You're singing my song Mattster, I'm in 100% agreement and if were up to only me that's the way it would be. However staff decisions are made much more democratically than some realize and my ideas aren't always in the majority opinion. It's kind if ironic that you'd mention that people who don't like things having the option of creating their own forum and running it however they like. That's been done and I'd hope that it is working to make everyone happy. One would think that wound be enough for them but it seems that's not enough for some and I guess tainting the GOTM voting makes them feel better about themselves.

You are correct in that the only way to ensure any integrity whatsoever in the voting is to restrict it from newly registered shill user accounts created from spoofed IP addresses. Limiting it to PM only is a great way to do this but not without it's drawbacks.

 

^^I took this into consideration and added a few guidelines.

 

No offense to anyone, but GOTM is kind of a joke anyway. It's really not about the "best" G37. It's more of a popularity contest. That's not to say that the nicest G does not win occasionally, but, overall, it is more a competition about generating votes than it is about having the nicest car out of the group.

Who is complaining, though? What did I miss?

Sadly, GOTM is not a perfect, flawless system and it never will be. I don't think limiting the contest to "Premier" members is going to alleviate too many of the problems. As we saw in the beginning, it will get boring. The fact that there are limited Premier Members to begin with already makes the contestant pool small, so why limit the voting, too? The majority of members on here are not Premier Members, so why skew the already-warped voting even further by only allowing those few Premier Members to cast a vote? The opinion of G enthusiasts that do not pay InternetBrands does not matter? If you do that, people will lose interest in the contest quickly.

On top of that, if someone wants the title of G of the Month that badly, they will pay for a Premier Membership. But to suggest that non-Premier Members do not contribute to the forum is crazy. It's a public discussion forum. If this site had no visitors, IB would struggle. Not to beat the dead horse, but it does go back to this: What exactly do you pay for besides being eligible to earn the illustrious GOTM title? A bigger mailbox? Access to a naked women thread? I use Google a lot, but I don't "contribute" to Google by sending them money every month. InternetBrands generates the majority of their money via page hits, advertising, vendors, forum traffic, etc... not through the people who pay to have an avatar and their name in bold.

Give me something worth paying for, and I will become a Premier Member, but I will likely opt out if I am ever nominated for G of the Month.

My 3 suggestions to improve the GOTM Contest:

1) One must be a member of the forum for at least 45 days before being eligible to vote.
2) A set number of pictures per contestant. (One contestant should not be allowed to post a new picture of their car every day, or have ten pictures while another contestant only has two.)
3) Modification lists for all contestants.

 

You make excellent points Bill and I agree with some of them but not all. It will always be imperfect. Yes it's a popularity contest, there are no set criteria as to what one should vote for - its completely subjective. It could be your friend, a guy who contributes to the forum, best aesthetics, best performance, guy from your region, most money invested, or any number of other random factors as to how members vote. I don't think it's ever been put across as a means of selecting the "best" car. That's extremely difficult if not impossible to quantify. It's just the G of the Month, nothing more.

Premier vs non premier membership is its own debate that I wont go into here in depth. As to why limit the feature to PM only, it solves a number of issues. It gives some small perk to those who've chosen to contribute vs everyone else. It's an encouragement to some who desire to be GOTM to become Premier. It drastically reduces the incidence of voting fraud in the selection process. If anyone wants to skew the votes enough to be willing to pay $30 just to do so, they are more than welcome to IMO. The greater number of votes since its been open to all has been largely due to last minute shill votes from freshly registered accounts that aren't legitimate rather than real members. Even with voting open to all there are only a couple hundred votes cast each month from many thousands of registered members. Most don't really care. Mod lists were supposed to be a part of it from day one, it's just that nobody complied.

 

I agree with that, too. It doesn't ruin my day one way or the other, but I do think the contest will become stale again rather quickly if you take out the non-Premier voters. Just my opinion... As a non-Premier Member, I don't vote every month, but I like knowing that I am able to if I want. It makes me pay attention a little more, as well. I can say with relative certainty that if I am told my opinion doesn't matter (in other words, that I cannot vote), I will likely never open a GOTM thread...

I think the 45-day Rule (or whatever number you want to put on it) is a good way to control those fraudulent votes. But you are absolutely correct in the contest not being about "The Best" G out there. People are free to vote on whatever criteria they wish - good or bad.

Like I said, I do not particularly hold a strong viewpoint either way, I just figured I'd throw in my $.02.

 

I think it was in the Premier Only forum to begin with wasn't it? (or perhaps that was only discussed when implementing it?, can't remember) So it wouldn't be a in a place that non premiers could even see it. Like AG forum and Premier Member feedback forum.

And just because you don't vote doesn't mean you don't have an opinion. I don't care for what it has become so I abstain from participating anymore or even posting up the thread, 1cleanG brought it back because he felt it's important. It just means that your opinion can be taken with a grain of salt because you aren't participating in the process anyway. Just like mine. I'm a moderator and your opinion carries just as much weight as mine, for whatever that's worth. Lol.

And there will always be ways to manipulate results no matter how it's done. If people want to do that it says a lot about them as human beings IMO. Maybe Lance an anyone else associated with it can find a way to fix what's broken.

I guess as it is currently, my Give a F is too broken to even bother with it anymore.

 

I'll try my best Jeremy...like you said, there's no possible way to make everyone happy. I'll refine the guidelines along the way and hope to avoid discussions or complaints along the way.

 

I think that keeping voting annonymous would keep down the appearance of a popularity contest. Like when people say "voted for xxx" its not needed. Just have each nominess pictures, mod list, and the voting poll, no other posts.

 

Do the still add the winners photo to the front page?

 

dont think Ive seen it happen, would probably get more attention as a banner on the forum page since most people probably bypass the splash screen anyway.

 

Guess this is dead once again?

 

I have a humble suggestion, I have no horse in this race, so I'm don't really care on way or the other...but I think this might help...

You can have a staff member (or all the staff together) pick 5 members every month who have at least been members for 6 months by going through the photo albums posted here on the forum. From the 5 picked by staff all members can vote on their favorites. I think that is the fairest and least complicated way to do it...let the staff pick the nominees, and everyone gets to vote. The winners can only win once a year. It's simple yet effective.

...and only a suggestion not in any way a criticism.

 

Would love to see this revisited.

 

I would like to see this post revisited too.

 

I'll third this. Although I've seen some threads on GOTM, I've never actually seen much hype on this, at least as much hype as I think it should have.