know that answer, I'll be sure to spam Robot Chicken's M. Night Shaymallamadingdong's "WHAT A TWIST!"

[Tallgeese]

I always find it odd how these art contest topics die out as the contests go through their stages.

That said, there is far too much faith in the concept of judges. If you know in advance who the judges are, it is entirely possible to look into their history, their personal likes/dislikes, and simply pander to that for a significantly improved chance of winning regardless of skill.

Not to mention that all humans are biased, and therefore since the judges in this instance are mods, pleasant or unpleasant interactions with them on the message boards also tip the odds due to unconscious cognitive processes. It is similar in concept to how some prospective graduate school students try to find out who judges the applications, and then try to gain their favor.

In this case, we knew who the judges were as soon as Week 2 hit.

With this is mind, there is equal logic to putting it to a public vote. The only thing you risk in a public vote is cheating, which I believe I did a decent job rooting out in the last contest.

[Blackhook]

Well, since Miyabi forgot to update it I guess that I´ll just do it instead. Hope you don´t mind.
Result post of week 4. Winner Wave

[Cpie]

they got really sloppy to judge this week!

[Align]

The winning entry deserved it though.

[KoiDrake]

Meh, wish I had the time to enter this one :<

Really cool entry there btw, well deserved.

[Rock Miyabi]

I didn't forget, I was just too tired to care to update. And dealing with something elsewhere, to boot. It's not like I demanded being the one to update with results all the time. 

I thought Wave and hj's were the most deserving, so I'm glad one of them took this week. But yeah, taking my own out of consideration, I feel bad for some of the pieces that didn't get a true honorable mention, while others that did weren't quite up to the same level, IMO. Like Asena implied, some of these weeks have just come across as the most random, odd judging. Suppose I would understand more if there was a more set criteria of what they were looking for.

I almost would be for something more like the NFL Pro Bowl voting, in which voting is taken publicly, by managers, and by the players themselves, and then it's all averaged out. It'd be kinda cool to see the next one split that way, with a public vote, a Capcom vote, and an entrant vote, just to see what the results would bring.

[KoiDrake]

I really didn´t liked the public voting method from the previous contests. Some awful entries got within the top ten because they surely voted their own drawing like there´s no tomorrow. One of the entries got banned in the finals for something alike to that, besides other reasons I didn´t fully understood.

If anything they should allow voting to registered users only and control in case there´s some multi accounting going on.

[Tallgeese]

I really didn´t liked the public voting method from the previous contests. Some awful entries got within the top ten because they surely voted their own drawing like there´s no tomorrow. One of the entries got banned in the finals for something alike to that, besides other reasons I didn´t fully understood.

If anything they should allow voting to registered users only and control in case there´s some multi accounting going on.

Which entries did you have in mind, out of curiosity?

As for that disqualification incident you mention... hah, you should have seen the damage control from Creepo once I pointed out what was being said over in a Spanish forum. I'm the guy who found out and posted about it. In addition to that he posted a journal, a poll, and an edited version of his picture to DA, essentially triple spamming his watchers' inboxes with notices to vote for him.

Something was incredibly suspicious as soon as he entered the Strike Man contest and won by a margin that was never, ever beaten. It was triple the win margin of anything else in any other public vote Capcom contest whose vote counts I know of. It was unbelievable. Inconceivable, even. Hence why I looked.

Some extra fun information I never posted anywhere... I can tell you that Creepo's DQed entry received around 540 or so votes, out of a maximum of 4,300 or so if my memory serves. I know this because I viewed the source code, which revealed these numbers. So, it is conceivable that even with the cheating he could not have won.

As for the actual winners...

The biggest surprise was third place. I can actually tell you that the final contest's third place did not do anything. I searched high and low for evidence. Completely legit. Tiny fanbase too. It was the only... action shot of the winning three, so I imagine that played a role.

Second place, Andrew Dickman, and I am going to speak plainly here, essentially won due to his massive DA fanbase. He posted a journal and an edited version of his contest picture to double-notify his watchers to vote.

First place, Hollow Zero, posted a journal entry explicitly in response to these DA entries of Creepo and Andrew Dickman, but their fanbase is a fraction of both's, like... a tenth. Searching turns up no foul play.

Ah, reminiscing...

---

As for the registered users restriction... That would help, sure.

Judging does stop outright cheating, but it comes at the expense of allowing mod/admin favoritism and wacky personal preferences to come into the equation, as this topic indicates.

[KoiDrake]

Pointing out the entry would be kinda rude, so I´ll try to reduce the rudeness a little bit . Let´s just say, for example, that there was one entry in the Chillman´s contest that didn´t deserved to be even close the top ten, considering the large amount of great entries that contest had, and still did. I could also go over the fact that there where other entries that deserved to win instead of the ones that did too, but different people have different tastes, so that wouldn´t really count.

Also, glad to finally hear the true story of what actually happened there, I couldn´t find anything over at Capcom Unity that time. And nice job on finding out that sucker btw .

And about the voting thing, I think it´s easier to try to please a bunch of judges than trying to compete against the popular DA users and their journal attacks, you pretty much pointed that out, and I agree with you. It´d be cool to let the entrants vote too probably, and that way try to break a bit the favoritism you mention while still keeping the amount of votes limited to some degree.

[Tallgeese]

Heh... after I pointed out what Creepo was saying, he went into complete damage control. What was really interesting was how, in his, uh, 'apologies', he claimed his English was bad. Broken sentences, et cetera.

Andrew Dickman also got an apology, since Creepo had called him a Photoshop noob with no skill. Again, the English was inexplicably bad, not to mention AWD saw the apology as half-hearted despite not even knowing what had happened.

Yet Creepo's entry on DA about it? Good English. Like the rest of his DA entries.

What does THAT tell you?

---

Now, there is one more bit to the story I think I should reveal that I have not said anywhere.

JGonzo eventually, inexplicably reversed course and said it was a big misunderstanding, that it was a joke, et cetera. Never mind that he could read Spanish and initially came to the same conclusion my original interpreter and I did. Some brand of 'unique Chilean humor' was supposedly involved.

What he forgot to mention to everyone, but Creepo was happy to mention on the Chilean (not Spanish, my bad, they were Chilean) forum, was that JGonzo wanted him to be the, uh, South American Capcom Unity fan correspondent. This was because Creepo was from South America and such, and CU wanted a way to reach out to that section of the fanbase. It would be unpaid, plus Creepo was pissy at being disuqalified, so it was turned down.

Relevant to JGonzo's sudden reversal? You decide.

---

Honestly the main issue behind a small group of judges is the fact that if you annoy one, you torpedo your chances of winning. At least with a public system, the favoritism is spread out more.

Of course, it becomes a problem when popular DA artists gets involved and spam their watchers' inboxes, so there's a double-edge to every sword.

Frankly I think this would be mitigated by instituting 'no vote begging' rules. Nobody would be able to do a double spamming of their watchers' inboxes, since anybody who looked would know and disqualification would be immediate.

[Night]

So, JGonzo takes some possibly shady dealings in a contest and uses it to reach more megaman fans.

I think I like Capcom Unity.

[KoiDrake]

It would have been cool to check that thread by myself , I´m from South America too, so it wouldn´t be hard to understand what was going on. And lol to the South American Capcom Unity fan correspondent thing.

About the judges part, I guess it´s true that it can be a problem too, there isn´t an easy and fair way to make a proper contest it seems...

[Tallgeese]

So, JGonzo takes some possibly shady dealings in a contest and uses it to reach more megaman fans.

I think I like Capcom Unity.

The operative word is 'tried', haha. It didn't work.

---

Also, KoiDrake...

Here.

http://www.tarreo.com/foro/index.php?/topic/648031-megaowned-final-del-concurso-de-megaman/

They use some very specific slang you may not understand. My interpreter got pretty angry at it, actually, haha.

Good thing they changed the forum layout, it used to be disastrously cluttered.

[Night]

Aw, that's sad too hear... 


Still, it shows how Jgonzo really thinks about the other fans a lot!

[Tallgeese]

That's certainly one way to think of it.

[KoiDrake]

Also, KoiDrake...

Here.

http://www.tarreo.com/foro/index.php?/topic/648031-megaowned-final-del-concurso-de-megaman/

They use some very specific slang you may not understand. My interpreter got pretty angry at it, actually, haha.

Good thing they changed the forum layout, it used to be disastrously cluttered.

Yeah, it was kinda hard to keep the pace, but I got the general idea. I rofl´d after seeing jgonzo´s post in the thread

[Tallgeese]

Yeah, it was kinda hard to keep the pace, but I got the general idea. I rofl´d after seeing jgonzo´s post in the thread

As an aside for the sake of my own curiosity, do you think everybody was joking there?

I actually got PMed by GeminiSaint about this at some point, because he's Creepo's friend or such. He was rather adamant that I apologize, but I personally never bought the "I WAS KIDDING" excuse, since the concept of it being a joke only appeared after the disqualification came down. I'm curious what somebody else who speaks Spanish thinks.

[KoiDrake]

About which part exactly?

Most of the thread is about people voting and some bitching about some Zelda wallpaper he promised to make if he won the first contest, and posted it watermarked. After jgonzo´s post, the thread is like 2/3 pages of "lol pwned" and "posting on epic thread" kind of stuff. A few pages later, Creepo says that there was a misunderstanding with that Zelda wp and some other post he made where he promised to make some pic to someone with a dinamic IP, and then more pages of posts making fun of Creepo. I think you knew all that already.

EDIT: Ok, I think I got what you meant exactly. I would say that the second one sounded like a joke imo (the one where he offered to make a drawing if he amde 70 votes), the other guy voted 30 times anyway, without even knowing about the offer. But there were A LOT of users pissed off for that Zelda wallpaper, so there was surely something fishy in there.