Contest Abuse?

[Lex Solari]

I am a merchant and club owner in SL. Recently, had an encounter in a club  in which one person received 6 votes and the nearest competitor had two. This is almost always an indication that cheating has occurred in one form or another. Either alts are voting for the primary owner or there has been some sort of consortium between several AVI's to vote for one person (and split the winnings amongst themselves). Anyway, in this case it was 6 people all visiting on Skype and agreeing to vote for their friend. I don't know what their intentions were regarding the winnings. Perhaps they just wanted their friend to win. Perhaps not. My question is, according to LL guidelines, do I have a right to remove them from the contest? I consider this stuffing the ballot box and unfair to the rest of the guests as well as the sponsor of the event. Would like to know what my legal options are for future events. Thanks. 

[Freya Mokusei]

There are no guidelines from LL on fairness, contests or related subjects. LL does not consider this an issue, and all issues concerning L$ (and not involving gambling, banking or RL currency) are considered 'Resident Disputes'.

It's not an issue of legality, but of publicity. Do whatever you like, but stand by it.

[Pamela Galli]

Unless you 1) publicly announce rules that include "no asking friend to vote for you" and 2) can prove that in fact occurred, I would not think there is any reason to disqualify someone from a contest. To be legitimate, rules have to be clear beforehand.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

You are free to set any rules you want to for a contest.  Just be sure that they are known.  Most contest boards can be set to give out a notecard to anyone that enters the contest.  Just set up your board this way with your rules on the notecard.  Whether the contest entrants read it or not, you can then enforce them.

Alts of the entrant should not be allowed to vote, but its hard to prove.  It is illegal to use anything that monitors for alts..  Friends are a bit different.  Most clubs allow it and encourage people to tp in their friends to fill the dance floor during most of the entry phase.. However most also forbid people doing this at the last minute right before or during the voting so that the friends are there only a few minutes.  Observant staff can see this is happening if all of the sudden people tp right in near a contestant and can then remove them from the board.  So that is pretty easy to control. 

 

[Perrie Juran]

Unfortunately there are always going to be people who game the system.

That's been going on in SL for as long as there have been contests.  And long before there was SL, it was going on in RL.

Some club owners do try to do things to minimize people abusing the system but it can almost amount to an effort in futility.

On the other hand I sometimes marvel that people put so much effort into this for a few hundred $L's!

Me, I've got better things to do with my time and any more unless there is another really good reason for me to go I don't frequent clubs with contests.  I certainly don't go to them FOR the contests.

[Madeliefste Oh]

I know a guy who was in a 'contest club' in the past. He told me they were with a group of 10 friends, and all they did was travel along contests. They agreed on the winner among them for each contest. They won each contest. When not everybody was online and it seemed they did not get enought votes, they tp-ed a few newbies and paid them 5 or 10 L$ for a vote.

[Phoebe Avro]

I have owned a club in SL for almost 6 years and we no longer use contest boards, because i dont like people cheeting

I get the staff to write the top 5 names down who they think should win and send them to me and i add my choices, but i also have final say and can change the winners if i wish, btw i dont have favouritism for anyone

[Czari Zenovka]

This kind of thing has been happening at least as far back as 2007 when my then-partner and I used to enter a LOT of contests.   In quite a few of these events, invariably someone would arrive at the last minute wearing jeans & a t-shirt (ie. nothing close to the "Best in <Whatever>) and win. /facepalms

I recall a thread on this subject in General or maybe even as far back as Resident Answers on the old forum; one person who was a club owner said they had seen instances (not in their club) where the DJ won or one of the club staff people. 

 

[JL Zinner]

I agree witht the info that was mentioned above. I'm a club owner also and I hate using contest for these points, but they do seem to bring peeps to the club. One thing I have been doing is putting the board on random (not sure if the board you use has this feature) and I choose the top 3 so it makes more than one person happy. We sometimes do 'come as you are' but if it's a dress up theme I do insruct my staff to take out indivuals that are not dressed.

 

Unfortunatly there are alwasy going to be those who try and take advantage of the situation so you just kinda have to deal with them the best you can.

[Lexi Zelin]

What does this have to do with merchants?

[IMGypsy]

First time I've had this happen in all the times I have run contests.  I was told by someone at midpoint the names of cheaters that have been banned from other venues.  We did close the contest and had voting for a minute or two and then ended the contest.  Now we are being accused of having alts so that we win!