VOTING THREAD: List of Colors

[Vipershark]

Okay, so with that posted, I'd like to say my two cents as well so that everything is on the table.

The voting period for this compo left me in a pretty confusing situation. The voting table currently shows different numbers than the amount of people that are listed, but I'll get to that in a minute.

Basically, the votes were so heavily skewed in favor of SchAlternate that there ended up being multiple ties between the entire board, which would have resulted in everyone on the table ending up in the silver/bronze/runner-up spot, thereby technically having everyone in the competition win by default simply because so many people voted for one entry as opposed to the others. I definitely want the competition to be fair but I don't consider it very fair to have everyone in the competition receive a badge on the same level as those who could/would have won had the votes been less one-sided.

Is it really okay to just give the winning prizes to people for simply finishing an entry rather than actually beating the competition? Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way trying to call anyone's work worse than anyone else's but I know if I were in a competition and I poured everything I had into some artwork and someone else ended up tying with me based on a technicality rather than an actual match of skill I'd be pretty pissed off.
Ant that's where my whole problem came from. As the competition manager it's my job to resolve issues as far as ties, but how do I resolve a situation where essentially everyone except the first place entry is tied?
Last night when I got home was to be the deadline for the poll. Had I closed it last night, my vote would have been for Gorsal before ending the poll, leaving the results as what you currently see now: SchAlternate in first, a 3 way tie for second, and a three way tie for third of entries with one vote each.
This would have resulted in three second place winners, three third place winners, and no runner-up, which doesn't really seem all that fair to me in a competition of spriting skill.

Because of this, I decided to hold my vote and leave the poll open overnight and while I was at work today, hoping that somebody else would vote to tip the scales in someone's favor and break the tie. That didn't happen (actually I think SchAlternate got even more votes so lol) so I was still stuck in the same hole. I asked StarSock64 for advice because I wasn't sure what to do. As you can see above, we didn't exactly agree with each other on what's considered fair so I went and asked some other users (Jetters, Kosheh, Keychain, Sketchasaurus and Rhymey) what I should do. Long story short, I ended up asking them to vote for someone to help break the tie so that the competition wouldn't be entirely one sided.

I'd like to make it very clear that I did NOT tell them who to vote for; that was on them, but I did ask them to break the tie, yes. No matter who they voted for (as long as it wasn't SchAlternate, he was winning anyway), that would help tip the scale.
Well, it ended up that Gorsal got those votes, leaving me still with a two way tie for third place and the runner-up spot, and I was left with a choice between Captainkakarot64 and StarSock64. Okay, I didn't vote last night and still had my vote, so now I could use it to break the tie for the entry I thought was best, right? There was now a definitive second place and I was still going to vote for the entry that I thought was best, though it was within the bounds that I was voting for the better of the two that were tied.

StarSock disagreed with this, and she thinks that if you're going to vote for the best entry you should vote for the best entry out of ALL of them, regardless of a tie. In other words, she didn't think I should vote for either of their entries (therefore not breaking the tie) because I didn't believe that either of them were the best overall entry, as she said above.
I believe that as the competition manager, not only do I have the right to vote for whoever I want (as does anyone who's voting, of course,) but also that in the event of a tie, it's my job to resolve that tie. Is it really "manipulating votes" to vote for anyone I want (even to break a tie) if my vote is still unbiased for the entry I think is better and I'm not actually screwing with anyone else's votes? I don't believe it is, and this is where we disagree. I can understand where she's coming from that people should vote for the entry they think overall is best but for me in particular, since I'm running the compo, I also have the responsibility to fix voting issues when they arise... right?

Anyway, very long story short, StarSock and I (and the other previously mentioned users) talked about it for a while and came to a solution that I think can solve the problem. I've reverted the votes to where they would have been last night had the poll ended naturally, with my vote for Gorsal being put in. This now results in SchAlternate taking first, with a tie for the 2nd, 3rd, and runner-up positions.

In order to break the tie, we're going to have a 3-way sprite-off between Gorsal, Captainkakarot64, and Starsock64 with another poll at the end to determine what the final placement will be.
More details on that later.


Finally, I'd like to apologize if my way of trying to fix the situation is considered unfair. I make my fair (haw) share of mistakes and I can understand how asking people to help break a tie for me rather than voting naturally for who they want can be considered unfair or manipulative. I wasn't shooting for any kind of vote fixing in any direction and was simply looking for a way to solve the issue with other people actually voting as opposed to just forcing some kind of outcome, which would be REALLY manipulative and unfair.
I'll leave this thread open for a while so you guys can chime in if you want while we hammer out the details for what to do next.

Sorry about screwing things up, everyone.