^to add to the above response, I would recommend you contact @Phoenix-Warbird - she is an expert on love, girly pink stuff and fluffy bunnies

waw mult players

I've always liked a good debate, and thought-provoking discussion can be really interesting and rewarding. So, I've decided to start up my very own 'Opinion Column', which I hope to write every issue to cover a range of topical issues in the game and community. What with Nighty-Whitey's article on hosting Press contests and the recent Craft-A-Tank contest, I thought it would be a good time to write a little piece on my thoughts about the matter. Enjoy! Contests. One of the awesome things the development and staff run for the community. Thanks to the great prizes on offer, they understandably attract a lot of attention and excitement from many players who either take part or watch from the sidelines. However, are they really all that great? There's been controversy (as usual) over the results of the Craft-A-Tank contest, with a few disgruntled players complaining about the way they're run and judged. In fact, one entrant went so far as to exclaim: Now, the Craft-A-Tank contest - and in particular, its results - haven't actually been that controversial. There have definitely been more controversial contests in the past, unsurprisingly. In fact, the results of Press contests often get even stronger reactions. But it's worth noting that this happens every single time any contest is held for the Tanki community, whether by the development or by the newspaper. Why is it that contests never seem to happen without controversy? Is it because of consistently bad management and unfair judging? To my mind, it would seem that the simple answer has to be "No". At this point, I think I'll put forth my strongest argument as to why the contests and the way they are run are not systemically flawed, at least... Whenever contests are run, the Tanki development and staff don't have any ulterior motives which might mean they intentionally run contests badly. We are not corrupt, evil or biased. As per the above quote, when the results seem to be 'wrong' in the eyes of some players, calls for the upholding of objective standards such as 'justice' and their antagonising terms - 'unfair', 'biased', 'corrupt' to name a few - are often thrown around like high-frequency missiles. But, stop and think about it for a few minutes. Why would the people running the contests actually intend to break such objective standards in the first place? The newspaper staff, for example, only get paid a lump sum for starting up and running the contest in the first place, receiving nothing thereafter for judging the entries and releasing the results. And the development don't even get paid any more for running their Tanki-wide contests, let alone for 'rigging' the results in any way. I mean, there just isn't any benefit to be secretively gained by not being fair or just. Well, a typical emotionally-fuelled response to such a ground-breaking suggestion might be "But what about when staff members win contests? Or their friends?" Again, why on earth would we bother going out of our way to give the prizes to particular people? Note that judging for such contests is typically done by a selected panel of judges, not by any one individual; not even an individual judge has much authority over the results. The results are then further checked and finalised by either admins or the CM, who are frankly way too busy to have any 'special friends' in the community! Put simply, the judging is entirely confidential - it isn't even publicised as to who is doing the judging, let alone how - and so fellow staff groups (or 'special friends') have no way of knowing what's going on behind-the-scenes any more than ordinary players do. They can't influence the results because they're not told anything! It's difficult to offer your judge-friend a bribe when you don't know exactly who's responsible for judging, and even then, you'd have to offer lots of bribes to a majority of judges for it to actually affect anything. I think this demonstrates that it's frankly not only wrong to suggest there's systematic corruption in contests (having been involved first-hand in these judging processes for both Press and Tanki-wide contests, I can assure you guys there isn't!), but it's just an impractical and unrealistic suggestion. The system is built such that nobody has undue influence. It wouldn't really make sense for a majority of contest organisers or judges to suddenly decide to go out of their way to facilitate cheating, when all they would be doing is risking their own jobs and positions. Now we've established that there aren't any systematic flaws in the way contests are run and judged (if you don't trust me, you at least have to accept it's unlikely based on the above reasoning and a lack of evidence to suggest otherwise), let's put things into context a little. Am I trying to suggest that contests are always run perfectly and every deserving entrant is always rewarded? Definitely not! The contests are judging by human beings, and despite our best efforts and most rigorous checking processes, we do still make bad judgements sometimes. But here's the key point: a lot of the time, what some angry entrants might see as 'bad judgements' are actually justifiable and at least OK, and it's subjective factors that influence their perspective. I'll admit it's completely understandable, though. If you've spent hours on an entry that unfortunately didn't quite make the cut and then you see a prize-winning entry which you don't like, then complaining about it feels like the natural thing to do. However, just because you don't like an entry doesn't mean it didn't deserve the prize it got. The first thing you as an entrant have to do is to accept that like the judges, you could equally be making a flawed or 'bad' judgement, and that it's possible that the judges saw something in the entry that you didn't which really makes its prize justified. Once you've accepted that you're not the centre of the world and that you're equally fallible, then you should be able to much better hold your tongue when you realise you're getting onto tenuous grounds, and instead put forth a legitimate critique. The most important thing is to say whatever you say with a respectful understanding that it's your opinion and not the law of the universe. Sure, maybe your criticisms are justified, and maybe the judges did make a poor decision with an entry. However, maybe they didn't. It's all down to balance. Being constructive will go down much better with the contest organisers, who would hopefully be able to swallow their pride and make use of your feedback to improve the judging processes in the future (and often do). Often, the main reason entrants react in the way shown in the quote above is not really because they've thought about it in this balanced and reasoned way, but because they're letting their emotions get the better of them. You can argue all you like, but (again) having been involved in numerous contests on all levels of the community, even if you might think you're being reasonable... you're probably not. After all, most human beings I communicate with on a day-to-day basis have been overly affected by their emotions at least a few times in the past, especially when something of theirs was at stake. I have fallen victim to this mindset myself. We all have. When things haven't gone our way, we're bound to look at things through a lens which is at least a bit blurred with our own biases and anger. Most of the time, entrants overreact to contest results, and either realise in hindsight that maybe the contest wasn't so bad or they don't (in which case, you can be sure you'll see them raging again after their next contest entry loses out). It's an attitude thing. If we all, judges and entrants included, stop to think about how we can improve the community experience rather than defending our own perspectives beyond reason with an "I'm right and you're wrong" style approach, then contests could be so much more fun. Time and time again, some players and entrants react in the same ways, sparking the same old flame wars and unnecessary arguments. It doesn't have to be this way! There would be a much more positive atmosphere if we all appreciated the good that we experience, and took more care over the bad. Close your mouth and open your ears, think before you speak, all that clichéd stuff. And remember that far from being out to get you, Tanki is just a place for you to relax and have fun! What do you think? Feel free to (respectfully) voice your opinions below, share your thoughts and even argue why I might be wrong! But be veeery cautious about that... if you do, don't expect to get away with it without a sharp and powerful response from my end (evil laugh) No but seriously, by all means go ahead and argue for your own perspective on this issue. I look forward to reading what you guys have to say about it! I hope you enjoyed this article, and rest assured that there'll be more coming up soon ;) Did you enjoy this article? Check out the rest of Issue 53 right here!

Mods put a stop to the copycat topics, sure, but not the original one. The original topic was perfectly 'normal' for a while - in fact, it was even 'successful'. It was closed on both occasions by request. Otherwise, it would still be around and this topic would be considered a copy. And excuse me, but who are you to come out of nowhere and degrade the original topic?

1. Do you think this is true? No. 2. What will your last words be? I don't exactly have any plans as to what my last words will be; it would be a little pessimistic if I already did xD 3. Who will you last talk to? My closest friends and family. 4. Will you rob the richest man on earth? On ethical grounds, no - but even so, what would the point be if the world was ending? 5. Will you invade Tanki Online Headquarters? Nah. Of all the things I could be doing, that isn't really one of the more attractive options.

People take a chance on such risky medical procedures only when there's no other options that could also be effective. In this case, having the /vote system set to multiple votes needed works well because genuine mults are likely to be voted by multiple players, stopping individual trolls from abusing the system. Although, yeah, I understand where you're coming from - it's just due to a lack of resources available to immediately respond to many cases of multing in battles. The current /vote system is alright, it would just be ideal if there were more moderators to focus on responding to voted battles, but unfortunately there are only so many suitable moderators in the community! If you take a video and report in Game Violators in the correct manner, the mults are often dealt with and receive severe punishments. Again, not saying the current situation is ideal, but at least there are mechanisms in place to try to prevent multing.

Completely unfeasible - would need very many moderators at hand for that - and could also be taken advantage of by random /voting. However, I sympathise with where you're coming from, the problem is there just aren't enough resources to attend to every battle where votes are made.

So was I - the claim genuinely did amuse me!

lol

As an ENTJ, I salute your approach to life - especially stopping, thinking and working to solve problems. I would add (along the lines of my own personality type hehe) that it would be great if people were braver, bolder and stood by their values instead of just going with the flow. Ultimately, we should be here to leave the world a better place than when we entered it!

Of course, but 'Welcome' is hardly the right term then, haha. More like 'Congrats and/or Good Luck' or more specifically, 'Welcome to Community Managing'!

He's not new here...

Your date story doesn't add up, it was the 23rd in India at the time of your post... It's not like India follows a calendar which is 2 days ahead, lol.

Oh dear... Uploading the whole DVD isn't protected by the Fair Use policy. Your copyright strike is justified. As per the 'four factors of Fair Use': 1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes Courts typically focus on whether the use is “transformative”. That is, whether it adds new expression or meaning to the original, or whether it merely copies from the original. Commercial uses are less likely to be considered fair, though it is possible to monetise a video and still take advantage of the fair use defence. 2. The nature of the copyrighted work Using material from primarily factual works is more likely to be fair than using purely fictional works. 3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole Borrowing small bits of material from an original work is more likely to be considered fair use than borrowing large portions. However, even a small taking may weigh against fair use in some situations if it constitutes the “heart” of the work. 4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work Uses that harm the copyright owner’s ability to profit from his or her original work are less likely to be fair uses. Courts have sometimes made an exception under this factor in cases involving parodies. I've put all the bits in italics which work against your use of the video. You've pretty much gone against every factor. And... Myth #3: “Entertainment” or “non-profit” uses are automatically fair use. Courts will look carefully at the purpose of your use in evaluating whether it is fair, but the three remaining factors also need to be considered. Declaring your upload to be “for entertainment purposes only”, for example, is unlikely to tip the scales in the fair use balancing test... etc. etc., the above has been pulled from YouTube's page on the subject here: https://www.youtube.com/yt/copyright/en-GB/fair-use.html The Fair Use policy is meant to protect the user in copying copyrighted material for limited and/or 'transformative' purposes without needing the permission of the owner, which are of some value - such as taking small excerpts from a film for research or personal-use-only purposes. Of course, having purchased the DVD you already have personal use rights. The Fair Use policy does not, however, allow you to upload whole copyrighted DVDs to YouTube. This violates the rights of the owner, who owns the material and who has the reasonable right for it not to be completely copied in a way that could damage the owner's profits. Your case is quite clearly one where the copyright strike was absolutely justified - it's not even dubious... Next time, don't upload copyrighted DVDs to YouTube. You're damaging the rights of the owners, who deserve to have their work protected. What you (and many others) have done is why artists, film-makers and singers continue to lose the pay they're rightfully entitled to for their work.

Prof. Pseudo-Science BpSc MpSc PhD aBcDe etc. etc.

better than me :c

Actually a really nicely done interview here, gg Pho :P

Thanks! Haha yeah, whilst I took a humorous approach to this article I agree completely, the game and community have actually had a positive impact on me in many ways! Just so you know I did it first, the other Reporters are the noobs not me :ph34r:

why are you on this topic Rem this topic isn't for you

Greedy...

Sad news. Glad to say you've been a great EN community manager, and I'd like to say thank you for being so open, fair and inclusive - it was wonderful working on projects as part of the staff with you. No wonder you became the face of this community. Doesn't need saying that you'll be missed very much, really hope to see you around at least every so often in the community you've shaped and built from the ground. We'll all be losing an awesomely innovative and friendly manager. Good luck with any future exploits you get involved with, it can only get bigger and better from here!

yw ba...ok nice quote editing, just noticed -.-

Happy Birthday Phoenix-Multbird :wub:

Would just like to add to the above that despite the fact you're continuing to hide posts to try and manipulate the post order, now in an attempt to conceal my criticism of you doing exactly that (oh the irony), I look forward to reading any future articles you publish! :)

Unnecessary gravedigging... Right, that's the second time you've hidden and re-posted now to make it look like I did the gravedigging... fortunately, this time round I made sure to quote your earlier post. Not sure what exactly you're trying to achieve here. If you're repeating a post made elsewhere unnecessarily to bump your old topic and you get called out for it, why overreact and try to troll in that way? Just relax man, there's no need to be immature and try to manipulate posts just because of some small (legitimate) criticism you received. I hope we can all conduct ourselves in a mature and respectable way as fellow forumers. Good luck with your topics!