*Ended* It's Time to Vote for Your Favorite Pumpkin

Quote from Rasterman : Graph the votes vs. order of the pictures and I'm sure you will see a trend, the spike at 200+ is probably someone who sent a mass email to their friends to vote for theirs directly. Not having a random listing makes the voting almost pointless, the first page pumpkins will get magnitudes more views and votes than the rest. To eliminate the 'friends voting' problem only people who entered should get to vote, and if you don't vote your submission is disqualified. Since you are unlikely to make them random perhaps an easy fix is to use some javascript to make the link to the gallery go to a random page in the series, better than nothing.

I would have to say that be simply looking at the votes leaders right now I think your argument is pretty flawed about the votes vs order of the pictures. If you were to look at the pumpkins who have received the most votes to this point you'll see that four of the top 9 are #100 or greater. That mean's that people have already looked through half of the pages at that point. Personally, I didn't mind looking through all of them. While I may not have clicked on each one to see it in greater detail I at least gave them all a glance...

I do think you can argue that those entries with lower numbers are getting more page views but I think the quality of the pumpkins is what is driving the votes. To simply accuse people of cheating just because they weren't one of the first to submit their entries is a little overboard.

In the end, I think the random page is a fantastic idea. Then we wouldn't have to have debates like this about who may have cheated and whether or not it was all fair

I was going to mention that. There are some from the higher numbers in the top. I think if it had been random that might have been nicer, but it really isn't affecting it that much.

If you're just going by the numbers, then 17 of the bottom 20 are #100 or greater. Order does seem to play a factor in voting.

Just wondered on the rules. Did they say just 1 pumpkin could be entered? If so, where does that leave the entries that have multiple pumpkins?

Also, the placards were to read "Slickdeals 2008"...I came across a couple that didn't have the year. Isn't this only the third year this has been done? If so then they would know if any pumpkins were previously entered (assuming that is the reason they wanted the year).

Would either of these issues disqualify anyone on a technicality or was that taken into consideration by the mods prior to posting them?

Again, just looking for clarification on the contest rules since they are no longer available for review.

EDIT: Found the original post with the rules.

http://forums.slickdeals.net/show...6&t=968235

It doesn't state 1 pumpkin, but it seems to imply it in the first 3 rules...the year on the placard is mentioned.

Congrats to all who entered our 3rd annual pumpkin contest! Here's the list of winners. Check your pm box for the link to claim your prize.
Grand Prize Winner
It was difficult for us to pick a grand prize winner out of so many great pumpkins. In the end, buvwon's pumpkin edged ahead. It won the popular vote and it incorporated the SD logo.



Highlights

Quote from slickdeals : Congrats for all that entered our 3rd annual pumpkin contest! Here's the list of winners: [code] Entry # # of Votes Profile 131 78 buvwon 211 77 taylorpsx ["http]

I think you may have made a mistake and left out a name or 2 - Entry #5 was ours, #211 was someone else's

Edit: Weird - when copied it here, it's correct - maybe the original post was messed up