barterer2002 wrote:So a thought on the contests. One of the things that has been noted is that in some ways they've become a manner for those with the largest "lists" to win. There will be 4 or 5 things to vote for and one or more of the nominees will PM a large group of people which unduly influences the results. Sometimes its an intentional "Vote for me" plea. Other times its a less obvious thing where a TO will be calling attention to the vote with a "even if you don't vote for me, go and vote" type of plea. The problem there is that their list are people already familiar with the work involved of that TO and it becomes a de facto vote for me plea.
I would thus suggest that any TO involved in a future contest that sends out any sort of PM advertising a contest that they are involved in, is disqualified. Now clearly you're not going to monitor every PM but sending a PM to 10 players isn't going to make that big a difference, sending it to 1000 will but those are the ones you want to catch anyway.
This is an issue that has also caught our attention (our=TD's).
Just to throw out an idea: Why not avoid this issue coming up and having to disqualify people? Not to mention the fact that we have no way of checking people's PMs.
How about a voting comity for every contest? Some TDs, some TOs and some regular tournament players? Obviously that could be another comity for every contest....
Lx
