Hi all, a new morning and it's time for a new beginning

I’ve had discussions with a few of the competitors last night on email and IM and, after sleeping on it, we pretty much decided it makes sense that I step aside as comp organiser at this point. A number of reasons were discussed (if i can remember them all.. annoyingly there were quite a few! )

1. We watched users come and go, and there wasn’t as much support for my own proposal as I had hoped.. and im pretty much out of ideas.

2. Whatever the general mood, I’m not prepared to let the result of the “other” thread go and stand as-is, you may need find someone not as stubborn as me

3. It allows fresh ideas and a new approach, feel free to argue that the competition was previously mishandled and organised poorly by myself if it enables you to rerun votes or introduce new restrictions (with donor and participant agreement ofcourse). You can start here

4. Continued from above, posts like this make it more difficult for the comp to rerun threads or negotiate for prizes etc - it would be better if that was handled by someone else now who is credible in everyone’s eyes.

5. If possible, we need someone closer to the mod team who can get a quicker response from them to the issues we raise. This could be key to us going forward.

Therefore there’s a position to fill, to lead this competition forward in it’s last steps. I have removed my name from the wiki and it now says "Competition organiser: <vacant>", it’s time for someone to step up and fill it. I’m happy to work with you, if you find that helpful, but I'm taking a definite step back and you will drive the competition to it’s conclusion

It's a real pain in the *** at times , but it's a great opportunity to get more involved with the community

Here are some thoughts from me.
This is what comes to my mind first: Kojacker, don't step aside! Noone could do it as well as you did!

Okay, so we have an "other" category in which the developers used some unfortunate "tricks" to get some votes.

My first question: were such trickery found in other categories as well, or only the first two of the "other" category are guilty?

If only they were, we could either find a good solution (eg. swap the 1st and 1nd places with the 3rd and 4th, or something like that), or just re-run the voting in the "other" category. (With no guarantees that this time it will go clean.)
If the other categories were not affected, leave those alone.

Kojacker, by no means should you abandon us, I doubt the others could do it any better than you.

So, of all the people who wrote their opinions in this thread, there is one person who was unlucky enough to lag behind.
This was a thread that was stickied for more than two months, and the competition was organized for even longer than that.

I feel sorry for him, but I think there was enough apps in the competition to say that there was a fair deal of developers who _could_ find the information about it.

Hi, I'm just a user who has no real idea of the difficulties and hard work involved in developing an application.
I donated to this competition and have enjoyed the great applications and games that have come from this great initiative.
So heres my tuppence...

1) Kojacker, please don't step aside.
You started this great competition and have dealt with any issues along the way openly and fairly.
I have confidence in you and that you can resolve this to the satisfaction of the community.

2) The actions of some Developers while probably within the rules don't for me reflect the spirit of the competition.
I hope they see how their actions could be construed and consider bowing out of the competition if necessary.
This wouldn't be taken as an admission of wrongdoing, more as a respectful act towards the integrity of the competition and the community.

Sorry if I'm a bit long winded.

lol Venemo, you're so melodramatic! Im definitely not abandoning the competition - im 100% determined to see it reach the end. I'm absolutely worn out by it, though, and at this point there's more determination than enthusiasm left. I think it could be good for the competition if someone would like to step up and organise it for a while, it would bring some fresh ideas and impetus

In the meantime Im gonna go catch up on some sleep .. lazy Sundays for the win!

I agree with Venemo and Kojacker, don't stand down from the competition. I haven't been following the competition much due to personal responsibilities and lack of time, but from what I've seen, you've always been there coordinating everything and ensuring its a smooth process.

Just wondering if the two apps involved in this issue where leading the way from the start, can't we split the prize between them or even split it with third place too. I suggest this as if they were winning anyway, although this situation occurred, they still deserve some winnings for making an application that has benefited the community.

First of all congratulations on your 666 thanks! But let us get back on competition issues. Almost everyone (me included) agreed that rerunning the poll is not a good idea. Also almost everyone agreed we should take out votes from accounts created past certain date.

But noone beside you, Kojacker, proposed any solution for situation in which polls cannot be unanonymized. Well in this case there is only one category suffering much from this and we would have to decide what to do with it. I think rerunning the poll will do more bad than good - there would surely be different results and developers that did not cheat would suffer from this. Also it will create much fuss and I think it should be avoided to save the good name of competitions like this. Therefore I propose that if there are no means to unanonymize the polls we should take the results as they are now.

Lesson should be learned and next competition (I hope there will be one) should have this issue solved by hard rule forbidding this and securing the option to unanonymize poll results for any case.

And the last thing: Kojacker please do not leave the position of competition organiser even for a short while! This competition needs an active organiser and you have been doing such a great work! Without you it will surely become chaos in no time. Please do not let it happen.

very simple question: did you contact the MAEMO COUNCIL?!

By the way.... I'm spending more time reading this thread than coding. I unsubscribe from this thread and good luck with all this mess.

kojacker: There is no reason for you to step down. In the eyes of a developer who was a competitor in this thing it was very well run. I understand completely that you are tired, everyone calling you out here for some bullcrap you did not expect and what is not your fault. Its impossible to make perfect rules, yours were good enough. Just relax for a few days, wait for the mods to respond to your PMs they are on week end holiday too

I am a bit surprised why you have not been promoted to a moderator my talk.maemo already when the competition started? They must know you are running a coding competition that involves hundreds of people voting and sending messages to numerous threads, this amount of messages and people need moderating. Removing flame/trolling and of course monitoring the polls so that rules are being followed.

What we others could do: make a thread where we support kojacker being promoted to a moderator permanently so we can get a clean ending to this competition and have another in the future!

yes , I also think that it have no reason for kojacker to step down. It is the first maemo contest, the rules can not be prefect at the beginning. It is a long process to improve the competition.

What Jonnenau said is also my opinion , I can't think of a better way to express my feeling , sorry for my poor English.