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Merlebird wrote: It's clearer if I use an example. In sticker price alone, the year's subscription to Kings Wild Shorts is, I think, the most valuable*, so for many raffle voters it was probably their first choice. Suppose Gonzalo ranked it on his prize preference list accordingly at the time he submitted his ballot. His name gets drawn first, the mods declare his choice in absentia, and prize selection rolls merrily along. Except, in this hypothetical, Gonzalo does not show up to finalize his claim within the allotted window of time. Who does the subscription go to? The next raffle winner on the list? The next one on the list who originally indicated a preference for that prize? The next runner-up to receive a prize drawing? We can't just send everything to 2pc and call it a day. He'll end up on Hoarders.

*This analysis does not account for the value of montenzi's dignity, which is, of course, w̶o̶r̶t̶h̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ priceless.

That sounds like a real nightmare when you put it that way. It would basically reset the entire process from #2 down - not ideal. Would be a helluva nice surprise for the newly-added member, lol.

Merlebird wrote:...We can't just send everything to 2pc and call it a day. He'll end up on Hoarders.

Lol wtf makes you think I'm not already?

Dear Amy,

A few months ago, I publicly called you out for being an amateur Mod (probably among other things). After your hard work and dedication to the UC 2018 DotY contest, I am publicly acknowledging that you are no longer an amateur Mod.

Regards,

Chris

TwoPiece wrote:Dear Amy,

I'm sorry I'm a tsundere edgelord who never learned how to apologize correctly. You are the best and I appreciate all your hard work, even if I'm not mature enough to admit it.

Regards,

Chris

ftfy buddy

I had another thought about the prize selection process (please, keep the applause to a dull roar). Let's say we make a set time to respond, whether it be 24- or 48-hours, or a few days. If we don't hear from a person in that time, they are bumped to the bottom of the list. This would give them time to still get a prize as long as they responded back before the final spot's time limit was exceeded. Perhaps a member was met with an unforeseen emergency and genuinely wants to participate. This could give them a second chance at receiving at least some kind of prize rather than forfeiting their chance altogether. Again, this is probably over-complicating things and they should just lose their slot, but we're spit-balling here. Cheers

I often forget that not every place in the world has as easy access to internet as in Finland. 4G coverage that does not cover the entire country but does cover 100 % of the population, works also inside buildings and in forests, save for the most remote places in Lapland. Unlimited data plans are cheap and commonly sold as average data usage per user in a month for DNA (one of the three major operators in Finland) was 19,8 GB in the first half of 2018.

Ever since I switched to using a smartphone from my old and beaten Nokia in 2013, I've taken it for granted that I can access to internet anywhere I want to with fast and reliable speed, no need for a Wi-Fi.

Eh, I'll take my home connection over reliance on a LTE-A/WiMax network anyday, 1 Gbit/s (over land) is faster than LTE-A, way faster-- even though the theoretical maximum data transfer rate is the same in practice they're nowhere near the same-- typically more connections competing for bandwidth of LTE-A than with land connections/WANs.

One thing that does bother me with the move to 5G though, is that it's going to require a much higher concentration of TX/RX hardware stuffed everywhere to reliably deliver, since it is higher frequency and therefore more susceptible to environmental attenuation than LTE and LTE-A standards-- and since the standard itself requires a lot more bandwidth/MIMO. So, enjoy it while it lasts, that might change with 5G.

On the topic of prize allocations, have you guys thought of just letting RNGesus take care of the problem? RNGs are imbedded in Microsoft Office and OpenSource Office software nowadays, a lot of them with user definable ranges/limits.

If someone could link me to a .txt file of the participants or link me to a post where there are listed and I'll make the text file and the same for a list of the prizes, I can do it in Excel myself. I'm an uninterested third party, since I did not participate.

Merlebird wrote:

TwoPiece wrote:Dear Amy,

I'm sorry I'm a tsundere edgelord who never learned how to apologize correctly. You are the best and I appreciate all your hard work, even if I'm not mature enough to admit it.

Regards,

Chris

ftfy buddy

Lol NO.

I'm sorry for NOTHING!

Merlebird wrote:

TwoPiece wrote:Dear Amy,

I'm sorry I'm a tsundere edgelord who never learned how to apologize correctly. You are the best and I appreciate all your hard work, even if I'm not mature enough to admit it.

Regards,

Chris

ftfy buddy

TIL what "tsundere" means (thanks, Google). Also, this is hilarious. That is all.

vasta41 wrote:My 2 cents:
48hrs is PLENTY of time and that rule should be implemented next year. People who care about this forum know we've been doing the DOTY awards for years now...There are five (count them, FIVE) stickies about the DOTYs and they're RIDDLED with dates and times... I have no sympathy for people who expect to pop in here once a year to win some free stuff and don't even have the decency to be punctual about it...I will take it a step further and say that it's a slap in the face to Amy who has worked her ASS off managing this competition and spending countless hours trying to make people aware of the contest. Her attention to detail is fantastic and anyone who cannot or chooses not to read her clear, well thought out instructions should be ashamed of themselves.

I agree with everything Paul has stated above, and would go even further and say a 24 hour time period should be sufficient to claim your prize. The problem is that we never specified anywhere in the rules about a time clock for picking prizes for this year's contest, so it would be a bit problematic to institute any hard rule retroactively. I think the fairest option is to give Risible 5 full days to respond from the time Merlebird picked first. I'm pretty sure most people would agree 5 days is way more than sufficient time to choose, but we can't be held hostage indefinitely from AWOL members and need to move this along. As to what to do with Risible if (s)he doesn't respond in time....

BaconWise wrote:If we don't hear from a person in that time, they are bumped to the bottom of the list. This would give them time to still get a prize as long as they responded back before the final spot's time limit was exceeded.

This is a great suggestion. If you snooze, you lose....but not everything. You still get to pick, just from the bottom of the list now.

Next year we should officially institute a 24 hour time clock for picks as well as the provision for bumping tardy pickers to the end of the list. If there are any winners who fail to claim a prize even after being moved to the bottom of the list, then they are forfeit and any unclaimed prizes at the end should be awarded out by random selection to eligible non-winners.

TwoPiece wrote:

Merlebird wrote: ftfy buddy

Lol NO.

You're right, I goofed. Here's the corrected version:

TwoPiece wrote:Dear Amy,

I'm sorry I'm a tsundere edgelord who never learned how to apologize correctly. You are the best and I appreciate a̶l̶l̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶h̶a̶r̶d̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶k̶ everything you do, even if I'm not mature enough to admit it. Yes, even the puns. Especially the puns. Please never stop telling me the puns.

Regards,

Chris

Räpylätassu wrote:I often forget that not every place in the world has as easy access to internet as in Finland. 4G coverage that does not cover the entire country but does cover 100 % of the population, works also inside buildings and in forests, save for the most remote places in Lapland. Unlimited data plans are cheap and commonly sold as average data usage per user in a month for DNA (one of the three major operators in Finland) was 19,8 GB in the first half of 2018.

Ever since I switched to using a smartphone from my old and beaten Nokia in 2013, I've taken it for granted that I can access to internet anywhere I want to with fast and reliable speed, no need for a Wi-Fi.

Well said, not all voters are from developed countries. Those of us from Asia and Africa may not have strong, regular internet coverage. Even in the city, I can drop from 4G to 2G at certain places, depending on how the signal transmitters were placed. My friend's house is unlucky enough to be in a narrow black zone where the cell towers signals don't overlap. But M'sia is one of the few countries where Wifi is free in many cafes, restaurants, McD, Starbucks, etc.

Yes, sometimes people may be backpacking that weekend or out of the city/country for work. However, as said, a reminder should be sent and voters who may be out of internet coverage should inform the Mods on their travel dates, alternate contact methods and/or even their list of prize choices.

I agree with 24 hours wait, and bumb the person who didn't respond to the last in the list.
And if they still don't come back, draw the remaining prizes to non-winners.

72 hours. Most of us won't need it, but those who do should have it.

It has been clear since day 1 that the winners would be announced on March 1st. Risible has not been online for 3 weeks now, the only post he/she has made was on January. I say that give him/her time to the end 6. day. As soon as it becomes the 7. day in the States, we move this along.

I'm not sure if you have a similar saying as we do in Finland: "Tyhmyydestä sakotetaan" meaning You get fined for being stupid.

If Risible ends up missing out on a free prize, he has nobody else to blame but himself.

TwoPiece, you have another quote:

"Tyhmyydestä sakotetaan"

Hi y'all,

I'm sorry I've been MIA the past 3 days - I went away for the weekend on a sorta mini vacay and, even though I've been somewhat checkin' in from time to time to keep an eye on DOTY stuff and am fully aware of this unclaimed prize issue from one of the giveaway winners, I wasn't available much to spend time writing out my thoughts on the matter until now.

So first off, I sincerely apologize that this scenario hadn't been hypothetically brought up or addressed prior to the start of the DOTY event and, because of such, it hadn't been explicitly stated what would happen in the case of such scenario on the official thread. I guess I assumed that anyone making the effort of entering into a contest of any sort would be responsible for paying attention to it in the event that they actually won, because... well..., the prizes of the giveaway are, IMO, most certainly be too big to for anyone to ignore... but I guess apparently not for some...

Second, I completely understand many of the expressed feelings of resentment in seeing some participants do literally the absolute bare minimum just to enter into the DOTY giveaway with no intention of actually engaging with the community yet alone contributing anything only to, by dumb luck, actually win placement in the random drawing (ugh) while others, that were so invested in the planning, donating, nominating, promoting, etc. from the very beginning and throughout the running of the DOTYs to help even make this event possible for such participants to join in, not win anything but that's the nature of a random drawing... And, even though I admit that I would've LOVED to have seen other, IMHO, more deserving participants win something as appreciation for their efforts, I still staunchly support the random drawing and keeping the contest completely open without putting any sorta of restrictions or barriers to joining in and voting - because ultimately, the DOTYs are NOT about the prize giveaway contest - it's just a fun incentive to attract people to actually vote so we can give recognition to the designers/producers in presenting Awards for their outstanding work among SOOOOO many releases.

This year, our collective efforts were able to attract roughly 7x more participants to vote than last year - many for the first time ever of our currently active members, but also a lot of participation coming from formally inactive members and, obviously, new members joining UC for the event; of course, there were (and always will be in the future) some that only voted to enter for their chance to win in the giveaway with no intention of actually becoming a part of UC despite our honest efforts to very warmly welcome them to our community but many more that initially did vote just to enter, ended up seeing the value of the UC community and have now become actively engaged members. Many of whom may not have ever taken the time to check out our little forum here, yet alone actually register AND contribute to become UC fam if they hadn't been initially attracted by the DOTYs and had the extra incentive of the super awesome prizes of the giveaway to do so. So the benefits of opening the DOTYs to everyone and promoting outside of this community to invite others to join in and participate, I feel, greatly outweighs the negatives of attracting one-and-done, fly-by participants only interested in entering the giveaway.

Third, now that the event is over, we unfortunately are obviously facing such a dilemma and it's especially problematic as this AWOL participant has clearly stalled the selection process of the prize giveaway so we def need to agree upon a proposed solution that is fair for all. A maximum time frame in which giveaway winners will need to claim their selected prizes will most definitely be implemented in next year's DOTYs and will be explicitly stated in the rules of participation. Considering the barriers that may prevent someone from access to internet/any other hypothetical reasons why someone may not be made aware of their winning, I still would agree that 72 hours (rather than just 24) is more than sufficient enough time for them to, at the very least, respond. Buuuut, for this year, implementing such a time constraint retroactively wouldn't be fair and so we should consider either a.) allowing a bit of more time for them to respond - 5 days seems to be the agreed consensus AND/OR, the proposed solution that is most generous, b.) bumping that winner to the last slot on the list of winners so, IF they do eventually come back around, they still can claim a prize before the very last 72 hour time frame runs out and a new winner will be selected.

Forth, I do NOT support participants providing more than just the email they use for registration as alternative forms of contact for entry into the contest - not because I want that they don't get the memo that they've won so they lose out on their prize through forfeiture, but only because I absolutely HATE the thought of having to go on a wild goose chase to track people down to give them free giveaway prizes for a contest they chose to enter into and are responsible for paying attention to. The email they themselves provided should be sufficient enough and whether they choose to check it or not is not my (or anyone else's) problem and I will not be taking on more work in keeping track of alternative contact info and dealing with all that. Sorry to be a b*tch about it but that's not something I'm on board with at.all.

It seems Merlebird, already sent Risible a PM to let him/her know that (s)he's the next up so a notification that (s)he has a PM has already been sent to the email address (s)he used to register. I will send another PM, but after that, I'm not investing any more time and effort into trying to reach him/her as that's the only way we can and it's up to them to respond.

So, ball's in Risible's court and, unfortunately, we'll all have to wait just a bit longer until Friday to make the ultimate decision to bump him down to the last slot on the list.

HOWEVER, this is now *officially* a warning to all other potential inactive participants that are listed as prize giveaway winners - you have 72 HOURS from the time you receive the PM from the previous winner to respond. If it takes you longer to decide upon your selection, that's fine, but you will need to publicly comment here or elsewhere to express that. After the 72 hours time frame runs out, you will forfeit your prize - no ifs, ands, or buts.

btw, I'll also be updating the rules of participation to announce these changes.

Let's keep this selection process rollin' and hope that Risibile comes around to claim his prize and that we don't have any other AWOL winners.

PipChick wrote: blah, blah blah blah, blah

very well said Amy! as the person in charge, great to see you taking a firm stance on this. while i also agree with others that 24 hours would be enough, not everyone would have the time/luxury of being able to get on this forum everyday, so yes in that regards i think 72 hours will be enough (way more than enough). and if the winner is unresponsive, i'd say just have them forfeit rather than having them bumped down to the end of the list. it is unfair for others in that regards who can't even bother logging in to check their status.. thought i'd give my two cents on it..

PipChick wrote:...many more that initially did vote just to enter, ended up seeing the value of the UC community and have now become actively engaged members. Many of whom may not have ever taken the time to check out our little forum here, yet alone actually register AND contribute to become UC fam if they hadn't been initially attracted by the DOTYs and had the incentive of the giveaway to do so.

This describes me, exactly. I found out about UC from TGW's social media so I thought I would check it out. I'll admit, the giveaway was very attractive so that was a main focus for me. Then I got to poking around and saw some great topics like New & Custom Decks and the drafting board and one my new personal favorites: the Black List So, I have been sucked into UC due to the wonderfully warm welcome by Amy and by Mike and by other great members here. I think I'll stick around!

I think I would agree with the (somewhat) consensus at this point:

- 72 Hours
- Bump to bottom if no response

Glad you could take some time for yourself over the weekend, Amy and welcome back! You sure you want to stick around?

PipChick wrote:It seems Merlebird, already sent Risible a PM to let him/her know that (s)he's the next up so a notification that (s)he has a PM has already been sent to the email address (s)he used to register.

I...

....


...apparently did not do this?

....

...whoops?

Merlebird wrote:

PipChick wrote:It seems Merlebird, already sent Risible a PM to let him/her know that (s)he's the next up so a notification that (s)he has a PM has already been sent to the email address (s)he used to register.

I...

....


...apparently did not do this?

....

...whoops?

Birb...

I swear to you on my love for 2pc's mom, I thought I sent it. But I just double-checked and the last thing I see in my sent messages is my exchange with montenzi.

In my defense I am very stupid.

Merlebird wrote:I swear to you on my love for 2pc's mom, I thought I sent it. But I just double-checked and the last thing I see in my sent messages is my exchange with montenzi.

In my defense I am very stupid.

Check your Outbox, messages sent but no read are shown there.

Räpylätassu wrote:

Merlebird wrote:I swear to you on my love for 2pc's mom, I thought I sent it. But I just double-checked and the last thing I see in my sent messages is my exchange with montenzi.

In my defense I am very stupid.

Check your Outbox, messages sent but no read are shown there.

My outbox is empty. Like my skull. [MURRAY] [MURRAY] [MURRAY]

RISIBLE IS ONLINE

Räpylätassu wrote:RISIBLE IS ONLINE

O. M. Gosh. This is happening.

My sincere apologies. I literally just received a notification like 5 minutes ago. Was there some sort of crossed communications? I'm looking it over and working on it right now, so sorry all!

Just checked my Inbox and I only have one PM, sent at 11:08pm today.

Risible wrote:My sincere apologies. I literally just received a notification like 5 minutes ago. Was there some sort of crossed communications? I'm looking it over and working on it right now, so sorry all!

Not your fault! I intended to send you a PM earlier, after I posted my prize pick, and then did not do that, for reasons possibly linked to some kind of brain-eating prion disease. Sorry for the confusion.

Risible wrote:My sincere apologies. I literally just received a notification like 5 minutes ago. Was there some sort of crossed communications? I'm looking it over and working on it right now, so sorry all!

No worries, everything is fine now =) Just a little mix up, happends to the best of us, literally the best of us as the mix up happend to Merlebird.

Merlebird wrote:

Risible wrote:My sincere apologies. I literally just received a notification like 5 minutes ago. Was there some sort of crossed communications? I'm looking it over and working on it right now, so sorry all!

Not your fault! I intended to send you a PM earlier, after I posted my prize pick, and then did not do that, for reasons possibly linked to some kind of brain-eating prion disease. Sorry for the confusion.

I resemble that remark. I know that feeling all to well, just ask my wife .

My apologies to all, I feel terrible for holding everyone up. I did my best to choose in haste so that things can progress. Thanks to everyone who donated prizes and made this possible and thanks to the admins for their infinite patience in dealing with a project of this size.

I loved going through the nominees and deciding on who to vote for, and it exposed me to a ton of decks I might not otherwise have known about. So so many gorgeous decks being made and released nowadays!