Project One Clarification

Done
Done 😀

20thebear, which one is yours
20thebear, which one is yours ? As we are both from the North East i will vote for yours mate.

Gkam84 wrote:Gregww1, That

Gkam84 wrote:

Gregww1, That was my comment, I voted because it was a female. Sorry, if you don’t follow me on twitter, you won’t understand my goal for 2014 is to do lots of things for womens cycling, That also includes running the womens world cup in the fantasy game.

But I started this thread, because I am totally confused about the rules regarding what is and isn’t allowed here. I know if my bike had gone through, I would have been all over social media to get votes, as it was going straight to a charity to do with as they wished. I would have been able to utilize their social media outlets aswell. Which in all likely hood would have given me a huge advantage.

Until things are a little clearer. I won’t be voting for any more. I hate to stir things up, as has been pointed out on facebook. My name appears on the contributors list of Road.cc. So I don’t want people thinking I am biased or know anything more than any of the rest.

I know none of the entrants at all and have no access to anything to do with the voting.

I am just a concerned user who sees what I thought might account to “cheating” and thought I might highlight the issue and see how it is being managed

Regarding the female thing, that’s fine, I just didn’t think it was a valid reason to choose one over the other, it smacks of a little discrimination, the polar opposite of what you are trying to achieve. No, I did not know about your goal, it is a commendable one and one I support as long as sight is not lost on equality rather than favouring one gender over another (which is unfortunately something that feminism seems to forget a lot of the time). Anyway, this is a post about bikes, not feminism.

Yes, I share your view on the “cheating” aspect, although we might slightly differ in our view of what is cheating and what isn’t, unfortunately at the moment, without the clarification that you seek, it would appear that nothing is off limits. :/

I’ve seen this before in
I’ve seen this before in other online competitions, and sadly it’s a case of if you can’t beat them join them. Yes, you can vote from multiple devices. Yes, you can vote daily. No, I’m not sure how and why, I’m not technical enough. But, the administrators of the competition should be able to monitor that and remove those votes if it was not allowed. If they can’t do that, then unfortunately how can it possibly be policed?

Also, it’s more of a case of popularity and how many friends you have these days and your ability to manipulate social networks to your advantage more than anything else. In fact, Dave kind of states as much in his spiel on the voting page, I quote “ceaselessly harangue your mates to vote for you”. Well, that’s great, if Justin Beiber had entered, he’d have instantly won.

A slightly fairer system would require voters to register and would not include the names on the entries. In my forum post about trying to persuade people to vote, I think the first reply included that the person voted for another bike because the designer “is female”. WTF? What the hell has that got to do with it? I didn’t realise it was a gender battle. I thought it was a contest between which was the nicest looking bike for the money (and that would include the components used, most of which you can’t really see from the picture). Clearly I misread the brief, I should have changed my name and created a multi-coloured monstrosity so that it stood out.

So, what have I done to generate ‘votes’? Well, I posted on the forum here to try to persuade folks who were undecided, it probably put them off, but never mind, I hope it amused some if nothing else. I’ve tweeted to my followers quite a bit and asked them to retweet, maybe 10 or so have. I’ve posted on Facebook daily and a few friends shared initially. As time goes on less and less are interested. In both of those cases I’ve stated that you can vote daily. I estimate I’ve probably generated 1/3rd of my votes by people voting again. I also have another tactic up my sleeve, which would be totally above board, but which hasn’t worked…yet.

What haven’t I done and what won’t I do? Well, used a “proxy” to vote over and over again, I wouldn’t even know where to begin with that. I haven’t bought votes on a website, which I know you can do and have been beaten by someone in another competition in the past who did. I was tempted to offer my current bike in a draw if I won this bike to anyone who retweeted or shared my social media posts…and then I realised that I might be accused of bribery and subject to the bribery act 2010, not good.

So, with a week to go I’ve pretty much given up, turning my attention instead to upgrading some components on my current bike and looking forward to riding it again once these storms bugger off.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, as long as the winner wins fairly then I don’t mind losing, unfortunately it is totally unclear what is fair and what isn’t at the moment.