So, who won the summer splash article contest

Coach McGuirk · #1 (**permalink**) 10-04-2005, 01:58 PM

Just curious...

imported_Drumset Connect · #2 (**permalink**) 10-04-2005, 04:51 PM

Coach McGuirk, your article was superb but ultimately we decided to give the honors to the article regarding Left Hand Speed. PM us your mailing address and we will send some cool shades your way. Thanks! This goes to full metal as well.

Coach McGuirk · #3 (**permalink**) 10-05-2005, 11:59 AM

No disrespect to the author, but the "...Left Hand Speed" article was published on 7/23. The contest period as stated at http://www.drumsetconnect.com/promos/ is 8/1/2005 to 9/30/2005.

Did the rules change?

imported_Drumset Connect · #4 (**permalink**) 10-05-2005, 01:08 PM

The rules did not change but when we implemented the contest it was in the beginning of august. So all submissions thereafter would have been included. Since the author of the left hand article submitted only shortly before and expressed interest in being entered, we allowed it to be judged for the contest.

Coach McGuirk · #5 (**permalink**) 10-05-2005, 02:02 PM

So the rules as published didn't apply to all of us?

At the risk of sounding like a sore loser (really, I'm not), I'll say: there are many aspects of this "contest" that appear more than a little suspicious. Among them:

1) A moderator won

2) The winning entry clearly did not meet the stated contest criteria (submitted between 8/1 and 8/31).

3) The rules were changed on ~9/1 to extend the deadline from 8/31 to 9/30. (This was frustrating for those of us who made an effort to complete our submissions before the 8/31 deadline and get our post-count up to 15 by 8/31.)

4) Today we learn that a special exception was made to the rules to allow a moderator's article into the contest even though it wasn't submitted between 8/1 and 9/30. AFAIK, this special exception was not disclosed until after the contest was over.

5) The submitted date on the winning article was recently changed from 7/23 to 8/1. It looks like someone is trying to make it look like the article was submitted within the stated contest period, when in fact it wasn't. Hmmmmm...

6) The "winner" was only announced on this forum after I started a thread about it. Why wasn't a winner announced on 10/1 in the announcements forum? Why weren't qualified entrants notified of the results via email, PM or a message on this forum? The only reason I can think of is that the contest was such a flop that there was no intention of naming a winner at all.

Smells a little fishy to me...

I honestly don't mind not winning a fair contest. I wouldn't have as much of a complaint if Gyutae's "Guide to Buying..." had won. The whole moderator winning thing would still look suspicious but at least that article was submitted within the stated time period.

Had I known that the rules didn't matter, I wouldn't have bothered submitting anything.

imported_Drumset Connect · #6 (**permalink**) 10-05-2005, 05:56 PM

Well I can see where you are coming from and I'm sorry that you feel the results are unfair. However, I will try to the best of my abilities to explain things.

1) Yes a moderator did win. However, being a moderator does not give any advantage. We judged based on the content of articles only. Considering that 2 of the 3 entrants were moderators I don't think you can say that things are fishy just because a moderator won.

2) As we said before, the contest started on 8/1 because that was the day it was initiated. We allowed gyutae to enter his article into the contest because it was submitted only a short while before. This will not happen in the future.

3) Sorry about the frustration. We extended the contest because there weren't enough articles in the contest to judge fairly. By extending it, we hoped to receive more entries and make things more interesting. The point of the 15 post count is to encourage active Drumset Connect members to contribute, not to make things harder.

4) You're right. We should have told everyone the list of articles in the contest before it was over. We'll make sure to do this next time.

5) That date was actually supposed to be changed when we let the article into the contest.

6) Winners and such will be announced in our next site update. Things are pretty slow right now.

Once again, sorry for the confusion. This is our first attempt at a contest and it's basically a trial and error kind of deal. Look for more contests in the future as we grow. We'll try to organize things much better.

Also, it was a very hard decision and it was an extremely close race with your article.