Voting is open

Well we finally got the voting set up for the film contest. If you want to vote, you can register here. I wrote the code yesterday - I'm still able to do some programming at times which is still my favorite part of the job. (So here's a chance to comment about the quality of my code.)

If you have any comments about what we have done to minimize vote fraud, please comment here. It's an interesting problem as we don't want to make the process onerous but we also don't want one person with a auto-vote program winning $10,000.00 for their entry.

I am really happy with the videos we got. Yes they're of varying quality. But people put in a significant effort. I think many of them are very good efforts. I will not list my favorites as I have a warped sense of humor.

Thank you to everyone who created an entry and good luck to all.

Update

Please read newer posts, including this one, for responses to comments here and additional information.

Update II

Please read this post for responses to the additional comments here.

Comments

[EC]

So you say that you are using these early rounds to gain interest for the later ones... so how is it fair that the entries who will continue are the ones who pester their friends and families and what not, and the ones that you paid to make. Which is making this whole cointest a one sided joke. There are a lot of good entires that will not make it in becuase you are 'waiting to gain interest'. I think its stupid, this contest should have be advertised way before entries started being deleted for have no votes. This is not giving anyone a fair chance of winning the gross amount of money that you say is being given away. After going through this once, and knowing that the votes will still be as little as theya re now throughout the entire contest, i don't think i'll enter again and i'll probably tell people not to enter. Why should we waist our time making a good piece of work only to be kicked out of the contest, becuase the company is paying people to make entries and those are the ones that always seem to be in the lead. This whole thing puts a bad taste in my mount, and i doubt my mind will change, come the last round.

[Budderfly]

As much as I love watching B&B videos and I think they are hilarious... I think it's unfair that they are included in the contest. You paid them to do a short and yes I read your reply about their contract. But c'mon man, there are plenty of entries in the contest. Give the other entries a chance! Perhaps B&B can withdraw and pass along the torch to the other film makers. Otherwise, what was the whole point of having this contest?

[what?]

simply... if you have the "formula" for the voting and you are confident in stopping fraud. how many rounds will there be?
you should at least state the rules.
like the 5 with fewest votes get pruned at the end of each round or maybe more reasonable 1/2s with fewest votes get pruned. I know that you are wanting to draw attention to your software (which is quite good) but you can't outlast the ones that will promote you. you have to keep people interested. and as the only ones to direct people to the contest voting, are the contestants, then you need to give em a reason to keep pestering their friends families and coworkers.
after all that is all we have right????

[MaRKy MaRK]

is this coNtesT riGGed?

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DiDn'T Windward Reports finance "CuBiCle WaRs"?

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i sMeLL a CoNspiraCy!!

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Reply from Dave:
There is something wrong with your caps key.

[EC]

I really think that any more then one round of voting is ridiculous. I cannot see there being enough people interested in voting if there were other rounds. I think that the premise was good, but this is NOT American Idol, where they promote voting all the time so that they can insure enough votes come in to carry on more rounds.

As you can see, right now the ones that are winning have jumped up in the last little while, which means that they are telling all there friends to vote, and most likely not all of them care enough to even go to the site and look at the entries.

So I really don't know what you are going to do to ensure that enough votes come in to make this contest not one sided like it is already looking to be. Well that my rant for now, but i really would like to hear some feed back from the admin for this contest so they can explain to me what they are planning to do. thanks

[Michelle]

Hi! Can you please put a disclaimer somewhere saying that you won't sell the phone numbers to anyone? That'll calm some of my friends down so they'll vote. Thanks!

Note from dave:
I will do this as soon as I get back. You may also put a fake number. We will use the phone numbers only if we think, but are not sure, that a group has registered with several emails. In that case we will call with some questions.

[Guy]

wow, this contest is easy to scam.

[Matthew]

Sorry for all the commenting, but one other thing occurred to me. There are 35 entries, and a round for each entry. If each round is 2 weeks like it is now, doesn't this mean the voting will run for over a year?

[Matthew]

Yeah I've seen my share of contests where people suddenly pop up with ridiculous amounts of votes as well. I think watching IP is a good idea, although I do have some concerns with the system though. Keep in mind these are all just suggestions for improvement, and I'm already impressed you guys spent so much time trying to make sure this was a fair contest:

1. 20+ rounds of voting is quite a lot of voting, I'm not sure enough people will be interested to keep coming back and voting (it would be great if that happens of course). But if it doesn't, will you guys shorten the amount of voting rounds, or perhaps carry over votes from previous rounds?

2. I would suggest allowing people to enter a vote immediately after they enter their information or even simultaneously. They should still need to validate by clicking a link in their email. If it's not validated within say 3 days, then their vote does not count. This better because it allows people to immediately vote; even the simple task of registering, going to email, then going back to the voting site is enough to deter some people, doing it this way would eliminate one of the perceived steps you'd have to complete before voting. Afterwards, the person can validate their vote at their leisure, since most people will probably check their email within the next three days.

3. I understand the need to check up on domain, but I'm also concerned about that since I live on a college campus, and I will be encouraging lots of people on campus to vote. That will probably mean many similar domain name/IPs. Hopefully this doesn’t mean everyone from campus will end up being removed from the vote tally.

[BackflipFilms]

I think the system you set up is great. I've been involved in a few other contests that were plagued with issues about voting fraud and it will be nice to know that this contest won't have those problems.