I withdraw from the contest.

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The time is 6:45:19 PM

I withdraw from the contest.
	Phaedrus Master Poster (2660 Posts) 7/4/2004 11:17:57 AM	To the ActiveWin staff I just wanted to apologize for my childish behavior during this contest. When it was first announced I thought that is sounded like a fun way to help get more people involved in this site. I've never been a huge poster, but I figured I'd use it as an excuse to get more involved in this website (I've always wanted to) Little did I realize but within days of the start of this contest it would become abundantly clear to me that because of the actions of two people (you know who you are) I stood no chance at all of winning without resorting to pretty much spamming the boards with idiotic statement and comments. Some of the thread here have 40 posts between two people saying nothing at all. So in order to compete I had to start posting stupid posting all over the site, in forums, in old new everywhere I could think of. I'm in the running to win and I truly do think that I can if I keep this up. But I'm not going to, this is my last post. I strongly urge the ActiveWin staff to revoke this contest. Nobody in the top 5 deserves to win this prize (myself included) We have acted like like little children. I can think of a number of ways that you could fairly give away the prize, and if your interested in them just let me know and I would be happy to help you out. Obviously in the end it is up to the ActiveWin staff to decide who should be awarded this prize. But just remember one of the two rules that we were given was to not spam the boards, well just look at them we have been. People have been replying to old news (myself), others have been posting lame comments onto 3 years old forum posts from people who have obviously left long ago. As I've said before I'm done doing that, if somehow I do happen to win I'd like the activewin staff to pick a member that did not spam the boards like a rotten little child, and give my prize to them. Someone that deserves to win it should have it. Now if you will excuse me I'm going to spend some time with my son, something I have been not doing enough because I have been posting like an idiot. Phaedrus This post was last edited by Phaedrus on Sunday, July 04, 2004 at 11:18:32 AM.

	monkeydog Guru Poster (825 Posts) 7/4/2004 2:57:12 PM	You're a trooper Phaedrus. Thanks for being a real man. (As for me, I'm half man and half woman)

	Mr. Dee Master Poster (3459 Posts) 7/4/2004 3:40:52 PM	QUOTE: Originally Posted by monkeydog: You're a trooper Phaedrus. Thanks for being a real man. (As for me, I'm half man and half woman) I must commend you also Phaedrus, for your honesty. But I must also rebuke for your mistakes, you should not have spammed the Forums in the first place. You are the one whose responsible for the triggering this distasteful posting rampage among the popular posters. I have been aware that you have been spamming, you posted the samething over and over again on a particular which I think was unfair, I have never done, my comments my drift away from the topic sometimes, but at least I'm not using sneaky tactics like spamming which is just crossing the line. For everyone else sake, I hope you hope you have learnt from this lesson, I wouldn't have a problem with you continuing posting, but lets try and make it relevant and upto the needs of the user. Some of us have have replyed to posts with correct answers and we are adding unnecessary replies to it anyway.

	Phaedrus Master Poster (2660 Posts) 7/4/2004 5:09:35 PM	I plan to continues posting on the site, just not to win a contest. As far as I'm aware I did not post the same thing over and over, I may have his similiar comments on similiar articles. I know on a couple post I ended up with two or three things for some reason. It's a shame you cannot see that you are doing the exact same thing, but thats fine. Just don't try to take some holier that thou position with me since your just as guility with me in this whole situation. Before I started to post tons of things sodajerk and others ware already all over you complaining about your bullcrap posts. However I am an adult and as such it was totally up to me and I should not have started posting tons in the old news just to catch and keep up. I was not mentioning names before. But since you feel like acting all innocent in this I will mention yours. I just hope that you are disquilified from this as well, you do not deserve to win a prize. I highly doubt that people not in the top posters for the month would feel that you did nothing wrong while I spamed. We both have spaming the hell out of these boards with stupid posts. This post was last edited by Phaedrus on Sunday, July 04, 2004 at 5:16:09 PM.

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/4/2004 10:19:19 PM	I believe that even though the contest has resulted in spam, there have also been truly helpful posts, and I think site traffic was the main goal of the contest. I think what went wrong here are a few things things: 1) Everyone was automatically entered 2) There were no strict guidelines for the contest 3) When Sodablue started posting spam, he was the only one removed, but when Dee started replying to every message, he wasn't reprimanded and as a result everyone else took this as a cue of a newly accepted threshold in regards to what would be considered bad activity and what would be considered good activity 4) As you can see, many of the posters who participated in the contest usually have very well worded and helpful posts. You're right that the quality has degenerated somewhat because of the contest, but I believe that this was due to the lack of restrictions that was placed on the users, but it is unfortunately very hard to create rules for this type of contest in the first place. It is hard to properly gauge the "quality" of each post, and since this is subjective, would have been argued between both administrators of the site as well as forum members. The administrators could have ended this contest whenever they saw fit, and I think that if they stopped it at this point it would be a little unfair to those who felt they were participating according to what was accepted on the site. This post was last edited by Halcyon-X12 on Sunday, July 04, 2004 at 10:21:34 PM.

	Phaedrus Master Poster (2660 Posts) 7/4/2004 11:52:03 PM	They could have ended this contest that's true. I don't think anyone can deny that the posting has been pretty stupid for awhile now. However from what I've seen the real problems only cropped up on Friday and later, that is when everything just went crazy in the home stretch. You say it's hard to judge the "quality" of the posts, but I don't find that at all. Open up any forum on here and pick 5 random posts from the first page. It's almost all crap, mostly two of three people saying stupid things back and forth. I'm sure some helpful things have been said, but one thing that was accomplished for sure is that they people that were actually here and wanting help did not get it. What this contest should have been about is helpful participation. The rules could have remained what they were, I feel that is fair. However the winner should not have been chosen by post count. The Admin's of the site could have paid attention to the new messages and forum posts and together picked the person that was the most valuable member of the Activewin community over the past month. That would have kept people from simply spamming the boards, and I feel made for a fairer contest. Most of us here are adults, and as adults I don't buy that each and every person that has contributed to this spamming of the board did not realize they were not doing things the way they were supposed to. Even if they don't want to admit to it. As such I don't see how it would be "unfair" to anyone if they pulled the contest. It was unfair of us to abuse these boards in the first place. That's just my opinion I could be wrong, but it's how I feel. Phaedrus

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 12:09:28 AM	Yes but to hold a contest in the name of "helpful participation" would require a way of rating the posts, and you would probably get some people who feel the need to vote everyone's suggestion as unhelpful. Unfortunately there are not enough active users to provide a good way to self-moderate. Otherwise, moderators could have rated the comments, but that would take a lot of time and counting the results would take forever. At least this is July 4th weekend and most people won't be offended by what is happening, and next week this will all be a distant memory. At least for the most part it has generated hits for the site. I don't want to say I started this but I can't deny playing a "me too" part, as soon as I found out on the 2nd that I had a chance of winning I decided I might as well go for it. I never even planned on competing otherwise. Dee held the title for a month, you took him down, and that made me think I could win as well. I don't know what else to say... This post was last edited by Halcyon-X12 on Monday, July 05, 2004 at 12:10:41 AM.

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 2:01:52 AM	Well, the contest is over now, it's midnight.

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 2:18:42 AM	Sorry, I missed one of your points... When I talked about the quality of the posts, I meant that before the past 3 days the quality of the posts were really good. I meant in the past 3 days it degraded into garbage. It's not like normally we don't try and make good posts.

	Mr. Dee Master Poster (3459 Posts) 7/5/2004 2:47:53 AM	QUOTE: Originally Posted by Halcyon-X12: Sorry, I missed one of your points... When I talked about the quality of the posts, I meant that before the past 3 days the quality of the posts were really good. I meant in the past 3 days it degraded into garbage. It's not like normally we don't try and make good posts. Congratulations, I think you have won Hal, we did good together. If you win, deserve it, and I think you have, we'll know later to day when AW applies their SQL procedures and automatically gets the results. Phae, I hope we can still be good friends, I have nothing against u, but don't make judgements on who should get prize, let AW staff decide for themselves.

	Mr. Dee Master Poster (3459 Posts) 7/5/2004 2:52:05 AM	QUOTE: Originally Posted by Mr. Dee: QUOTE: Originally Posted by Halcyon-X12: Sorry, I missed one of your points... When I talked about the quality of the posts, I meant that before the past 3 days the quality of the posts were really good. I meant in the past 3 days it degraded into garbage. It's not like normally we don't try and make good posts. Congratulations, I think you have won Hal, we did good together. If you win, deserve it, and I think you have, we'll know later to day when AW applies their SQL procedures and automatically gets the results. Phae, I hope we can still be good friends, I have nothing against u, but don't make judgements on who should get prize, let AW staff decide for themselves. I will admit too, I went a little crazy, but it happens when coffee is involved.

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:04:36 AM	Lucky, I hadn't really had anything all day. Now I can't even sleep though... I was thinking, maybe they held off on posting any news so on monday they could post a lot and get rid of last week. This post was last edited by Halcyon-X12 on Monday, July 05, 2004 at 5:05:31 AM.

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:07:07 AM	Anyway I hope I did win. I can't wait to get onto Windows and off of this Linux crap. Who was I kidding?

	msucks Master Poster (1716 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:11:43 AM	actually, it wasn't sodablue the one who got banned. it was sodajerk. And he began spamming because he was pissed at the exact thing phaedrus is mentioning. Stupid worthless spamming and worthless comments like the ones mr. dee did from day one of the contest, over a month ago. He was banned, but mr. dee kept on with his stupid one sentence remarks, and from then on everyone followed thru. If this contest was meant to increase traffic to a site with traffic problems, this wasn't the way, as only the few traffic came from the same few users.

	msucks Master Poster (1716 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:14:04 AM	stricter rules should've been placed. This was basically a who's the greatest spammer contest. And it was sorta weird answering to user's questions from 3 or more years ago. how pathetic. It shows was a bunch of greedy bastards most of us are.

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:19:55 AM	I keep getting them mixed up... Well I figured if we were answering posts from 3 years ago it wouldn't be useless. If anyone else has the same problem at least it'll already've been responded to. Perhaps sometimes the solution was a little drawn out but I think eventually we provided some help. It was a little depressing going in that Win9x forum, it brought back a lot of terrible memories. This post was last edited by Halcyon-X12 on Monday, July 05, 2004 at 5:21:40 AM.

	msucks Master Poster (1716 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:21:36 AM	actually, gonna unfortunately have to agree with the spammer of stupidity dee in that activewin got their increased traffic, which was what they were looking for with this contest, so they're just gonna reward the spammer who made the most spam by number count.

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:24:30 AM	I don't think they were looking for a spammer per se... I'm actually surprised that there weren't many new threads started. I found some bugs in the forum software too, hopefully we helped by beta testing.

	msucks Master Poster (1716 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:28:23 AM	and come to look at it, never on any other forum have I seen such an easy, rather lame way of participating. Just by posting. Usually it's by skill, or by merits. dee should've been called upon when he started making those stupid one line remarks. There were no stupid one line remarks before until the contest started, and they began with mr. dee. you halycyon came in late in the game. Dunno if the AW are going to sort out posting by posting to sort out useful postings from worthless one line remarks, don't believe so.

	msucks Master Poster (1716 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:34:12 AM	no, they were looking to increase traffic in AW, which sodajerk pointed out before being banned, because it's been flaking in traffic. The forums before the contest had been mostly empty for about three years. So, I just believe they're just gonna as I said, reward whoever posted the most, regardless of whether it was spam, or dee-like stupid postings, or whatever. I started a few threads. See? That proves the point of this silly contest, almost nobody started anything new, they just replied to the same posting by some users who are probably dead now or in another continent. And why do the forums aren't on a final version?

	msucks Master Poster (1716 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:39:09 AM	QUOTE: Originally Posted by Mr. Dee: QUOTE: Originally Posted by monkeydog: You're a trooper Phaedrus. Thanks for being a real man. (As for me, I'm half man and half woman) I must commend you also Phaedrus, for your honesty. But I must also rebuke for your mistakes, you should not have spammed the Forums in the first place. You are the one whose responsible for the triggering this distasteful posting rampage among the popular posters. I have been aware that you have been spamming, you posted the samething over and over again on a particular which I think was unfair, I have never done, my comments my drift away from the topic sometimes, but at least I'm not using sneaky tactics like spamming which is just crossing the line. For everyone else sake, I hope you hope you have learnt from this lesson, I wouldn't have a problem with you continuing posting, but lets try and make it relevant and upto the needs of the user. Some of us have have replyed to posts with correct answers and we are adding unnecessary replies to it anyway. don't be a crook dee, you did spam too, in the form of stupid remarks since the contest started. If anything, maybe the remaining users should have another contest where only them participate, ya know, those who kept mostly quite while the other users began their spam race.

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:41:02 AM	QUOTE: no, they were looking to increase traffic in AW Oh okay, I feel a lot better then actually. I didn't really think about it that way... This post was last edited by Halcyon-X12 on Monday, July 05, 2004 at 5:41:45 AM.

	Phaedrus Master Poster (2660 Posts) 7/5/2004 9:16:06 AM	The quality of the posts were really not that great even before the last three days. The few people that were in the game were posting junk before these last three days too. But it did get much worse. Mr. Dee I don't recall us ever being good friends, so it would be pretty hard to still be good friends. But that doesnt mean we couldnt be. I don't disklike you or anything. In fact one thing that posting to all the old news showed me if that your not an idiot that makes stupid posts. Your posts before the contest were all well thought out. Ultimatly the winner is of this contest is up to ActiveWin. I'm not attempting to tell what to do. I was simply making a suggestions as I really don't feel people that bend the rules so severly, and compltly shattered the spirit of the contest should be awarded for that. But I'd guess they will feel differnt. Thats up to them. It really is ashame that jerkyboy had to fly off the handle like he did. He was right in hindsight and maybe he could have gotton them to see that before this last weekend. I'm off to get my son ready for his class. I guess we will find out the winner later today.

	monkeydog Guru Poster (825 Posts) 7/5/2004 4:13:25 PM	Well, one thing I can say is that each and everyone of you deserves a hit from the ten foot ActiveBong!

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:21:19 PM	Well then I guess my posts normally suck, because I only started competing when I saw the 7/2 update. However I don't want to become enemies with anyone over this (or anyone at all ever). At least Sodajerk did his best to try to warn them. No thanks, dog, I don't wake and bake. This post was last edited by Halcyon-X12 on Monday, July 05, 2004 at 5:25:16 PM.

	Phaedrus Master Poster (2660 Posts) 7/5/2004 5:47:25 PM	Your posts don't normally suck. In fact most of them are pretty well thought out. I think you seem to be one of the biggest spammers in the contest, for exactly the reason that you just listed. You did not start to compete until after the 7/2/ update. The rest of us busted out butts getting up to 2000+ posts in a month's time. You passed 3000 in a weekend. See the problem? But we all screwed up. Lets just try to make well thought out helpful posts in the future.

	monkeydog Guru Poster (825 Posts) 7/5/2004 6:39:16 PM	Boy - it's already 5:30 pm and no results. It sure is taking them a long time to rig the contest...

	Halcyon-X12 Master Poster (4929 Posts) 7/5/2004 7:15:52 PM	Oh okay, I agree. I guess I misunderstood... Sorry...

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