paintseagull
pink wingull
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:
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!
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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:
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.
A purposely ambiguous rule from four years ago that was not written in the OP and that requires moderator discretion.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.
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?
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.