It seems that the best solution is to reset the entire poll. Let it run on an extra week to make up for the lost time. I cant see what harm it could do. Regardless, what community there is that is currently active have voiced their opinion on the matter and it does seem to suggest that they disagree with what has happened. That alone does not warrant a reversal of staff decision - however it does warrant looking at a possible solution that would be fair for everyone.

For what its worth - I think that the mods made the best decision at the time with the information they had. However there are times when the best intentions are not always the best solutions. Be big enough to say 'crap, I miscalled that one.'

Also for what its worth - after the hoo haw, I downloaded both systems and from my point of view, v3arcade is far better. Its coded from scratch, far cleaner and better written. Thats not to say the other isn't good and has its merits - its just to point out that regardless of my preference, fair is fair. You cant punish someone for a rule that is unpublished and enforced sporadically.

Reset the entire poll, and leave it open until the end of January. Leave January's as-is normal. Who cares if the two overlap?

Just my yule log for the fire ;)

GUYS please have a look at this.. :( whats going on here.. Check out this link https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=93783

Show your support and vote this hack for HotM September!!

Although he has clearly requesting the forum members to vote, his hack wasnt removed from the HotM for September.. https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showthread.php?t=96300

That is neither using the "Send Update" feature or the PM system, or emailing members directly to ask them to vote...

Whether this sort of action will be prohibited in the future, we will find out when the rules are made public...

IMO that is acceptable, as it is contained within the hack thread, and does not intrude elsewhere within this forum...

Chris

I think you are missing the point: MrZeroPage didn't knowingly break any rules because he didn't know about the rules which is not surprising because the HotM rules didn't exist at the time he allegedly broke them. Huh? Anyway, even at this moment in time there are no HotM rules except as existing amongst the staff who can most likely change them at anytime to anything they like because they are not written down! What I wonder is what other unwritten rules we don't know about will be applied in other areas of vbulletin.org not to mention other sites in the vbulletin group? For unwritten rules" I think read "whims". It's a dirty business isn't it!

Could you guys stick to one set or interpretation of these rules.

There are several past nominees and winners who asked for votes (some of them staff members). Now if you say it's o.k. to promote it in your threads, that's more "mass" promotion than PM's to your testers or those seeking support.

We will work out every possible eventuality and word the rules accordingly - Whether promoting it only within the first post of your hack thread is allowed or not, I don't know... yet...

Chris

reset the poll.

You can't even enter a game manually in v3Arcade. That alone takes it down a few notches.

Sure you can.. :p
Admin CP -> Game Tools -> Import

Haven't we done arcade v arcade to death already ....

it is getting boring now,thread should be closed,whats done is done,and what ever has been decided, and no matter what our views will not change decisions that have been made by staff,and as for rules that didnt exist,hopefully the rules will be clearly clarified in future events.

Post a screenshot. When I looked in there I didn't see any place to add the game info manually.

This is the most unfair action I have ever seen done to an individual. I could care less for these types of competitions because they are nothing more than popularity contests. I do have to comment on this.
There are several things wrong with what was done.
First staff decides to disqualify a nominee for breaking a rule. The problem is the rule is not a written rule, but, is an implied rule that everyone should know since staff knows of it.
The person that broke the rule didn't know they were breaking it yet staff decided they did and removed them from nomination.
What really makes this a traversty is the removal was done after the voting started. If anything the whole contest should have been started over.
As a result what you now have is the community upset with what happened and a few of the staff members defending the decision and doing damage control.
In all fairness this months contest should be closed and no further contests should be started until a set of rules is defined and posted for all to see. I also agree with staff that the no spam rule for the site was broken, however, no where is it stated that this rule applies to this contest. What staff should have done is reprimand the user for using the PM system to spam by either a warning or a temp ban.
Now that the damage is done and staff is making itself look bad in their responses to this thead the only logical thing for them to do to save face is close this contest, set up specific rules that leave little to misinterpretation and admit that they might have made a hasty decision.
As I said I could care less for these types of contests, but, what was done here is an injustice and needs to be rectified.

Well said AWS.. Totally Agree with you

Lemme get my photoshop up. He he he ;)

Let's face it, the only reason anyone cares about this is because the arcades are so popular. Restarting the poll would probably be the easiest thing to do to make the majority happy, but that really wouldn't be fair to everyone who's had their hack removed from previous polls.

Jenta, I'm getting sick of your trolling. As far as arcade preference goes, I'm with The Geek. Ibpro might have better support or more features, but as soon as I saw that it came with it's own database class, complete with a second connection, I ran for the hills.

EDIT: I don't know why it needed to be reworded, I thought it was just a funny explanation of why Jenta seems so angry with John. :speechless:

v3 Arcade - Games Arcade System for 3.5.1 is the champion :) ;)

Are any of the previous HoTM contests fair seeing as there winners may have unknowingly broken other rules regarding HoTM? Most likley atleast one previous HoTM winners would of been DQed over a broken rule gone unnoticed. So is it fair to allow IPB Arcade in, perhaps not but is it fair to call anyone an Offical HoTM winner?

Good! :p

yea this is a complete nightmare for the hotm for dec. just redicoulous. we cant get answers completely. i went far enough to make my own poll for us in the general forum, and it got deleted by Brad, and i got sent this PM

still dont understand how my poll affects anything and how i spammed and how its a problem. if this gets your attention brad, instead of the 3 PM's ive sent u already that have been ignored, let us all know why my poll isnt ok. thanks.

You are creating more ppl to vent and most already did in this thread, you do not need to make the staff here to be pitted against memebers.

the staff is already pitted against its members right now on this matter dont ya think

I voted for boofo..... Maybe thats why he yanked it.... :ermm:

You think so. People who has other things to do don't give a damn if IPB pro arcade is removed or not. There are rules which had been applied before but fanatic users are trolling this thread and blaming moderators which i find NONSENSE...

I still think the 'thank you!' hack should be applied to HOTM so ppl do not respond like this again. ;)

I am just fed up. I am trying to follow the board as best as i can and since the moderators decision there is a mess going on here. As a user i am really disturbed. Yes i shall not post like that but what about people try to troll this thread which each of their posts. Subject closed and then reopen by a guy who posted 10 times in this thread. I understand they think they are right but they made their point and moderators made theirs and moderators are incharge here. So there is no point of this nonsense discussion i believe. If you are disturbed you only post your idea's Once not 10 times.

Whos on first??? Wait....Whos on second?

ZZZZZzzzzz......

It's a shame to see IBPro arcade removed, I voted for it over the other offering due to lack of support from the V3Arcade owner.

So, we have a winner that isn't supported, 2 nominees that are still in beta, along with a removed candidate. Then there's the ArticleBot RSS. Is that about right?

Well, I'm voting for ArticleBot because it's not in beta testing and it's supported.

Well even though the IPBPro arcade was removed, it says i've allready voted
I hope my vote wasn't reallocated to the other arcade or something.

Hmmmm, any chance for me to place my vote again ?

The vB-Bug says I already voted for (2) but it is not counted there... ;)

\
No votes were "reassigned or changed". You have voted for the IB Pro arcade mod, its just no longer listed. I'd suggest pming Chris M as he suggested if you need your vote changed.

Why not just run a query and reset the has voted flag for those whos votes you removed? Having 200 odd people pm a moderator isnt going to happen.

Btw, I see googlemap is still on here and the author supposedly sent out an update email mentioning the poll. What was the outcome of that?

If that is true, as I see that something was posted on about that earlier. If this was not followed the same way, then I see Dec HOTH a bit of a sham. So what is up with that? Any truth in it, or just flaming again? :ermm:

To both jenta and lead_weight, did either of you report it? The original mod was brought directly to our attention by several members.

ArticleBot RSS Feed Poster 2.58

because I think its really about vbulletin. but others, its about a game, adds.. Means there are simply things..

Most important topic ArticleBot RSS Feed Poster..

It's my idea..

This is what Jenta must of been talking about? I do not see anything else that brought my attension.
https://vborg.vbsupport.ru/showpost....0&postcount=75

When things like this happen the staff is seen as uncaring towards the membership, please understand that this is not our intention and we do care a great bit about this site and the people that visit it. These decisions are tough ones to make but at some point someone has to make a call one way or the other.

I will clarify exactly how this was dealt with:

On the 20th of this month a PM was forwarded to an admin from one of our member's, the PM in question has been sent to this user by MrZeropage. An admin sent a private message to MrZeropage, this PM explained that sending messages to other user's requesting they vote for a modification was considered spam.

After a discussion that included multiple moderators, and two admins (one begin me) it was decided that the modification would be removed from the poll. This was done because even with a list of users that received the PM, we have no way of telling who the author's friends or beta testers are. In addition to that other hacks were not allowed in past HOTM threads due to PM spamming asking users to click the install button on certain hacks (so they would be in the poll).

At that time an admin gave the go ahead for the modification to be removed from the poll, and a moderator followed these instructions. This action was taken about 24 hours after the initial report was sent to us.

Shortly after much feedback was posted in this thread related to the issue, and some things have been tossed around that are simply not true (partly thanks to a bad word choice on my part). We listen to all feedback and do our best to resolve problems like this, but you must realize that things do take time and we can't make everyone happy. I think the response to this thread has been so great because many people use the arcade add-on's, when you combine their user base together we are talking about a nice chunk of users keeping an eye on this thread. When a large modification is removed fans of it are going to post questions asking why it was removed, this is just natural.

"The unwritten rule" was again a bad word choice on my part. The rule in question is this one:

This rule covers the entire site, including HOTM threads. What the users were not aware of is the action the staff would take if someone was caught spamming others in an attempt to win HOTM or have a hack included in the poll.

In response to the user feedback we are making a few changes to the site to make our policies more clear. The first step is the new guidelines for HOTM polls, these will be listed on the rules page, in hotm threads, and will also be PM'ed to hack authors in the current months poll. These guidelines will state exactly is allowed and not allowed when asking users to vote for your modification, it will also outline the actions that will be taken if you are caught and how the issue will be handled by the staff. We will also re-write our site rules soon to make them more clear and understandable.

The current staff position on this poll is it will continue as is. We do not feel ipb pro arcade should be allowed back in the poll because that would not be fair other hack author's that have been removed from HOTM polls in the past. We can not bend the rules for one user while enforcing them upon others.

You are of course free to send in more feedback, this is an on-going issue and I think it will be some time before it's fully resolved. I encourage you guys to employ some people skills while posting in this thread (and elsewhere). You will find that I am much easier to work with when we discuss things like adults. I know a lot of lost in text, but try to remember to be kind to each other.

Gotti: I have been visiting family the past week and was sick for awhile after doing that. Thus I have not sent any replies to anyone that PM'ed in the last few days. You'll find my reply in your PM inbox.

So what's up with googlemap then?