Quit Jerking Up the Voting Thread

[psych]

Hmm, biggest Jerk award? Now that would be quite interesting. You could have another nomination period and a voting period. Then again, I'm not sure I'd want to see how that turned out.

You already nominated, these words sound familiar?

"Psych...you're an asshole. Not the lovable Maniac kind but the real pretentious, pain-in-everybody's-neck, arrogant kind." - a "Major" trying to pull rank


To keep this thread on the tracks, I personally don't care much for internet awards. The best award is a job that's complete.

 

[Edfilho]

Goodness gracious, people are STILL whinning??? The CIC DID NOT PICK THE NOMINEES!!!!! THE FANS DID!!! NO ONE VOTED FOR PO OR VS OR WHATEVER!!!! AAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Thank you for your attention.

 

[Maj.Striker]

You already nominated, these words sound familiar?

"Psych...you're an asshole. Not the lovable Maniac kind but the real pretentious, pain-in-everybody's-neck, arrogant kind." - a "Major" trying to pull rank


To keep this thread on the tracks, I personally don't care much for internet awards. The best award is a job that's complete.

Don't worry, Psych...you'll always have my vote.

 

[psych]

Don't worry, Psych...you'll always have my vote.

You didn't understand the main point behind my post.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Allright, allright, much as it pains me to do it, I'm shutting this one down. If anyone else has any issues they'd like to air regarding the voting, they're welcome to contact news@wcnews.com. Mind you, if these issues are even one tenth as idiotic as the ones we've seen so far, we're just going to give you the same advice Tolwyn gave Jukaga at the end of Fleet Action.

 

[charlieg]

What a surprise; Privateer Remake is omitted!

I abstain.

 

[Death]

Apparently, some people need a point applied with a sledgehammer. And it's probably not surprising that I'm the one weilding it.

Every one of the nominations for the 2005 Fan Project of the Year were because a fan nominated them for inclusion in the vote, after three weeks and multiple news stories about the nomination period. If a project isn't included, no one nominated it.

Don't complain to us if you were too lazy to nominate a project, or assumed that there was support for it that doesn't exist ("oh, someone else will get it" being another flavor of laziness).

 

[Bandit LOAF]

What a surprise; Privateer Remake is omitted!

I abstain.

Good. If you're too stupid to understand the process, you shouldn't be part of it.

I bet you have a fantastic life full of wonder and amazement. I know I, for one, would never wake up on the wednesday after the first monday of November and be shocked that no one elected me to congress. But you're stupid enough to be able to! And that's *amazing*.

If you giant jerks continue to troll about this -- and that's what this is, not some honest mistake like the first time... you have a giant goddamn message board devoted to instigating this crap -- I will happily remove you all and we will be the richer for it.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

Eh, we wouldn't mind if the thread slid off into oblivion right now.

Standoff is, far and away, the project recieving votes from actual Wing Commander fans. The Gemini Gold votes are mostly newly registered Vega Strike losers who are very, very angry that they forgot to nominate their actual project.

That's not a criticism of Gemini Gold, mind you -- I think it's great... but it has a disproportionate number of votes because the Lunix junkies got their panties in a wad and don't understand that no matter who wins, no one even bothered to nominate Vega Strike. (There's also at least one clear case of jerks registering multiple accounts to vote for the thing - we measure IP's, people, and will clean those out before the final tally.)

I suppose the thread could be stickied, but I find in general that people completely overlook stuck threads -- they've been trained to assume they're FAQs and such that don't need to be read. These threads are mostly for us to link to from the front page, anyway...

 

[Nomad Terror]

the Lunix junkies

In defense of 'Lunix junkies' everywhere, the Vega Strike community is a very poor example of the opensource community at large. Unfortunately the rude, outspoken and obnoxious ones tarnish the reputation of the rest of us.

Projects related to them unfortunately usually tend to catch their bad attitudes and "holier-than-thou" disposition which further causes unnecesary grief.

Rest assured that plenty of opensource programmers and advocates find the Vega Strike community quite undesirable.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

That's good to know. I love the idea of open source software very much... I just have some trouble with the way its vocal supporters present it as the end-all of everything.

(Heck, Vega Strike is a good example -- in spite of how obnoxious these guys are being, it allowed some better people to form a more perfect Privateer Remake...)

 

[klauss]

The Gemini Gold votes are mostly newly registered Vega Strike losers who are very, very angry that they forgot to nominate their actual project.

It would make sense that newly registered users voted for Gemini Gold because, you know, most activity regarding PR/GG happens at VegaStrike's forums, not here. Or at least a sizable portion. Hence, those that don't check this forum and don't have an account had to register a new account in order to vote.
Is that so odd?

That's not a criticism of Gemini Gold, mind you -- I think it's great... but it has a disproportionate number of votes because the Lunix junkies got their panties in a wad and don't understand that no matter who wins, no one even bothered to nominate Vega Strike.

I hope you would have rejected such a nomination because, you know, VegaStrike is not Wing-Commander related. Perhaps you meant Privateer Remake?

Unfortunately the rude, outspoken and obnoxious ones tarnish the reputation of the rest of us.
Projects related to them unfortunately usually tend to catch their bad attitudes and "holier-than-thou" disposition which further causes unnecesary grief.

Ehm... care to exemplify?
Because such attitude is strange to me - never noticed it.
(Please don't quote banning stuff... that's personal and between two people often)

 

[Bandit LOAF]

It would make sense that newly registered users voted for Gemini Gold because, you know, most activity regarding PR/GG happens at VegaStrike's forums, not here. Or at least a sizable portion. Hence, those that don't check this forum and don't have an account had to register a new account in order to vote.
Is that so odd?

Your awful forum has a thread specifically instructing people to register accounts to vote and then get themselves banned. That's terrible. You are guilty, guilty, guilty.

(You also very conveniently ignored the stated fact that your precious darlings are registering multiple accounts to do their voting -- it's not some innocent influx.)

If one of my moderators started a thread about how much he hates Hellcat and how he'd like for us to attack flood the Vega Strike boards, he would be out on his ass so fast his silver eagles would spin.

I hope you would have rejected such a nomination because, you know, VegaStrike is not Wing-Commander related. Perhaps you meant Privateer Remake?

I don't make that call at all. Once again, the purpose of the complicated manner in which this process is undergone is to keep the award valuable by disassosciating the CIC Staff.

Given this, it's the height of idiocy that you people decided on *this* as your cause celebre -- you picked the one instance where we bend over backwards to make sure no bias exists to whine like little girls over.

As for Vega Strike's "status", that's revisionism pure and simple. Before Vega Strike was the massive open source circle jerk it is today, it was just another Wing Commander fan project.

It's been nominated for the award three times -- in 2001, 2002 and 2003, and has twice won the coveted second place "Runner Up" slot. Hellcat himself posted to your board recently about how he'd like to win the award for once.

(I do not, incidentally, have anything against Vega Strike... as easy as it is to enrage people, and that's something I enjoy doing, there's nothing wrong with the project. I find the Privateer Remake, developed by the same people, thoroughly reprehensible... but Vega Strike as written is a fine and noble idea. )

 

[klauss]

(You also very conveniently ignored the stated fact that your precious darlings are registering multiple accounts to do their voting -- it's not some innocent influx.)

There are many reasons IPs could be duplicated other than that. I mean, I know it looks suspicious, and it's probably true what you say, but have in mind that IPs are no proof. Just think "proxies" and you have one explanation.
So, be careful with IP bans... you're risking not only banning lots of other people, but also you really don't ban anyone you want to, because the banned one just has to request a new IP (done with your router's management interface), and you're free to post again. I say banning, but it also applies to posts, logs and everything. Really, IPs are somewhat useless.

If one of my moderators started a thread about how much he hates Hellcat and how he'd like for us to attack flood the Vega Strike boards, he would be out on his ass so fast his silver eagles would spin.

Ehm...

As far as CIC goes, no attention is good attention, especially if every post someone makes there serves only to piss off those in charge (whether the post was inflammatory or the target was oversensitive is irrelevant, the result is the same). That is hardly helping our standing. If we can't communicate civilly with them, it is better not to communicate at all.

In short, please do not flood their forums.

Voting with the intention of drawing extra attention or sticking it to someone can bring no good either, when those whose attention is drawn are infavourably disposed towards us.

There you go.

I don't make that call at all
...
As for Vega Strike's "status", that's revisionism pure and simple. Before Vega Strike was the massive open source circle jerk it is today, it was just another Wing Commander fan project
...

Well, but now it isn't. Can't you reject it if someone nomiated it? Hell... if someone nominated "Microsoft Windows" and "Linux" (a troll might want to ), couldn't you reject the nomination?

 

[Bandit LOAF]

There are many reasons IPs could be duplicated other than that. I mean, I know it looks suspicious, and it's probably true what you say, but have in mind that IPs are no proof. Just think "proxies" and you have one explanation.
So, be careful with IP bans... you're risking not only banning lots of other people, but also you really don't ban anyone you want to, because the banned one just has to request a new IP (done with your router's management interface), and you're free to post again. I say banning, but it also applies to posts, logs and everything. Really, IPs are somewhat useless.

I'm pretty sure I know how the internet works. If we recieve two votes from two newly registered users and both have the same IP, we know what's going on.

We're not performing IP bans (though we do ban popular anonymous proxies by default specifically to avoid this problem), we're banning because people with the same IP are voting.

They'll still be able to view the Chat Zone, they just won't have their votes counted in the final tally.

There you go.

Really? Did you ban the guy? Close his thread? Delete his post? Anything? Nope. Posting something like that is a worthless instance of someone looking for plausible deniability while continuing to enable the problem. It's worse than that even, it's a wink and a nudge and an I see what you're doing but I'm not going to punish you for it. It's disgusting.

Well, but now it isn't. Can't you reject it if someone nomiated it? Hell... if someone nominated "Microsoft Windows" and "Linux" (a troll might want to ), couldn't you reject the nomination?

I've never had to worry about that, this is a highly intelligent community.

 

[klauss]

Really? Did you ban the guy? Close his thread? Delete his post? Anything? Nope. Posting something like that is a worthless instance of someone looking for plausible deniability while continuing to enable the problem.

No... it's just that we manage our forum differently. That post was trying to stop people from doing the incited flooding. You can't command people not to flood or double-vote, you can only ask.
Don't get worked up because we deal with this stuff differently than you. We don't delete posts (usually), let alone entire threads.

It's worse than that even, it's a wink and a nudge and an I see what you're doing but I'm not going to punish you for it. It's disgusting.

That's presumptuous - you may think it is that, but it may or may not be. From my point of view, it's as much as Mamiya could do: urge others not to follow MK's advice to flood this site. I'm sure MK and Mamiya talked privately about it... there's no need to publish internal matters.

PS: Noone has to like you to consider attacks on you not dignifying... I think that's mamiya's position on this, regardless of what he thinks, he can't support inciting indecorous (is that a word) behavior. And no, I don't know what he thinks of this site (just speculative language)

 

[hellcatv]

Do you find it hard to believe that 29 people voted for privateer?!?! ... far less than one tenth of one percent of the total userbase (A pathetic turnout of VS users if you ask me)
If it assuages your fear of large hacking attempts, I've talked to voters 9 through 25... all of them are genuine Wing Commander fans... and most of them didn't have CIC accounts (Having a CIC account may have positive correlation with being a WC fan, but do not mistake correlation with causation!!!!)--and I asked them to register as legitimate users to your message board, adding to your userbase...

There was, however, one attempt at masking IP addresses---but that voter was not trying to vote for Privateer.
It was Spirit, trying to cast the second vote so that PiArmada wouldn't be so lonely with *one* vote...that game is awesome! So if you'd respectfully add one vote to PiArmada from SpiritPlumber we would be most obliged, and maybe these IP address masking attempts would go away, casting a clear light on Privateer.
That is all
-HellcatV

 

[PeteyG]

All those projects that I've used (like Standoff, Gemini Gold, Flight Commander) are totally awesome. The Armada Online and WCIVDVD patch are really cool, but I haven't been able to use them yet. Things like Pioneer and Saga look like they've got great potential.

But PiArmada really tickled me where I like it. I hope some more great things come out of that.

It wouldn't really sit right with me to see Vega Strike on the nomination list. It's like, 'one of these things is not like the other...' in that it isn't directly related to the Wing Commander universe (lowercase u). Which is an important part of a Wing Commander fan project, I think.

 

[Bandit LOAF]

No... it's just that we manage our forum differently. That post was trying to stop people from doing the incited flooding. You can't command people not to flood or double-vote, you can only ask.
Don't get worked up because we deal with this stuff differently than you. We don't delete posts (usually), let alone entire threads.

What the hell are you talking about? This isn't a case of two different 'methods' -- it's a case of you encouraging awful behavior. It's a case of right versus wrong and you're doing it very, very wrong.

Here's an ultimatum: fix your own house or you're banned from mine. Do not post here again until you've deleted the offensive thread in question.

Do you find it hard to believe that 29 people voted for privateer?!?! ... far less than one tenth of one percent of the total userbase (A pathetic turnout of VS users if you ask me)
If it assuages your fear of large hacking attempts, I've talked to voters 9 through 25... all of them are genuine Wing Commander fans... and most of them didn't have CIC accounts (Having a CIC account may have positive correlation with being a WC fan, but do not mistake correlation with causation!!!!)--and I asked them to register as legitimate users to your message board, adding to your userbase...

I'm not going on some vauge notion here - I'm looking at the IPs of the people who've voted. There are now six IPs that have been used to vote twice... funny, the projects that don't have message boards where their moderators encourage people to do this aren't running into this problem.

I really like Privateer Gold, it deserves to win as much as Standoff does -- I'm just saying that there's a valid, conscious effort, supported by your own message board to cheat at this poll. That's just plain wrong.

If someone doesn't have a CIC account, they aren't worth thinking about. They're not Wing Commander fans.

There was, however, one attempt at masking IP addresses---but that voter was not trying to vote for Privateer.
It was Spirit, trying to cast the second vote so that PiArmada wouldn't be so lonely with *one* vote...that game is awesome! So if you'd respectfully add one vote to PiArmada from SpiritPlumber we would be most obliged, and maybe these IP address masking attempts would go away, casting a clear light on Privateer.

Banned users are not allowed to vote in polls -- and Spirit holds a rather unique position as only the second person in history to earn a permanent ban from these boards. He certainly can't vote in the poll.

 

[ChrisReid]

There was, however, one attempt at masking IP addresses

Funny *you* should mention all that. There's always a few people each year who try to screw up the voting. Kris is the most paranoid person ever to set up a forum though, so we have quite detailed reports on what's going on, of course. Once everything is said and done, we'll be happy to let everyone know which members of the community chose to attempt to cheat and deliver the appropriate repercussions. Instead of accumulating more fraudulent votes to remove in the end, we've also made the registration process more robust. Anyone with any problem registering can just send chatzone@wcnews.com an email and we can fix you quickly. In the mean time, we'll continue to monitor everything so that all Wing Commander projects in the running receive their fair shot at recognition.