Is is possible to rig the WAT award

i dont know how many votes the last winner had, but if u got anough people together an just vote for one person, could u change th outcome for WATs award?

not that id try it,

uhh you know with the way voting works;


I think it just might.

i actually program the diebold machines that the wats buttons are connected to, no matter who u vote for it is predetermined by a secret behind the scenes group.

And if u didnt know, that was a complete load of SARCASM there.

Please,

No its not rigged, the winners are voted fairly by way of most votes too a person.
there is no rigging here i mean far out. this isnt the government. shhheeesh.

Omega

It must be rigged because I never win.

Just kidding I suck at posting.

People win WATS Dalair, because a multitude of people have found that someone created an excellent post, replied to a post in a very good way or some sort of other means. Each member has 3 votes per month and Its a way of letting someone know they did an excellent job. Enough with the ATS Conspiracy/rigging threads will ya. jeez

I know that I never win WATS because my posts are just too radical, even if they are well thought out, for the average person. Lord knows if the Feds ever saw one of my posts on here, I'd disappear.

Originally posted by Dulcimer
It must be rigged because I never win.

Just kidding I suck at posting.

Well, the redness of your Post Bar tells me that you do offer quality posts... I know it takes hard work to get that bar to change "redder"... Maybe you should post to suck(up)...

Originally posted by DalairTheGreat
i dont know how many votes the last winner had, but if u got anough people together an just vote for one person, could u change th outcome for WATs award?

not that id try it,

[sarcasm=ON]

Dalair, are you thinking about having all of your friends vote for you?

I think that if that happened, everyone else would be suspiscious. [/sarcasm=OFF] ...anyone can change.

Seriously, only if the WATS votes are tallied in Florida......

Hmmmm........

Yes, it's possible and I've seen it happen many times. Any time people start blatently advertising it and suggesting to other people that someone deserves a WATS award, or on many threads you will see examples of "You have voted ______ for the WATS award". Then other people see it and also do it. Once one person shows their WATS opinion, everyone else tends to follow. Even without reading the thread.

In other things that can be rigged, I went out of my way to tell a bunch of people I knew to vote me to the top of the ATS Best Conspiracy Podcast contest, and it worked. I didn't win, because the final descision was decided by the Three Amigos personally, and that is much harder to rig. But my inside sources say I had the most votes.

So I guess the thing is... where is the line drawn between rigging a competition, and actively recruiting people to vote for you?

Anyway, let me be the first to say.

You have voted DalairTheGreat for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

Seriously, I did vote for you. I suggest everyone else do the same just to see if we can rig it. I'd give you all three votes, but it gives you the old "You have already voted for DalairTheGreat this month." message. Unfortunately even if you did win it this way, someone would probably have a hissy fit and make them disqualify you. But if anybody asks, I'll deny this thread ever happened, and say that it was for your quality posts in the Aliens & UFO forum.

Anybody else want my other two votes? I'll trade ya.

[edit on 8-6-2006 by Yarcofin]

?did u really vote for me,lol

Is This Legal?

Please bear with me, and let's have some fun with this.

I'm a moderator for this forum, so I'm reading through this thread as a good moderator should, and I find myself thinking, "Hey, is it okay under the AboveTopSecret.com Terms And Conditions Of Use to conspire to rig a WATS election?"

And, trying as I always do to be a good moderator and make sure I'm playing by the rules, I looked the T&C up and down thoroughly, asking myself if there's anything in them that prohibits this sort of thing.

Conclusion: I don't know!

Now normally I would consult my fellow mods about this privately (thereby cleverly concealing my shameful ignorance of the finer points of the T&C), and see if we could figure out this conundrum amongst us, but it's late and there's not a lot of us on.

So I'll ask you, my fellow members, if you think this thread is legal under the T&C.

Please bear in mind that the interpretation must not be creative, and that the meaning of the relevant portion must be readily apparent to anyone.

What do you think? Is it legal to campaign for WATS votes on ATS?

I'm open to suggestions.

It would defeat the purpose of the election to begin with, IMO. Consider this, the person chosen to be WATS, is someone who has contributed highly and on several occasions to the overall exspansion of knowledge and denial of ignorance. I think the best way to get someone to ignore you is to go around saying, "hey, look at me, my posts are well managed and conclusive." Who cares? Shouldn't the recipient of such award also have a certain degree of selflessness? Really, IMO, such a person would only be posting these quality subjects in the pursuit of increased personal knowledge and understanding, or at least that of other members and viewers of the ATS website. My opinion, is that perhaps we should remind people that such an award exists, so that they might actively be seeking the recipients of their three votes, but not necessarily advertise any particular person. Example: "ATS Members, just a reminder to you all that the WATS award will be extended to the member recieving the most votes by you, by such and such a date. I think this is the only way to make the best of everything and keep it clean. Who wants the politics on every level? Lets leave it at PTS where it belongs.

Obviously anything that involves the words "rigging" and "conspiring" is probably not good. Haha. Since it doesn't appear to be in the T&C, it seems to be "legal". As for ethical/moral, who knows.

Then again, I got a big crazy U2U threatening to put me on global ignore for a rule that I didn't know existed and IS NOT in the T&C (Or wasn't at the time, havent checked again). "Please don't post using foreign languages or characters, as it isn't possible for mods to tell if the post is offensive or not."

So even if it's not in the T&C, mods still seem to be able to bust you for any fun you engage in .

I'm not sure if you would consider this being "creative" or not, but since the member managed to get so many people to vote for them, wouldn't that make them "Way Above" in a way anyways? If they have such a showing on ATS that they can sway enough votes like that, I'd say they deserve it. The WATS award isn't necessarily based just on making one amazing post per month, it's about being a Way Above ATS member overall. That means stepping outside of the box and campaigning to win WATS, etc. As long as they aren't using multiple accounts to increase their votes by themselves, I'd say it sounds reasonable enough.

Members can't give other members an applause, so I say a WATS is the least they can do.

?did u really vote for me,lol

Yes, but that punctuation/grammar makes me want to take it back in a way .

[edit on 10-6-2006 by Yarcofin]

Originally posted by DalairTheGreat
if u got anough people together an just vote for one person, could u change th outcome for WATs award?

Sure you could. That's not 'rigging' that's just trying to influence people. They'd still make the final choice for whom they'd vote. That's not 'rigging'. Rigging would be to mess with people's votes; to somehow change who people vote for behind the scenes. And I suppose that's possible, but I believe it's highly unlikely.

Majic, I think it's probably legal to campaign for WATS votes... I wouldn't do it myself, because WATS, although it looks mighty cool, is many times a popularity contest. People many times vote WATS for opinions they agree with, not for good quality posts with lots of research. One liners get WATS.

I don't think I'd ever vote for someone with the hubris to campaign for WATS votes.

Now, that well-reasoned response deserves a WATS vote for me, wouldn't you agree?

If you rig the votes for the WATS you get a new award.

Its smaller, and it shows up below your name in big red capital letters.




Wats is usually a popularity contest anyways. Anybody that says something someone likes, even if its a one liner, can potentially get a WATS vote.

I think it would be possible to ask enough people to vote for you to win. If you can find a way to sway enough people to vote for you then I say you should win.


Everyone vote for me to win!!!

Members are free to vote for whoever they want to vote for. But I think the votes should be given to members who have made an effort to create good posts. Otherwise I think it would be an insult to them if it went to someone who didn't. My 2 cents...

how much did the last winner win with