Why has my contest thread been locked?

Over a month ago, I stated that I would be hosting the Fruit of the Month Coaster Contest, and that there would be a contest for each month of 2011. You, the staff of CoasterCrazy, had ample time to discuss any potential conflicts with the NLT with me, instead of waiting until I had spent a month working on this to coldly slam a lock on my thread.

I would already feel quite irritated if this was the only problem I saw with this lock.

However, I have found no rule on this site which prohibits a member from running an unofficial contest at the same time as the NLT. In fact, the current contest forum rules are ridiculously out of date, and bar the contest subforum from being used for unofficial contests, but I assume that rule is no longer in effect as a large number of unofficial contests, including my own, have been hosted in this subforum.

If you are concerned that the NLT will steal entrants from my contest, than I assure you that I am well aware of this risk and that it is my business and mine alone.

If you think people will flock to my unofficial contest put together by just one member of no real site standing, as opposed to an official contest which was put together by several staff and VIP members working together, and has been running for several years, then consider that if the NLT is so abysmally run that this scenario actually takes place, than the solution is to improve it, not try to stamp out competition.

I therefore would like to request that my thread be unlocked. I have violated no rule of this site that I am aware of. If I have, and there is a valid reason to effectively shut down my contest, then please inform me of it. If not, kindly unlock my thread instead of emulating TPR staff.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message,

Omnigeek6

maybe because the big site NL contest is going on.

Originally posted by Jcoasters

maybe because the big site NL contest is going on.

My post may be a little tl;dr, but if you can't take the time to read, why take the time to reply? The answers are in that block of text.

[Oscar]

A submission of a contest idea does not mean that your contest will go live. We appreciate the work you have done but we would like to push back your fruit of the month contest begin dates back a month or two. Just so that things settle down with the official Site Contest which is the Tournament. I am sure you know that every year we start this tournament and no other contests are allowed to start during the time period that the tournament starts. That has always been the case and it will the case this year to.

While you may have posted something a month ago, it does not mean we saw what you posted. After not hearing anything from us within 3 days, you should have done due diligence and sent a staff member a private message a reminder. Here is a list of staff members. Don't take your anger to compare us to other sites, if we were like other sites, you would have been banned already. Chill! [pshades]

To add to what Oscar said, it seems that you didnt even notice what MY reply to your topic was. Since you just noticed that it was locked you seem to think we wronged you and that is not the case. What is the case is that you didnt take the time to read the relpy and notice that we dont run contests besides the NLT around this time of year. You just made yourself look really foolish in my opinion for over-reacting to a simple message. Here is that message since you clearly didnt read it,

Lets wait until the NLT is done with,

and as Oscar said, Chill!

I apologize for my overreacting and firing off a somewhat angry message earlier.

However, I still have a couple of minor quibbles:

1. I have apparently "made myself look really foolish" because I did not know that it was not allowed to have an unofficial contest at the same time as the NLT. As I have mentioned, the contest forum rules are several years out of date, and state that unofficial contests should go in the simulation subforums, which is clearly no longer the case. In neither these rules, nor the NLT rules, is anything said about conflicting unofficial contests. The only piece of information which could have tipped me off was that previously no unofficial contests have been run at the same time as the NLT. However, I do not think it is entirely unreasonable for me to think that people postponed their contests our of fear that too many designers would already be signed up in the NLT and not have time to do two contest tracks simultaneously. I am unsure how my ignorance of a rule which I could not reasonably have known about warrants a condescending reply.

2. Judging by post dates from 2010's NLT, the tournament typically takes up the entire first half of a year. IMHO, this is a pretty long time to ban all other contests.

3.

What is the case is that you didnt take the time to read the relpy and notice that we dont run contests besides the NLT around this time of year.

As I mentioned, I was simply told to wait. I was never linked to a thread containing this rule, or even told that it was a rule. Although I realize in hindsight that this was paranoid, I was concerned that given all the drama over the NLT, tempers were a little hot and someone saw my contest as a malicious attempt to undermine the NLT. As I said, I am no longer of this view, and realize it was paranoid.

I will happily postpone, or even cancel, my contest, if CC staff give a valid reason. My issue is that inadequate information was available for me to determine the rules, and when the thread was locked, Tetsu did not clearly state that there was a rule against contests conflicting with the NLT.

There is no rule against it. We just dont do it. It seems distracting to run more then one contest during the NLT.

Your contest thread will be unlocked after the first round of the NLT. (Hopefully that will be around the end of January. Also, by the end of the First Round I mean the day that the tracks are due for the NLT.) That way your not competing with the NLT which at this time is open to anyone. You will loose out on the well-known builders as they advance but your contest could help un-cover a new great designer.

EDIT: I have updated the "rules" in the Contests forum. Rule 4, near the bottom is the newest rule in there and I will post it here.

4. While it is not any violation to run contests during others, we normally will NOT allow contests to run while the NLT (No Limits Tornny) is running. This applies only to the first round. The day those tracks are due, your contest will be allowed if approved.

[Mikey]

So after discussing this matter with the Honorable Judge Oscar, we have come to the following conclusions.

That it would interfere with traditional notions of scheduled annual traditions to permit the start of your contest at the present time, but that it would be a disservice to you to give you an unreasonable length of time in which you must wait to start your contest. So accordingly, the following comprise shall be enforced.

You may start your contest on or after January 25th, 2011, or after the deadline for first round submissions has passed, whichever comes first.


SO ORDERED

This site has indeed deviated from the original rules that I started about the contest thread. I originally said that any unofficial contest could be held at any time, without staff approval, in the open no-approval-needed "No Limits Coaster" forum section.

I have no idea when people started ignoring this rule, posting un-official contests in the "Contest" forum, and the staff started needing to approve them. And I'd also like to know what the staff's new rule on unofficial contests is, as it is technically still my responsibility to update the "Using the Contest Forum" topic.

Originally posted by cjdI have no idea when people started ignoring this rule, posting un-official contests in the "Contest" forum, and the staff started needing to approve them. And I'd also like to know what the staff's new rule on unofficial contests is, as it is technically still my responsibility to update the "Using the Contest Forum" topic.

I think it's because everyone HAS the capabilities to start a new thread in that section. I actually thought anyone could make a contest because anyone can make a new topic in the first place. If you guys want only official contests posted in there, you can remove the 'start new topic' option for everyone else. They can only be allowed to respond to topics posted in there and whatnot.

That might help out clean the contest forum to be used for only official contests, and the "No Limits Coaster" section to be used to unofficial contests and such.

just a thought.

^ To be honest, I dont think thats possible at this time.

[Oscar]

Anyone can start a new topic on the contest forum but it is not publicly displayed unless approved by a staff member since it gets held in a moderation queue.