Policy Review Flavour Polls - Campaigning

paintseagull

pink wingull
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During the CAP 5 Final Art Poll, there was some controversy concerning the rules for campaigning. There has been discussion about this in the past: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=54633 however there is no clear rule in the poll OP. Doug's final thoughts and rule were the following:

Hopefully this thread has removed the community's rose-colored glasses, and exposed everyone to what's REALLY going on in some of our most hotly-contested polls. At the very least, you won't be naive if you see some suspicious voting patterns in a future poll. And to submitters that participate in various CAP polls (not just art btw) -- now you know what you are really up against, in certain cases.

I do think we need to make a rule that says all forms of poll tampering AND recruiting is illegal. Realistically, there is no way to enforce such a rule. But the existence of a rule makes it clear that we do not condone or encourage such practices. Without a rule, it's possible that people could assume that voting campaigns are "allowed" -- and take it to a whole new level.

Imagine if people started offering to buy votes? What if an artist made a triple-flawless legendary giveaway thread in wifi, with the stipulation "I will give you this pokemon if you vote for my art in the current CAP poll." I have already outlawed server mods using wall messages to advocate poll options on the CAP server. But what about other servers? What if other communities openly post CAP vote recruitment messages in their forums?

Technically, none of this is illegal today. It may not be happening currently, but now that the issue is out in the open -- if we do not make a rule, people could assume that these actions are actually condoned. For this reason, I think we should make a blanket rule that says:
"All forms of vote cheating, vote manipulation, or voter recruiting from outside the CAP project is disallowed. It is perfectly acceptable to advocate for or against poll options within the bounds of the CAP project."
Maybe that's not the perfect wording -- but that's a decent start. A short, somewhat ambiguous ban on voter manipulation and cheating, followed by a statement that allows advocacy within the CAP project itself. I do not want to get into long detailed descriptions of what constitutes "vote manipulation", "voter recruiting", and "the bounds of the CAP project". It's intentionally left somewhat open-ended. Moderators will use their best judgement, if a questionable situation arises. By placing a blanket ban on all this nonsense, we make it clear that we do not accept or condone these practices, even if we really can't stop it completely.
A purposely ambiguous rule from four years ago that was not written in the OP and that requires moderator discretion.

Now, the case in the CAP 5 poll was that Yilx had posted on his DeviantArt journal that he was in the final poll of the art stage, and that he needed help from people with a Smogon account. Yilx has done this before, and people have known about it before, but he had never been penalized for it.

During this poll, which was quite close, the link to said journal was posted in #cap. I was online at the time. Yilx was not. The conversation quickly turned to a discussion on the ethics of this action. Many people expressed disgust over it, and claimed to consider changing their vote. People got upset and assumptions were made. Some people noticed some votes in the thread by users with a very small number of postcounts. People assumed it was from Yilx's campaigning.

At the same time, this youtube video, in which some battlers ask their viewers to go to the CAP project and vote for Yilx's design, had been posted, but we didn't realize it during this discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUhN0dvT2Pw#t=9m45s

When Doug/Birkal and Yilx were able to talk about it, no disciplinary action was taken against Yilx. In the end, Dracoyoshi8 won the poll by only two votes. As I was not a mod at the time I do not know what that conversation was or if any votes were deemed illegal. Someone else please fill in this blank if you could!

---------

It is currently illegal to create alts or new accounts for the express purpose of voting for one particular thing. We can and do police this. Things such as requiring CAP participation to vote, requiring X number of posts to vote, requiring some kind of membership to vote have been discussed and they have been deemed unfeasible and against the spirit of the CAP project. Many active and valued CAP participants have had their first posts in CAP and even on Smogon from voting in art or other flavour threads. I think it would be terrible to disallow this. We recognize that there are "fly-by" voters on our project and while that may put a bad taste in some peoples' mouths it is inevitable and should balance itself out without introducing an unfair bias. The fact is that every person is voting by their own choice, even if that choice is to defer their opinion to another person they respect.

In light of the hurt that has been caused to valued members of our project I think we need to clarify this rule and codify it in the OP of flavour polls (and possibly other polls).

The questions we need to answer are:

  • Is campaigning for oneself or for others *to current Smogon members* ethical and allowable in our project?
  • Does it matter if said campaigning is done on-site or off-site?
The complicating factor is: Policing voting by current Smogon members is very difficult if not impossible. If an Artist or another Smogon member directs the attention of unaware Smogoners to the poll, either by suggesting a favoured entry or simply by linking to it, we cannot determine this by simply looking at their votes. If person A suggests an entry and person B agrees and casts a vote, how is that different from person A suggesting an entry and person B disagreeing and casting a vote?

Please discuss!

Important note: This is not a thread for judging the actions of people in the past and I will not tolerate finger pointing or saying that someone was in the right or in the wrong. This is a thread for discussing how we should proceed in the future.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
is a Top Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
My opinions and suggestions:

In my personal opinion, campaigning to Smogoners is not unethical, illegal or against CAP's values. Modesty is not a required trait during a competition. We hope that Artists will put their best effort forward for us and we should anticipate for them to be proud of this effort and want it to win. Since it is impossible to determine whether a current Smogon member has decided on their vote based on a suggestion from within Smogon, outside Smogon or from their own personal opinion, we should allow campaigning on-site and off-site to active Smogon members.

I do think this is harmless and that it should not bias anyone. In the end every single person who votes does so out of their own free will. The best design will still have a fair chance of winning. Obviously bribes and threats are another matter and should be considered illegal, but such things can be policed if the bribed and threatened people come forward.

I appreciate that others disagree with this -- that's what this thread is for.

----

I would also like to bring up another issue that I can't forsee leading to any formal rules, and that is the lynch mob attitude that developed in #cap when Yilx's journal was shown. People quickly formed opinions on right and wrong without knowing the rule and without a moderator's judgement having been given. Yilx was not available to defend himself. One person even accosted Yilx on his DA account. Yilx is a long time contributor to CAP and I am ashamed at the treatment that was given to him. Dracoyoshi8 was also put into a tricky situation and I know he was unhappy about it. This type of action should be quickly and strongly discouraged by people in leadership positions if they see it arise. I hope we can all recognize it before another person is hurt.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
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The following post is by non-PRC member Yilx.

A rundown of events.

Apparently I've been called out for something I did in previous CAPs before, all suddenly so! I have no idea why it has to happen now of all CAPs, but here's the gist of things.

User A thought it would be a good idea to link to everyone a Journal Entry I put on my DA; one I put up to ask for support for my CAP design. At this point in time, I had no idea this was against the rules as I've done it for previous CAPs before like I mentioned and absolutely nobody mentioned anything.
To remphaize on it, I told people to just lend me their support and vote if they have a Smogon Account already; I did not say something like "I will Nuke the USA if you don't vote for my design!" like certain users B and C thought it was a good idea to make it seem like I was doing!

So came the outcry; the treatment like I commited some sort of ungodly crime that involved killing millions of innocent children. People changed their votes away from me, user C went on a crusade against me, even creating a DA account just to call me a "Cheater" and harassing me. That's a tale for another time, however; let me get back to the main point.

So, as the best good morning call I've ever received, I have to sort shit out with all kinds of people, learn that the last mention of this "NO ADVERTISING" rule was from 4 years ago? And arrive late for work because I have to settle shit and appease users Y and X, and arrrive late for work because of that and get questioned by my superiors. Bravo, CAP.


Wonder where that "spike" came from? It's when User A linked my page to #cap for all to see.
For the people that think "omg his devert has 114514 pkmn fans they will fuk up the poll" No. 90% of the people who visit my page and bookmark my works do it for the pictures of the giant women in bikinis and muscular girls, not the Pokemon. Get it straight.

To top off things, I hear of certain users like user B "bullying" others into changing their votes for me. 2 users, in fact; and lo and behold, I lose by 2 votes! I was ecstatic. I couldn't ask for more, really! Thanks alot!

Oh, and to reinstate on something:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUhN0dvT2Pw#t=9m45s

In the end, you've made me feel terrible, you've made yourselves feel terrible, you overreacted over a small thing that was breaking a rule that had to be dug out of a 4-Year Old thread and you've made a royal mess of everything.

PS.

You should give it V-Shitfan.

Thank you.

-----

psg's note: The reason I am allowing this post is because I believe Yilx deserves to express his feelings and his point of view on this. This does not mean this thread is for having a back-and-forth on the timeline of events or for calling out users for doing something good or bad -- everyone's personal perspective is different and we have hopefully put this behind us. This post also demonstrates the confusion and hurt feelings that come from this rule being ambiguous.
 

Nyktos

Custom Loser Title
I'm not quite sure what my position on this is right now, but I definitely think that whatever decision is made should apply to all polls that get the winner's name on the CAP site, not just flavour ones.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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I'm aware we have no good way to police advertising, etc. However, that does not mean we should not have a codified statement that at least dissuades such practices. I'm all for adding such a statement to the block of text at the top of a thread. I am not however in favor of an unworkable, subjective system of policing. This whole situation is rather silly and unnecessarily un-cordial. While competitive discussions are designed to get testy, the art and flavor is contentious in a different way. They are contentious only in that each submission is great and the community pushes each other to produce better and better designs. I think misattributing one circumstance, in which perhaps something fishy did happen, or not, to make sweeping pseudo-enforcement a standard is just bad policy.

Let this simply serve as a warning to the artists. Don't ruin the community with petty actions. Win with the best design.
 

nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
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I personally agree with Paintseagull. As I have said numerous times during the whole honestly pathetic "outrage," there is absolutely no harm to this and the only justification to disallow campaiging is some mislead sense of "fairness."

Anyone can campaign. Do some people have an inherent advantage due to having a fanbase? Sure. But some people are simply superior artistic wise, some people have better design skills. To decry a random advantage as "unfair" is arbitrary at best.

In addition, this might actually be a good thing. Campaigning brings in new blood to CAP, and even if not all of them stay, at least one or two will be intrigued by our fakemons project and decide to stick around.

Threatening and bribing rules need to be more tightly enforced because there was some seriously disgusting shit going down when people said Yilx had posted his ad and it went on for far too long. For example:

Let this simply serve as a warning to the artists. Don't ruin the community with petty actions. Win with the best design.
Shit mentalities like this need to get out. People shouldn't have to worry about being accosted or harassed or accused of things (especially when they're not here) simply because some user(s) thought that them using one of their advantages to attempt to win was a "petty action." Yilx clearly was not attempting to be petty, he clearly wasn't attempting to ruin the community, and worst of all, it actually had some people knee jerk and launch a petty campaign of self-righteousness and bullying to try to change the poll. Yilx's actions didn't even harm the community - it was the reactions of the people with a misplaced sense of "fairness" that did so.

We have no way to police advertising, and there has not been a single good reason for why we should attempt to do so. We're going to need something with a bit more substance then arbitrary declaring it to be "unfair," especially since I only see gain from people campaigning their art.
 

Bull of Heaven

Guest
Note: I have the same thoughts on both campaigning and recruiting, and wasn't careful with my wording. No matter which word I used at a given moment, this post is always talking about both.

I don't see any good way to enforce this rule, and the quality of CAP art is so high that I can't imagine recruiting doing much harm. There's also the issue of how effective recruiting actually is (touched on in Yilx's post), since people won't just blindly do as the artist says. It could easily generate votes for other artists as well. And actually, CAP could even benefit from recruiting sometimes, since it ultimately draws attention to the project. If I were watching that Youtube video without prior knowledge of CAP, I'd probably want to check out the "awesome" pineapple design, vote instead for the snake design that I liked more, and then get involved in other aspects of the project.

Looks like that last point got ninja'd by nyttyn. nyttyn'd. Oh well.

I'm going to agree with the other posters so far and say recruiting should be allowed. I don't think it does any significant harm, and it even has potential to be beneficial.

And man, I don't go on #cap often enough. I was completely unaware of this situation. It's a real shame to hear how Yilx was apparently treated over this.

Edit: srk mentioned keeping some sort of formal disapproval of campaigning in place. I liked the idea at first, but in the interest of maintaining a level playing field, I don't think we should intimidate people away from legal things that others are doing. If they have their own qualms about it, that's their call, but if we do allow campaigning, we should try to manufacture any.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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Nyttyn, methinks you need to (re)read my first paragraph. You fundamentally misunderstand my overall feelings. Fwiw, I never even knew this whole thing had happened. Campaigning is natural and impossible to stop anyway.
 
There really wouldn't be any way to enforce this even if we could know whenever a campaign is started. If people are banned from campaigning for themselves, they could get other people to. Punishing people for others campaigning for them could result in user A trying to get user B disqualified by having person C campaign for user B.
Even if there was, I don't see how this is a bad thing. Like others have said, this can actually help CAP by drawing new people in.
 

Quanyails

On sabbatical!
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There is the potential for harmless or beneficial effects from allowing recruiting; however, those effects only result if there is the assumption that people have no incentive to vote for a specific person. Asking votes may elicit a "sure why not" response from the campaigner's audience--an additional incentive by the campaigner, "buying votes", so to speak, would distort the sense of honor we'd putting on ourselves to allow campaigning. I see no trouble in mentioning CAP submissions to other people on Smogon, since that, at least, is an environment that focuses less on popularity and, for competitive steps, on competitive Pokemon.

This is assuming the artist (or CAP member in general) is advertising outside of Smogon. There's the uncontrollable nature of the rest of the internet; if an individual who only glances at CAP but has followers outside of this site favors one submission over the other, then he or she may provide an unsavory incentive and add votes. The only suggestion I thought of that would cover that scenario--pre-CAP registration--would not be good for optics nor would it make CAP a project that anyone who is simply interested can join. Vote solicitation that originates from outside of CAP can't be controlled, so there's nothing that can feasibly be done, I think, that could manage that.
 

DetroitLolcat

Maize and Blue Badge Set 2014-2017
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Let me preface my post by stating that Yilx is not largely at fault in this discussion, that Yilx should not be blamed for this incident, and that this Policy Review, at least in my opinion, should be about correcting a controversy that has recently emerged, not affixing any blame to events that occurred during CAP 5. Although Yilx technically should have known the existing rule about campaigning, it is not reasonable to blame him for overlooking an oft-broken, largely unknown rule that is buried deep in the 2009 section of the Policy Review.

Now, the OP's quotation of Doug's rule may have been the prevailing attitude in 2009, but from my perception of the Art (and other flavor-related) steps is that a lot less borderline-illicit activity occurs now than it did in 2009. Although I was not a CAPper back then, I have heard stories on IRC about how much rule-breaking occurred four years ago and believe that art polls today are much less...corrupt, for lack of a better word. If someone were to challenge this notion and cite examples of modern art poll corruption, please enlighten me.

Now, before I get to my opinion, I'd like to comment on some of the...comments that people before me have posted.

paintseagull said:
I would also like to bring up another issue that I can't forsee leading to any formal rules, and that is the lynch mob attitude that developed in #cap when Yilx's journal was shown. People quickly formed opinions on right and wrong without knowing the rule and without a moderator's judgement having been given. Yilx was not available to defend himself. One person even accosted Yilx on his DA account. Yilx is a long time contributor to CAP and I am ashamed at the treatment that was given to him. Dracoyoshi8 was also put into a tricky situation and I know he was unhappy about it. This type of action should be quickly and strongly discouraged by people in leadership positions if they see it arise. I hope we can all recognize it before another person is hurt.
I wholeheartedly agree with this notion, and, most importantly, would like to see this philosophy extended to CAP as a whole. Although this section of my post isn't completely germane to the PR at hand, it should be addressed. A lynch-mob mentality on #cap definitely exists and we as a community, myself included, overreacted to Yilx's controversial actions. Waiting for moderator (or op, in the case of IRC) discretion is good, and waiting a few moments for the situation to simmer and one's emotions to subside is even better. I do not believe that we are a very forgiving community. I would never call CAP or #cap a "toxic" atmosphere; I believe that CAP may be the least toxic, most inclusive area on Smogon. But as a community, we are quick to overreact to relatively minor controversies and it is a source of much drama. We only need to look at the strain we put on Yilx to verify this.

Pontificating over. Next quote.

Nyktos said:
I'm not quite sure what my position on this is right now, but I definitely think that whatever decision is made should apply to all polls that get the winner's name on the CAP site, not just flavour ones.
I also agree with this. From what I have heard, there have been instances of voter fraud in non-flavor aspects of CAP. While I have not heard of "campaigning" in concept or stat spread polls, there is no reason to believe that competitive-poll campaigning will never become an issue. Competitive polls and flavor polls are almost identical in nature in that they are taken very seriously. Much like designing the perfect artwork, designing the perfect stat spread, movepool, or concept takes a great deal of work. People want to win those polls just as badly as they want to win art and sprite polls, and we should not handle the logistics of those polls differently. Whatever conclusions are drawn in this thread should apply to both competitive and flavor polls.

srk1214 said:
I'm aware we have no good way to police advertising, etc. However, that does not mean we should not have a codified statement that at least dissuades such practices.
Absolutely, yes. I view CAP as a very honorable community. Had Yilx been aware of the four year old thread's rule, I highly doubt he would have broken it. Had the rule been more prominently displayed, I highly doubt that this PR thread would exist right now. An "honor system" with slight policing to keep people honest will go a long way if not outright eliminate any campaigning we deem illegal. Although people will probably find ways to illegally campaign regardless of the rules we put in, just codifying our policy on the issue will go a long way if not outright eliminate any cheating. Furthermore, codifying our law concerning campaigning allows us to be tough with those who violate it.

2009-level cheating, from what I've seen, does not exist in 2013 CAP. Art poll manipulation, in any form, is not prominent and should not be tolerated if we make the rules clear.


However, that does not mean I am against recruiting or campaigning at all. There is little evidence to suggest that recruiting and campaigning are prominent practices, and even less evidence to support that recruiting is an effective practice. Campaigning is not "fair" in that it is not an advantage that any artist can use. However, there are other advantages afforded to certain users that are not afforded to others. Clout on Smogon comes to mind; people are naturally going to be more attracted to art submitted by established veterans than those less proven. Art programs also come to mind; if one user possesses a digital resource that allows them to create more attractive artwork, that is an "unfair" advantage that should still be allowed.

Campaign restriction also has one major harm that uwnim brings up: if outside campaigning is disallowed, it would not be difficult to use this rule to frame other artists and disqualify them.

I will concede one point to those who believe campaigning is immoral, harmful, or otherwise should not be legal. Every voter has the right not to vote for those that recruit others to vote for them. If User A tells his friends on deviantart to vote for his or her art design and User B takes issue with that, User B is free to vote for User A's opposition, tell others to vote for User A's opposition, and ask User A to discontinue his practice. On the flip side, User A does not have to listen to User B. We know people switched their vote as a reaction to Yilx's campaigning, and that is a perfectly valid reason to switch votes. When it comes to campaigning for votes, let the free market decide the effectiveness of campaigning.

It seems I am in the majority when it comes to allowing campaigning. If campaigning is not allowed in art polls, we need to do a better job of making that rule known.

For that, I have one simple proposal that is contingent on recruiting being disallowed, and that is to add this sentence to the Art Polls section of the Thread Original Post for Art Submissions.

Proposal:

If off-site recruiting is disallowed, add this sentence to the Art Polls section of the Thread Original Post for Art Submissions.

Campaigning on sites not affiliated with Smogon is disallowed and may result in your Art submission being disqualified.
That is all.
 

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
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Orange Islands
DLC touched on a point I wanted to make... Although I am not sure which side of the fence he is on.

I was very upset when this came to light as I know Doug had had problems with Art Poll manipulation before. I'll put my hand up and say I was pretty scathing at the time, and I know my actions pissed off a few other people. All I can say is it really comes down to what you perceive as being the limits to right and wrong as far as a Poll goes. At the time, I thought it was horrifying that someone would push for such a thing. And even now I feel like it is somehow cheating and manipulative. This Honour system that DLC mentions is certainly an interesting proposition, but there are very huge gaps in what some users perceive as honourable and what isn't. I honestly do not think it would work effectively as a solution.

I seem to be in the absolute minority when it comes to this, and everyone knows I probably have stronger feelings on this stuff than a lot of others do. I'd like to point out Yilx wasn't the only party upset by these actions, Draco DID attempt to withdraw from the Poll itself and leave Yilx as the auto winner. CaP Submission rules prevented this as essentially any submitted artwork becomes property of CaP and not of the Artist. The fact that it upset one of the options enough for them to request for their design to be withdrawn in the Final Art Poll would be enough for me to want this sort of stuff disallowed or at least clarified. I don't know if that would change things if people knew it was happening, but still. I know I would be pretty annoyed if I lost to someone who had been campaigning out the wazoo.

I can't really get behind the positives. Yes, there is a chance a voter may come along and see other designs and vote for those instead. Yes they may even stay and get involved with a CaP project proper the next time around. But the chances are, they are sheep and have no interest in the project. I know we get a lot of "Drive By Voters" anyway (especially in art polls), and I think this sort of practice would simply degrade it into whoever has the most social media coverage is the winner. Think of all the possible outlets someone has, you could easily get to at least 10 without even trying; there is no way to police that sort of coverage.

While I disagree with the practice in principle, I do not see a way we can actually enforce it. I think it would be best to just allow people to do what they have been doing just with the caveat that everyone knows its happening rather than it coming out of the left field...

Sorry if this is confusing, I am writing it at work in rushed segments. I'll probably take another look at this when I get home and edit it a little but the main bulk will stay the same.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
is a Top Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Some good points have been made but I think this discussion is skirting around our big questions so far. I think we are confusing recruiting and campaigning. I do not suggest that we allow recruiting, where by a person is asked to create an account for the express purpose of voting for something. I suggest that we allow campaigning, where by a person who already has a Smogon account is asked to vote for something.

[...] I definitely think that whatever decision is made should apply to all polls that get the winner's name on the CAP site, not just flavour ones.
I think we'll all be in agreement on this, someone speak up if you think differently.

Anyone can campaign. Do some people have an inherent advantage due to having a fanbase? Sure. But some people are simply superior artistic wise, some people have better design skills. To decry a random advantage as "unfair" is arbitrary at best.
Important point to consider. If we are going to ban campaigning because it's unfair due to differing popularity, this begs the question, what else is unfair?

In addition, this might actually be a good thing. Campaigning brings in new blood to CAP, and even if not all of them stay, at least one or two will be intrigued by our fakemons project and decide to stick around.
I think this is plausible especially if we are talking about Smogoners who are being campaigned to.

If people are banned from campaigning for themselves, they could get other people to. Punishing people for others campaigning for them could result in user A trying to get user B disqualified by having person C campaign for user B.
Good point here.

The fact that it upset one of the options enough for them to request for their design to be withdrawn in the Final Art Poll would be enough for me to want this sort of stuff disallowed or at least clarified. I don't know if that would change things if people knew it was happening, but still. I know I would be pretty annoyed if I lost to someone who had been campaigning out the wazoo.
If campaigning was explicitly allowed, people would know before submitting their art and could easily choose not to if that made them uncomfortable. If we allow it, the playing field is even and everyone has a chance to campaign from the start. I think Draco felt wronged because he only found out very close to the end that Yilx had campaigned. Art in CAP is a competition and the nature of competitions is that you want other people to lose. There is nothing mean or wrong about that.

I think this sort of practice would simply degrade it into whoever has the most social media coverage is the winner. Think of all the possible outlets someone has, you could easily get to at least 10 without even trying; there is no way to police that sort of coverage.
I can't envision this being the case in such an extreme way if we are still disallowing *recruiting* (as defined above).

To clarify:
Currently we disallow recruiting, and campaigning is a grey area. I am proposing we solidify our stance here. We can choose to disallow campaigning altogether, allow it on-site (such as on one's art thread), or allow it both on-site and off-site (such as saying on your DA journal: "Attn: Smogoners, vote for me in CAP, if you do not have an account, this is not for you").
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
Nyktos said:
I definitely think that whatever decision is made should apply to all polls that get the winner's name on the CAP site, not just flavour ones.
Why? As everyone was so kind as to point out to me last CAP, having emotional ties to competitive submissions is just plain wrong >_>



With regards to the campaigning issue, I'm ok with campaigning as long as it is kept on-site. We have simply a shitton of members (173,688 at time of writing) but i can't imagine that more than 10,000 have ever been active. When you ask someone involved in the site to vote for a CAP poll, chances are they know what CAP is and they'll actually take the time to weigh the options; yes. But simply because someone has a smogon account does not mean we can assume they are at all involved in the site. If someone's involved in the site, you can nab their attention without having to post on your dA or twitter—and if they're not, well, i don't see the difference between that and recruiting.
 

Bull of Heaven

Guest
Draco DID attempt to withdraw from the Poll itself and leave Yilx as the auto winner. CaP Submission rules prevented this as essentially any submitted artwork becomes property of CaP and not of the Artist. The fact that it upset one of the options enough for them to request for their design to be withdrawn in the Final Art Poll would be enough for me to want this sort of stuff disallowed or at least clarified.
Point of clarification for those of us that hadn't heard about this until now: did Draco try to withdraw because of what Yilx did or because of the reaction to what Yilx did? That distinction matters if we're going to cite this in PR arguments. If you're reading this Draco, I assume you're best qualified to answer.

Also, uh, holy shit, I had no idea that it was this bad. Or that anything had happened at all. Wow.

Some good points have been made but I think this discussion is skirting around our big questions so far. I think we are confusing recruiting and campaigning. I do not suggest that we allow recruiting, where by a person is asked to create an account for the express purpose of voting for something. I suggest that we allow campaigning, where by a person who already has a Smogon account is asked to vote for something.
Guilty. I have exactly the same feelings about both and have been using the words interchangeably. I'll edit my previous post to make this clear.
 

Birkal

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I will come out of the gates with what is likely to be an unpopular opinion, but should still be stated nonetheless. First, I am largely opposed to implementing any sort of rules to dispel and outlaw campaigning. It's criminally easy to frame someone with campaigning. I could make a site, claim I am Wyverii (example user), and tell my viewers to create Smogon accounts and vote for Wyverii in the art polls. Anyone has the power to do this, so it's not inconceivable that someone could abuse any ruling we have to clear out the competition. There's no way for us to verify that it is or is not Wyverii; she would essentially be framed. I'm not a fan of perpetuating some sort of witch hunt to stop artists (or any submitter in general) from campaigning. I think it's both unfeasible and impossible; we will not be able to stop campaigning, we'd just take it to the shadows.

That being said, time for me to get even more controversial. I hate campaigning and I do frown on the submitters that take part in it. I'd rather have a poll where both artists wish each other the best rather than wishing themselves the best. Smogon has this weird mentality that is all about "winning". The Tournaments forum is a good example of this; there have been recent cases of competitors using any means necessary to win, including shutting off their opponent's Internet (DDoSing). It was sad for me to see that sort of behavior creeping into CAP during CAP 5's art polls. Everyone's art is phenomenal, and I wish we'd spend more time praising each others' rather than pushing them in the mud. For me, it's not about the win. It's about drawing a Pokemon I like and sharing it with others.

Remember, this is all my personal opinion. Some people are fine with campaigning, and I respect that. I think it's unfair, yes, but they have the right under the current rules to campaign. You won't catch me doing it, but I'm not willing to disqualify someone when they're not breaking the rules. Furthermore, people have different definitions of campaigning, which makes things even worse. For example, I PM users on IRC that have previously voted for my submission and remind them that the next poll is up. They already voted for me; I just ask them if they'd like to continue to vote in the polls. It's a reminder, and I don't consider it campaigning. However, I'm sure that other users would consider that campaigning, and that's totally fine. The point I'm making is that defining campaigning is difficult.

My time is running short, so I'll wrap up here. My proposal is that we don't have any sort of rules against campaigning. My reasoning is that we have no feasible way of stopping it from happening, and it would turn our community into that of a witch-hunting mob that is aiming to bring others down for their own gain. Rather, I'd prefer to foster a community that frowns upon campaigning. I'd rather it be every artist's personal choice to campaign or not campaign, and to what level they campaign. I care more about hosting a positive, supportive community than making rules against loopholes in the system.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
is a Top Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
The following post is by non-PRC member Dracoyoshi8.

I managed to get a properly functioning keyboard for long enough to answer some questions.

First, I attempted to withdraw from the poll because I was sick of what was going on. I will confess that I was probably the most pissed when I found out Yilx was "campaigning." Anyone who followed the thread or was in #cap or #smeargle knows how excited I was to participate, to the point that I was pumping out new content almost daily, if not multiple pieces in one day. So when I found out that my opponent was "campaigning" against me, I took it as a direct slap to the face. I remember thinking it was along the lines of "I don't want to lose to this p.o.s. art so vote for me!!!!" was what Yilx was trying to say. When Yilx got on and cleared it up with me, that he was simply trying to contact smogon friends, I felt terrible, especially since I helped stir the pot.

Back to the withdrawal, at that point I thought "if Yilx wants to win so bad, he can have it." I was fed up and wanted out. But of course, I couldn't, and now whenever I see CAP5 on PS!, the forums or CAP website, I get this awful feeling. My enthusiasm for my design has become simple disgust and hatred, and if I still had the choice I would tell everyone to take it down and pick a new design. The prevo is adorable though :3

What hasn't been brought up is another reason why people got upset. I know some people were genuinely upset about the campaigning, but I have no doubts that some users used Yilx's DA post simply as a way to cut down his design so mine could win. Simple mudslinging, which may help explain why Yilx's actions weren't called to action in the past. We all know how competitive CAP art polls can be, but I am disappointed to see it come to this, with my own design nonetheless.

Regarding the actual issue of campaigning, I have no problem with it unless the actual candidate is specifically saying they want someone to vote for their own piece. I don't care if someone else says "hey vote for user A's mon its cool!", like in the youtube video Yilx linked.

Simply put, what occurred during this art poll has made sure there is no way in hell I'm participating in any art poll in future CAPs.

If you need anymore info on my side of things, ask.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
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This is a difficult subject and there are many pros and cons that go with either decision. My opinion on whether we should allow or disallow is definitely not unchangable. However, I am completely 100% against the idea which has been brought up by quite a few people of allowing campaigning but at the same time fostering a community that frowns on campaigning. This leaves us in the exact same position that we are in now, where we do nothing to dissuade people from campaigning but then scorn them for doing so for *no actual reason*. This makes it even easier for someone to come in innocently enough and put their art in the poll, then mention it on twitter or what have you, then have someone bring it up in #cap and a bunch of people snort in disgust and change their vote. No, absolutely not. This is the exact thing I am trying to prevent. If the PRC feels that campaigning is worthy of scorn then we should absolutely ban it. If we allow it, and you, on a personal level, do not like the idea of campaigning, then you may choose to not vote for anyone who likes to campaign, but we cannot go forcing those morals on others.

I feel like we really do want to ban it in a way, but we don't want to deal with the consequences. It forces us to consider being hard asses on things such as posting CAP art in art threads before polling is done, or reminding people who supported us in a past poll to vote, like Birkal said. Our rules are already pretty strict. It also makes us have to take a look at how we allow people to act with respect to our other polls.

I still really feel like we can see campaigning in a better light so we don't feel we have to scorn it. If I thought that allowing campaigning off-site (with the condition that you may not create an account just to vote for a friend's art) would actually affect the poll results significantly I would not have suggested we do it in the first place. If an artist has fans that love to see the artist's work on projects like CAP, and those fans have also seen fit to sign up for Smogon at some point, I think they are a) few in number and b) legitimate voters and their opinions count just as much as a drive-by voter who doesn't give a shit about the project or a voter brought in from a youtube video. And they are *absolutely* more legitimate than cheated votes that we don't catch (yes these do still happen -- DLC your assumptions about this are false by my understanding, unfortunately).

If we can't get past this scorn we have no choice but to ban it, despite the cons and difficulty in policing, I think.
 
I think the problem with campaigning is that at the end of the day, people want the "best" design to win. Best in this case being the winner of a poll where people base their vote solely on which design they like the most. The fundamental difference between this and a poll 'contaminated' by campaigning is that in the latter, there are some votes that are there not because the voter necessarily thinks the design they voted for is better/cooler/prettier but [mainly] because they were told to vote for it (basically, I (and others) disagree with the idea that the two votes are equally valid. If this needs to be debated I will do so, but that's not what I wanted to talk about in this post). Obviously voting intent is impossible to know, but in general I think our goal should be to have a poll where the "best" design wins. In my perfect world, I'd want a poll where people vote for a design solely based on its artistic merit in their eyes.

That being so, many users have correctly pointed out the logistical flaws of banning campaigning. It's difficult to detect, and it's too easy to abuse any system we do create if we ban it. Thus, I don't think we should restrict campaigning by banning it. I'm fine with this because I don't have a problem with most aspects of campaigning. I don't care about people "not involved in the project" voting on a design. I think the more people that know about CAP the better, because if people get brought here to vote in an art people, at least some of them will become interested in the project and start contributing in other areas. I also don't think there is anything wrong with a user asking their friends to vote in a poll (and I can even understand a user asking their friends to vote for their design in a poll)! However, I do think we should try to get as many people to vote for the design they prefer as possible.

My dumb idea is to put a disclaimer in the OP of every (art) poll, something like the following:
"While campaigning for a design a user prefers is not forbidden, we hope that everyone who votes will vote for the design they like the most. If you were brought to this poll by another user, please keep this in mind."

The point isn't that it will stop campaign votes, merely curb them, which is why I'm ok with how incredibly naive it comes across. I'm sure there are other things we can do to also curb campaign votes.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
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Time to start wrapping this up.

Here's some selected parts of an irc convo from the other day, the full thing is here.

11:36 Birkal: there's a difference between frowning upon campaigning and doing what happened in CAP 5
11:36 Birkal: what happened this time around (from what I can tell) is people were pulling out crap from the past and trying to get others disqualified
11:37 Birkal: again, I don't see any feasible way of stopping campaigning, both on site and off site
11:37 paintseagull: even if it's not feasible to stop it, we can still say it's not allowed
11:37 paintseagull: most people will respect that
11:38 Birkal: I'd rather ask that it not be allowed
11:38 Birkal: rather than say it's not allowed
11:38 Birkal: because the latter gives us no power
11:38 paintseagull: i don't understand the difference
11:38 paintseagull: i don't believe we should be wishy washy with our rules
11:38 Birkal: if we make it a plea to the artists, then it's up to them to make the choice or not
11:38 paintseagull: either have a rule or don't
11:38 Birkal: I agree
11:38 Birkal: which is why I am against making a hard rule of no campaigning :P
11:39 Birkal: because that rule is one we cannot enforce
11:39 Birkal: it has no claws
11:46 paintseagull: if we are discouraging people from campaigning, someone can still be framed
11:46 Birkal: yes, but they wouldn't be removed from the poll
11:46 Birkal: it would just be discouraged; it's a cultural thing
11:46 paintseagull: if the consequence for doing such is supposedly that people who uphold that standard will change their vote / not vote for you
11:46 paintseagull: how is that any better
11:47 Birkal: because it's not a hard fast rule...
11:47 Birkal: if we make a hard rule, you're suggesting that we DON'T follow it?
11:47 Birkal: that doesn't make any sense .__.
11:47 paintseagull: no, we would
11:47 paintseagull: we would remove them from the poll
11:47 Birkal: so I impersonate Yilx
11:47 Birkal: he's removed from the poll?
11:47 paintseagull: imo, removing somoene from the poll and saying "sorry you didn't read the rules this disqualifies you"
11:48 paintseagull: is better than saying 'ugh you campaigned gross, i'm changing my vote, jerk"
11:48 Birkal: uhh, I disagree hardcore
11:48 Zt: psg - Birks argument still stands.
11:48 Birkal: because the former is not just
11:48 Birkal: the former could get anyone removed from the art poll at any time
11:48 Birkal: even if they are innocent
11:48 Zt: Why put in a rule, if we cannot objectively enforce it.
11:48 Zt: ?
11:49 paintseagull: look, the framing thing can be dealt with. we can figure something out for that. if someone has been framed they can come to us and say "I was framed" and probably would be able to come up with proof
11:49 Birkal: not quite
11:49 Birkal: there is no way for us to verify if someone off site is yilx or not yilx
11:49 paintseagull: sure there is
11:49 Birkal: how
11:49 Zt: If we were to subjectively enforce the said rules, then the enforcers are risking manipulation by the offenders.
11:51 paintseagull: if Zt feels he has been framed, he may come to us and say so. if we trust him, we can take him at his word. if not, we can check things like a) when the framed profile was created, what email it's linked to
11:51 Birkal: "if we trust him"
11:51 Birkal: so you're saying he needs to be in the "in crowd"?
11:51 Birkal: I hate that too. I want a new artist like Eol to be on the exact same grounds as DougJustDoug
11:52 Zt: psg - maybe we could just jump to the checking part.
11:52 Zt: Treat everybody the same that way, right?
11:52 Pwnemon: not to mention
11:52 paintseagull: if an artist has a history with cap over many years i feel like we can trust them more than a new artist, yes. but okay, we can treat everyone the same way either.
11:52 Pwnemon: he gets framed
11:52 Pwnemon: at like some awkward time of the night because he lives in malaysia
11:52 Pwnemon: logs on eight hours later to see he's been framed
12:02 Pwnemon: what the hell do you want paint
12:02 Pwnemon: i dont see what you're getting at
12:02 Pwnemon: are you trying to get us all to say campaigning is fine and dandy and good
12:02 paintseagull: I don't want us to have a note in the OP that says "we discourage campaigning"
12:02 paintseagull: if individuals want to have their own opinion that is obviously fine but as a PRC we should be neutral
12:02 paintseagull: that is what I think
12:02 Pwnemon: unfortunately
12:02 Pwnemon: people on irc are individuals
12:03 Pwnemon: so unless we expressly have a note saying campaigning is NOT bad
12:03 Pwnemon: we're going to have what we had last CAP if it happens again
12:03 Pwnemon: i hope you realize that
12:03 paintseagull: I don't think so, if we have a note in the OP that says "Campaigning to Smogoners is permitted"
12:03 Birkal: I'm fine with the PRC being neutral
12:04 paintseagull: I do not think you'll have people coming on here and mud slinging to that extent
12:04 Birkal: I don't think I advocated for a line in the OP that stated that we should have a line for discouraging campaigning
12:04 Pwnemon: [12:03pm] paintseagull: I don't think so, if we have a note in the OP that says "Campaigning to Smogoners is permitted"
12:04 Pwnemon: what is this saying if not that campaigning isn't bad ¬_¬
12:04 paintseagull: it's saying it's permitted
12:05 Birkal: see if you have a line that says that, pwne is right
12:05 Birkal: it implies that it's encouraged
12:05 paintseagull: it's not saying "campaigning is great"
12:05 paintseagull: that's the difference
12:05 Zt: psg - it's still ambiguous though.
12:05 imanalt: why not say the reverse: Campaigning to nonsmogoners is strictly forbidden
12:05 Zt: Weren't you for a hard ruling that disallows campaigning, like Alty said?
12:05 imanalt: which says implicitly campaigning to smogoners is permitted, but doesnt encourage it either
12:06 paintseagull: yeah - that could work
12:06 Birkal: shrugs
12:06 Birkal: I'm fine with that
12:06 Pwnemon: sure, that works
12:43 elcheeso: someone in #pokemon mentioned early on that they really liked my design for cap5, was probably treecko off the top of my head... when the first poll went up, i noticed he hadnt voted and told him the poll was up, didnt say VOTE FOR ME but, you know, it was kind of obviously going to happen if he bothered to vote... in your eyes, did i cheat or not?
12:44 elcheeso: just curious
12:44 Pwnemon: no
12:45 Pwnemon: i think there's a pretty obvious distinction between telling someone to make a decision and telling them what decision to make
12:45 elcheeso: so its basically just the words "vote for me" thats the problem and not the campaigning, so to speak?
12:46 Pwnemon: basically yeah
12:47 DHR: I think if people bring attention to the poll thats not bad
12:47 elcheeso: what about the situation with that random guy telling people to vote for yilx via his vids, is that something youd see as cheating and/or something that yilx needs to be held responsible for?
12:47 Nyktos: "bringing attention" to a poll you happen to be in is always going to have a bit of a wink-wink-nudge-nudge feel to it
12:48 Pwnemon: obviously yilx had no control over that
12:48 elcheeso: you say obviously but how could anyone be sure that person wasnt a friend of yilx or if someone else did something like that in the future for someone else?
12:49 DHR: Thats the stuff you cant sotp imo
12:49 elcheeso: im not suggesting he was incidentally
12:49 Pwnemon: (we all know he didn't but) if yilx did tell the guy to make the video then he's a real douche
12:49 Pwnemon: but i cant do anything about it
12:49 Pwnemon: i never claimed that anti-campaigning rules were enforceable
12:49 Pwnemon: just that they sent a clear message
12:50 elcheeso: thats the problem to me. i dont see the point of introducing a rule if its not enforcible
12:50 elcheeso: enforcable
12:50 elcheeso: i cant spell
12:49 paintseagull: that makes me think of another thing
12:50 paintseagull: given that outsiders may campaign for someone's art
12:50 paintseagull: if you are disallowed from campaigning for your own art in response
12:50 paintseagull: to me that's a bit unfair
12:50 Pwnemon: what's a speed limit
12:50 Pwnemon: what's a profanity law
12:51 elcheeso: you realise that listing real life laws that i have nothing to do with doesnt really negate my point?
12:51 elcheeso: lol
12:51 DHR: :| I think
12:51 DHR: The best way might just to be like
12:51 DHR: You can bring attention to the poll
12:51 DHR: but not explicitly state VOTE FOR ME
12:51 Pwnemon: but my point is
12:52 Pwnemon: those are laws that are completely or nearly unenforced
12:52 Pwnemon: but they still do their trick
12:52 Yilx: honestly
12:52 Yilx: this is the internet
12:52 Yilx: you think randoms are going to come on and vote for you?
12:52 Pwnemon: yes
12:52 Pwnemon: i've seen it happen with my eyes
12:52 paintseagull: that's just silly to me, if you are showing it to someone who supports you, it's basically the same thing as saying "vote for me"
12:52 DHR: Yeah but, i guess youre giving people more option?
12:52 paintseagull: saying "vote for me" is just one extreme (not even the full extreme) of a spectrum of grey
12:53 paintseagull: what if you say "hint hint"
12:53 paintseagull: what about "I would be really excited if I won this"
12:53 elcheeso: yeah i think the distinction between the two things is kind of overstated. that said im ok with that as a compromise despite it being another case of unenforcible (sic?) rule lawyering
12:54 paintseagull: i don't even think campaigning is completely unenforcable
12:54 DHR: no its not
12:54 paintseagull: *disallowing it i mean
12:54 DHR: Its really not
12:54 DHR: Ive been thihking of ways to stop it, and its just not possible
12:54 DHR: banning it outright is impossible
12:55 elcheeso: id argue its enforcible within the confines of smogon... but outside (which, to be honest, is where it matters to most people), not really? i mean beyond posting on your own DA account or whatever lol
12:55 elcheeso: but if this shit were to pop up on youtube or 4chan or whatever its completely out of our hands
12:55 Pwnemon: heaven help us if anon decides to fuck with a poll
12:56 elcheeso: and id rather not punish artists for shit they could easily be framed for, for basically... campaigning for their own stuff. which is half the point of supplemental art to begin with
12:56 Yilx: if you ask me
12:56 Yilx: the safest way is to just allow campaigning
12:57 Yilx: but say its "frowned upon" or whatever
12:57 Yilx: because
12:57 Yilx: really now
12:57 Yilx: nobody has
12:57 Yilx: a personal army
12:57 Yilx: at their beck and call
12:57 elcheeso: frowned upon is a terrible idea imo
12:57 paintseagull: exactly, if campaigning by asking your friends to vote for you is unfair, I don't see how being popular in and of itself is not deemed unfair, or posting a lot of supplemental art, or posting in your art thread, or posting in #cap
12:57 paintseagull: it's all incremental

I think that generally, whether or not we are for, against, or neutral towards campaigning, we have decided that it does not make sense to police it. Therefore, we will NOT ban it. This means we will take no disciplinary actions against anyone who is found to be asking for votes. We DO take disciplinary actions against account creation for the sole purpose of voting for a campaigned design, though.

The question remains as to what kind of statement we should put in the poll's OP.

Based on the thread, that irc convo, and Elevator Music's post, I propose the following statement be included in all Art Poll OPs:
Campaigning to people without a Smogon account is strictly forbidden. Accounts created for the singular purpose of voting for a design based on outside influence will be disciplined and the vote will be removed. If you have been directed to this poll by another person, we encourage you to vote for the design(s) you like the most.
Right now I don't think we should include it in any other poll OPs but I know some people did like that idea… so I'd like to hear more on that.

I'll close this thread in ~2 days with our final conclusions (12pm EDT June 27th) unless someone wants an extension. Please speak up now if you have any comments on or if you take issue with the proposal.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
is a Site Content Manageris a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
I would like to add something at the end to strengthen the message. Maybe tack on

"regardless of which user(s) made the submission(s).
 

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
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Orange Islands
So I was talking to PSG in IRC (full transcript below with horrible formatting). And while I agree with what is up there I wanted to being up a few points that popped into my head as we were talking about it.

The main issue I have is how do we determine a legitimate new user from one who has been "campaigned too". For example: User A is not part of Smogon but has an interest in what is going on and posts on another forum/4chan/wherever. User B sees this and thinks "Wow, this is cool! I am going to go vote!". They sign up and vote for their preferred design. With what PSG says above, will whoever they vote for be questioned about where this user came from even though they have no knowledge of it?

As far as I am aware, there is no way to determine between a legit vote like the one described above, and one which has been campaigned for (as in, Artist A has explicitly told them to sign up). I know DjD/Other mods have some powerful tools, but I am pretty sure this is not one of them. Even with their experience and knowledge of background info, there is no legitimate way they can possibly know if someone has been influenced outside of Smogon. I bring this up mainly because of anonymous posting places such as 4chan give a headache because we don't even know who has posted such information.

Extending onto that, the wording could potentially put off a newcomer from voting as they do not want to get the artist they vote for in trouble. I think that's probably a bad way to interpret it, but that's just a feeling I get. Please tell me if you think I am interpreting an extreme with that viewpoint.

I don't really know how to ward off the practice without making lots of loop holes which could potentially get users and submitters in trouble. I do not like the idea of "You must have a join date prior to the CaP Starting". As then the artists job would be to just get them to sign up before it all starts...

I started rambling a bit there but its the general idea I think...

WARNING HORRIBLE FORMATTING BELOW BLAME MIBBIT

DHR think that statement pretty much encapsulates it all tbh
16:06 DHR
we cant police it
16:06 DHR
the problem is
16:06 DHR
what if a user ctahces wind of cap, creates an account to vote and then votes
16:06
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16:07 DHR
will that artist be interrogated about that person? Or are we literally saying "You must have a join date before the start of this CaP Project to vote"
16:07 paintseagull
ah, you mean an innocent user
16:08 DHR
Yeah who just happens to join at the wrong time if that makes sense
16:08 DHR
maybe they havent been campaigned at or anything
16:08 paintseagull
yes i understand
16:08 DHR
But theyve like, caught wind on 4chan or something
16:08 paintseagull
that does happen
16:08 paintseagull
p sure my first post was a vote
16:08 paintseagull
i think we are able to tell the difference
16:08 paintseagull
i am not 100% all up on the way we monitor voting
16:09 DHR
Are we though
16:09 paintseagull
what I am mostly concerned about with respect to that: do you think the language I have now would scare off someone who was about to vote as their first post
16:09 DHR
I can't think of a way we can discern between those 2 votes
16:10 DHR
Quite possibly yes, as they may interpret it as if they vote they make that artist get in trouble
16:10 DHR
even if it is entirely unrelated
16:12
*** Qwilphish quit (Quit: http://www.mibbit.com ajax IRC Client)
16:12 paintseagull
can you think of a better way to say it? or do you think i should just remove that line
16:12
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16:12 paintseagull
because we definitely would not delete a vote/account unless we were sure it was cheated
16:12 DHR
No I think it's ok, just
16:13 DHR
How do we know that an account created for that purpose is illigitimate compared to one that is
16:13 paintseagull
so there is no concern there. I just want to make sure we are not scaring away people unnecessarily. As it stands that line is representing something we already do.
16:13 paintseagull
I don't know for sure to be honest.
16:14 DHR
And I agree I don't overly like the tone of YOU MUST HAVE AN ACCOUNT MADE BEFORE THE CAP TO VOTE
16:14 paintseagull
I am trusting Doug's behind the scenes know-how and I'm interpreting some anecdotes that he's talked about before
16:15 DHR
I don't even think Doug has the tech or know how to make that call
16:15 DHR
I'm 100% sure there is no way to discern between a legit (ish) user who has heard of CaP from another site from a user not involved with the project
16:16 paintseagull
between one vote and another vote in isolation? no, but that's not all there is to it
16:16 DHR
And a user who has been campaigned too making an account and voting for someone
16:16 paintseagull
you will have to bring it up with Doug
16:16 paintseagull
I am not saying we can always pick out cheated things - far from it
16:16 paintseagull
but we sometimes can
16:16 paintseagull
i don't know the details
16:17 paintseagull
perhaps my language is too definitive
16:17 DHR
I mean, we get people all the time whose only votes are in CaP voting stages
16:17 DHR
*Only posts
16:18 paintseagull
I know, they are perfectly legit
16:18 paintseagull
We would not be removing those
16:18 DHR
How do we know they are legit
16:19 DHR
They might be the same people who have been campaigned too for years by other users :|
16:19 paintseagull
we assume they are legit unless we have proof otherwise
16:19 DHR
Maybe I'm getting in a bit too deep, but yeah
16:19 paintseagull
I don't know the details of that proof, I just know that Doug has implied that in some cases it's possible to know
16:20 paintseagull
how about "Accounts created for the singular purpose of voting for a design based on outside influence are illegitimate"
16:20 DHR
How do we know
16:20 DHR
That the accounts were influenced or not from outside sources
16:21
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16:21 paintseagull
we don't necessarily know, but that doesn't mean we can't say they're not allowed
16:22 paintseagull
but we can't keep rules secret or get rid of them just because we can't always enforce them
 

jas61292

used substitute
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I meant to post here a while ago but kinda forgot. However, it looks like we are generally trending in the direction of doing what I would support anyways. Basically, we can't police campaining, so we shouldn't try. However, we should not be encouraging it in any way. I don't really care how good it would be for recruiting; in my mind, it is against the entire spirit of the project.

I think a warning at the top saying that we do not tolerate campaigning would be good to have. We don't have to feign punishment, but we don't need to welcome campaigning either. If we want to stop this it has to be a social effort, much more so than a policy one, and a policy like this that makes such a social effort easier to achieve is ideal.
 

nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
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Right can we get some actual reasons for why campaigining is bad? I've heard talks of "solutions" and "what we should do about it," but not one person thus far has offered any reason that isn't overly broad like "it's bad" or personal such as "I don't like it." However, there have been positive points that have been brought up in favor of campaigning (drumming up interest, recruiting fresh blood), so I'm finding it really hard to swallow that campaigning is "bad" given the utter lack of concrete reasons why it is bad.

Seriously, take a step back and actually state why this ;problem; is actually a problem and not just a bunch of personal, biased feelings before anyone goes around throwing out 'solutions.'
 

Bull of Heaven

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In light of nyttyn's post: This post assumes that we do decide to be agaisnt campaigning, which seems likely to happen.

I agree entirely with DHR. As far as I know, there's no reliable way to identify a recruited vote, and that's important if we're going to talk about removing them. Sure, there's some obvious circumstantial evidence, such as join dates during the voting and no subsequent posts, but the former proves nothing and the latter isn't of much use to us with how quickly polls close. I trust the judgement of our mods, but barring some wonder technology I don't know about, recruited votes are a little too ambiguous. I don't doubt that the mods could identify some recruited votes, and I would probably on a high success rate with that, but any rule that could so easily remove even one legitimate vote is a huge deal, and I don't think it's acceptable in such a vote-driven process. And requiring join dates prior to the start would be even worse, since the art polls bring more attention to CAP than anything else we do.

As for stating that campaigning is not tolerated, I don't think that's the way to go either. For one thing, if we do decide to allow campaigning, it should be an accessible option to everyone in the interest of fairness. A message like jas suggests will intimidate some people and not others, and I don't like the idea of giving an advantage to people that happen to have read a particular PR thread. On top of that, it's not hard to see that leading to the exact problem that spawned this thread: someone campaigning without knowing that it's illegal (or in this case because it isn't) and being harassed over it. I don't love the idea of mentioning campaigning in the OP at all, because any message can be read as either an endorsement of it or a justification to attack those that do it. On the other hand, I think I've now argued against every proposed solution without providing any of my own, and not mentioning campaigning at all seems to be an unpopular position. If we are going to include something, it should be more along the lines of what Elevator Music suggested, and I would watch out for language like "not tolerate".

The most appealing idea to me isn't tangible policy change, but the idea of maintaining a culture that discourages campaigning. Birkal's post in particular got me thinking about what could be done here, and I think people might be approaching this the wrong way. CAP is undeniably both a collaborative and a competitive project. If I submit something, I want it to win. I've never campaigned, but I will always vote for my own submission first, and I'm always disappointed when it's always eliminated. At the same time, what makes CAP different from, say, tournaments, is the idea that we're building a Pokemon collectively; that personal "victory" isn't everything, as long as the creation gets something good for it in the end. Whereas tournament players seem to be obsessed with keeping their teams hidden (disclaimer: I'm not in those circles), it's perfectly normal in CAP to see people giving honest feedback to try to improve the submissions of others. I'll be the first to admit that I don't do enough of that, and it's something I need to change.

So where am I going with that? Instead of trying to build a community that frowns on campaigning, which reads like a fertile breeding ground for hostility, I think we should put a more positive spin on it by emphasizing the collaborative nature of CAP, and its greater importance over any personal competition. How we do that, aside from the open discussion of submissions that we already have, and greater participation therein from people like me, is a more challenging question, and one that I hope you can all help with.

To nyttyn: I think Dracoyoshi and Birkal have given reasons why campaigning is "bad". Draco took Yilx's campaigning as a personal attack (you or I might not have interpreted it that way, but it's not hard to see why someone would) and Birkal raised concerns about a divisive mentality creeping into CAP. Yes, CAP will always be a somewhat competitive environment, but the kind of competitiveness commonly seen on Smogon these days is dangerous to a collaborative project.

What I'm more curious about is what practical difference there is between on- and offsite campaigning. Is it the difference between knowing and not knowing the campaignees? I don't get it, but maybe that's just because I'm not an artist. Wait, why am I even posting in this thread?
 

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