Policy Review Flavour Polls - Campaigning

nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
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Bah, missed the poll. I'd vote Yes anyways, but then again I believe a whole lot of what goes into winning an art poll goes against CAP's philosiphy. But I digress.

Also, wasn't it agreed upon we were going to vote about that rule? I remember it being agreed upoin in CAP we would have a 24 hour period to vote on if it falls in line with the philosiphy, and a 24 hour period to vote on the rule itself. But either way, my feelings still stand - toothless, un-enforcable feel good rule that can be abused, even with the "and no one else, minimodding considered abuse" part. Could even backfire if people demand "Hey this is against the rules, why the hell aren't you guys doing anything about it!?" If there is a vote, pre-emptive No rule vote since these next three days are going to be a mite hectic for me.
 

Nyktos

Custom Loser Title
I guess I should expand on what I said now that there's been an argument against the proposal, especially since I've expressed essentially the same position as nyttyn in discussions on IRC before.

I agree that a ban on campaigning is essentially unenforceable and a feel-good law, and I expected to oppose any proposal to make an actual rule against campaigning. However, I sympathize with paintseagull's position as well. If we see something we consider wrong and against CAP's philosophy, the reasonable response should be to make a rule against it. (God knows CAP doesn't have a problem with making rules against things.) My issue with a rule, though, was always that in the bulk of circumstances, we can't really enforce it. We can never really be sure that someone on another site with the same username as a CAP regular is actually the same person, and it is not fair to punish someone if we don't have actual proof that they did it. As such, my preference had been to go no further than a "we would really prefer if you didn't try to campaign"-type statement.

However, I think paintseagull's proposal is a little big better. In practice, it usually won't amount to much more than a more strongly-worded version of such a statement, since it leaves any punishment up to the mods' discretion. (I would hope and expect that the mods would be lenient when they aren't entirely certain that it really was the accused who did it.) However, I think there are two major advantages to having such a rule over simply "disapproving" of campaigning and leaving it at that.

First of all, it encourages people who encounter campaigning to report it to the mods. There are a couple of reasons I think this is good. One is that it means that the mods can keep track of any incidents that happen. They can speak to the accused and get the other side of the story. It's probably a good thing that the mods are at least aware of campaigning going on, even if they can't do much about it. Another upside is that if people feel that they have "done something" by reporting campaigning that they see to the mods, they may be deterred from doing something like the name-and-shame on IRC we saw during CAP 5. (Explicitly saying that doing so is against the rules is good, too.)

The other upside to having a rule like that relates to this bit that Pwnemon said on IRC:
Jul 07 13:46:38 <Pwnemon> if someone rigs a cap vote and then comes on #cap and brags about what they just did and we have explicitly said what they can do is legal
Jul 07 13:46:39 <Pwnemon> we're tied
Now, I don't really feel like that is especially likely to happen. However, in those rare situations where we really can be completely certain that someone is campaigning, it's good if we can do something about it. I stress that I really don't expect this to happen very often, if it ever happens at all. But maybe we can sleep better at night knowing that if someone really wants to be an idiot and brag about it, the mods can actually do something about it?

I do agree that this rule would be mostly toothless. However, all things considered, I think that it would do some good to have it anyway. Maybe it would be best to indicate in the actual wording that punishment won't always happen.
 

jas61292

used substitute
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So, I am 100% in favor of what paintseagull proposed. This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for all along (I just failed to word my posts in a way to suggest this properly). As we can clearly see from the results of the poll, a majority believes that campaigning is not in line with the principles of the CAP project. However, as many people have pointed out, it is not an easy thing to enforce. Yet, simply saying "this is bad, but oh well, you can do it" is not something I could accept. This is why I think one of the best things to do is have a rule against it with actual (if ambiguous) consequences with enforcement left up to moderator discretion. Yes, I know, in the vast majority of campaigning cases we probably couldn't do anything about it while being certain it was the right thing to do. However, in some cases, maybe we can, and if we make it obvious to people that it is against the rules, hopefully it will, at the very least act as a deterrent.

With that said though, the part of this I love the most was the bit on only informing mods and against mini-modding. Mini-modding is something that is almost always a bad thing, and this is no exception. Look around the Smogon community: there is a global forum rule against mini-moderating, and a rule against it on our PS server. This is no different. In practice, making this a rule is pretty much just extending the mini-modding rule to #cap (and ideally any other irc channel), and I can see no reason whatsoever not to do this.
 

Bull of Heaven

Guest
As I think I've mentioned before, I don't like the idea of an unenforced rule because of the advantage it can give to anyone that happens to have read this thread. If this one actually can be enforced, even if it's only in the most obvious cases, I'm okay with it. And I agree with just about all of the points in the two posts above this one, so I'm in favour of this.
 

DHR-107

Robot from the Future
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Orange Islands
Just wanted to echo what I said on IRC last night to Paint, in that I agree with the wording of this rule. As long as the mods are seeing to do something or mention it to whoever then I think it should be fine in all honesty. I do think however that we need a more concrete "Allowed List" as opposed to a "Banned List" like DarkSlay was mentioning on IRC. People are always going to push the boundaries of whatever we put forward.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
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nyttyn: for this part I don't think we need a vote unless it appears to me that we can't come to a consensus with discussion alone (and right now it seems that we can). I think you must have misinterpreted what I said - sorry if I wasn't clear

I definitely do not think this is unenforceable. There are many cases where someone can post on an account that we know is theirs (on the forums, on an identified account on irc, on an account on PS, on a long-time off-site account). Also note that in my proposal I suggest that *anyone* asking for votes for *anyone* is not allowed, so if someone is in the poll and attempts to frame someone else by asking for votes for that other person, the one who asked for the votes in the first place would be subject to punishment if they were found out. That punishment could be as severe as being having your art DQ'd in a clear cut case where voting anomalies are obvious, or simply a demand to have a vote-asking post removed.

Consider the following situation: Ashley is running in the art poll. She has a huge fan base on tumblr through her account ashley-art. Someone makes a post on a new twitter account ashley-art claiming to be Ashley, and one of the first posts is a link to the CAP art poll saying "Vote for me". No post appears on the tumblr linking to the twitter account, and no post appears on the tumblr asking for votes. Brett is also in the art poll. He PMs a moderator telling them about the twitter account.
- Ashley is implicated because her name is on the offending twitter account. This appears to be a potential framing case.
- Brett is implicated because he is automatically considered a suspect in the framing. How did he know about the twitter account?
In this situation it's easy for the moderators to simply do nothing except monitor the voting trends more closely. There is no evidence strong enough to punish either party. They can contact Ashley about the twitter account, say it's suspicious, and allow her to proceed how she likes. The consequence to doing nothing here is minimal at worst. Ashley's fan base will not know about the new account for the most part and no voting anomalies should come from it.

I suppose it is possible for someone to hack someone else's account and post as them but most well used websites have methods for a user to claim they are hacked and that is very extreme.

But the point is that leaving the punishment decision to a behind-closed-doors moderator discretion type policy, we can account for cases where the proof may be sketchy. Personally I prefer to have a clear cut policy but the set of possibilities here is too wide.

Umm also please excuse my use of silly random names
 

nyttyn

From Now On, We'll...
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Seeing as how there has been no opposition to paintseagull's proposal, how it has been almost four days since he made it, and seeing as how we are pressed for time with XY's imminent release, I say that we should implement this rule. Unless anyone has any last minute objections, even though I personally don't agree with it, it isn't going to hurt anything and we can go back over it when we actually have the time - for now let's just impliment it since nobody hates it enough to object and move on with CAP 6.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
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Yeah, we are all tired of discussing this I think. I'll call it done after 48 hours if we don't get an objecting post with an alternate suggestion.
 

Bughouse

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I agree in concept. I am concerned with the fact that we are creating a law that strictly can only be interpreted to make explicit vote-requests a violation. It does make me worry that we may have a bigger fight at some point in the future over what is and isn't asking for a vote. That said, if someone can really manage to successfully campaign in a significant enough fashion to win a poll they otherwise would have lost, without actually explicitly asking for a single vote, I'd be surprised. So I'm going to temper my worries about the future judicial enforcement of the rule and tentatively support the proposal along with everyone else.
 

paintseagull

pink wingull
is a Top Artistis a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Conclusion:
We will add this rule to our policy and to the OP of Art Polls:
Asking for votes for your submission or for the submissions of others is not allowed. Anyone found to have done so risks punishment at the moderation team's discretion. If you find that someone has broken this rule, please contact the CAP moderation team with your evidence and no one else. Mini-moderation of this rule is also considered a serious offense and can be punished.
Whether or not we add it to other poll OPs will have to be decided on at a later time.
 

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