I’m reposting this because my old post seems to have disappeared… 😮

I think this measure will have an impact, just not in the way it is intended. It can occur that people vote for their friends rather than the quality of the builds. If this happens a lot, it detracts from the competition. So if we assume by this logic that crews will be more likely to vote for their own members, we’d be searching for a method to inhibit this phenomenon.

Large crews will on average be able to enter more new build each month than small crews. It is more likely small crews will be blocked from entering for three months if they win once. So it will not have much effect on the same crews winning repeatedly. This is not necessarily a bad thing. No person and no crew has the “right” to win every once in a while. The “best” build should get first prize. It should be completely irrelevant who made the build. The question is: How does one determine which one is “best”?

We have decided that the number of votes decides the best build. I think a popular vote like this is in a way the purist form. We could have an “expert” panel to make the vote “less populist”. But then you get the opposite phenomenon where the jury is accused of “undermining the popular opinion”. I don’t think a jury consisting of staff members would make the situation any better. With all due respect, they are not “experts” when it comes to judging builds (to be fair, who is…?) and their disproportional opinions would make the results even more wonky.

There is no perfect system. Some component can always be accused of skewing the results. Compare the rankings of the Eurovision Song Contest in 2016 using the old 2015 voting system and the new 2016 one:

Using the old voting system (which was much more heavily influenced by the “expert” votes), Australia would have won. What is right? What is wrong?

On the other side of the spectrum, it would not be cool for the same person to win every single BOTM every single time. We do not want this either, because this gives the impression that the result is a foregone conclusion. However, the same person has rarely won twice before. I don’t think this is a serious problem. And if a person is pumping out epic builds month after month, do they not deserve to win more often than Joe Bloggs?

As this new rule currently stands, I think the three month entry ban is far too harsh and will just discourage many, many good builds from being entered. (Because if your semi-awesome build reaches third place, you won’t be able to enter your super-awesome build in the next competition. So why even enter the semi-awesome build?). It’s not about who or which crew wins, it’s about producing good quality builds for everyone to enjoy.

At a stretch a one-month ban could be considered in my opinion. But I don’t really see much of a point, especially as it’s the phenomenon of friends voting for each other that seems to be the problem rather than the same individuals winning over and over. The current suggestions don’t solve the problem. If they did, I’d be in favour of them.