Alright I'm in to talk this over. I get where folks are coming from with these arguments and ideas. Unfortunately a lot of it is not something I can really "police" so to speak.
I understand why some would be upset over losing a battle, for example, because they feel like someone else got others who might not even vote in the fight to vote for them. I completely and totally get that.
On the other side of that coin I can also understand why people would want to go and get others involved in Fight Club from either other comics related sites or social networking venues.
Again, there's no real way for me to either police or enforce any rules or policies that I'd add in to regulate outside activity. I can put in a "Don't Talk About Fight Club" (heh) rule, sure - but there's no way to back that up other than moving away from the poll system altogether.
But if we move away from the poll system and solely towards a "count the votes made in threads by each user over 'x' number of pages" system for deciding fights it will create a colossal headache for yours truly, the Crawl Space Fight Club Commissioner. Suddenly, instead of a nice, neat poll number I'd instead have longer vote tabulations and, eventually and inevitably, disagreements over what does and does not constitute a vote. And I am loathe to see Crawl Space Fight Club matches come down to dimpled and/or hanging chads. I've got a finite amount of time to run Fight Club as it is; I simply do not have time to start vote counting or getting into debates with people about what did or didnt' or should or shouldn't be counted as a vote. Also - with this sort of potential there's a risk of actually lowering our overall vote count. We've got an average (around 15) number of people who even vote on the matches and only a handful of those ever post. If we start requiring people to make a case for their vote we're going to have some Fight Clubbers not bother. Heck, sometimes we have fights and either one or both of the participants don't even participate in the discussion!
Typically when we've got a normal heavy match we get a little over 20 votes. Usually like 21 or 22 votes total. When we start going beyond that it's a tip-off that there's some behind-the-scenes campaigning or maneuvering. On one hand I am cool with that because it gets others involved in Fight Club. But on the other hand I'm not cool with it because most of the time the folks who filtered in from either this board (who don't normally participate) or elsewhere don't stick around to contribute. And that's vexing.
I also want to adress something specific I saw from one of CrazyChris's points:
CrazyChris wrote:Second example: in an earlier fight someone flat out told me (over skype) that he voted for the other person's champion because he was "tight" with the other person. He admitted that he thought my champion would be the real winner, though. After some pleading, he said he would change his vote but he'd only do it if it would change the outcome of the poll. At the end of the day, the poll really was decided by one vote. Now, I'm not saying my bargaining in this case was any better than the other guy taking advantage of "favors" he could call in, so if I'm pointing fingers then the finger is equally pointed at myself. However, it is a problem that these kinds of backroom interactions are actually deciding fights. If that way of playing is allowed, then everyone who wants to build great stats has to play that way. I don't want to be in that position any more.
I completely understand that. Having someone vote for someone who's their friend, or who they know better than someone else on the board, that's not a good reason to vote for one combatant over the other. One of the things I've loved about Fight Club so far is those times when you're in a heated debate with an opponent (or someone supporting your opponent's combatant) yet in another thread the two of you are arguing for someone else's combatant together.
There also shouldn't be any system of "Well I'll vote for so-and-so because they voted my way in a fight," etc. etc. And there should never be any behind-the-scenes vote trading. Yet again - if folks want to do that I cannot stop them.
Venomaniac wrote:My question is this: Is there enough debate going on in the threads?
The reason the Samus-Boba fight was so good because it was a TON of people debating. Now it seems its normally only 2-3 people debating, and veveryone ele voting without backing up or explaining their votres (something I know I don't like whyen I'm fighting- I like to know wny people voted to either challenge their view or back up a trong point)
FSUSpiderFan wrote:I agree that it would be nice if people would put their reasons for voting more often and hop in on the debate. It used to be that way but I think the volume of fights and people being busy has lessened it.
The amount of debate on any given fight depends, largely, on the chosen combatants involved in each fight. I cannot force people to debate or listen to arguments or back their arguments up with reasons. There's no way to do that.
I also cannot eliminate bias from the fights and honestly we're all guilty of it to one extent or another. I've often encouraged others to just state their biases right up front rather than try to make arguments for/against something so we'd know when we're wasting time. Hell, one fight I was in started coming down to college rivalry. And it was frustrating. But again, there's no real way to prevent that. Bias is human, bias is broad and bias is immortal. And no amount of counter-argument is going to defeat someone's bias. It's absolutely not.
There's also bias for and against characters and genres. Again, there's no way to eliminate that.
Tonyd117 wrote:Speaking for myself alone, it's awfully hard to comment when you have characters I've never heard of. I can read the fight cards but I'm not really researching things past that. I'll read the posts and then make a choice, but after that I'm not really checking in again if I have no interest in who wins. The more obscure the character, the less likely you'll get a lot of debate.
This. A billion times, this.
So I'll bounce the following off you folks and see what you think. Give me your feedback.
1.) The poll system stays as the sole measurement of a match's outcome.
2.) I will amend the rules to say "Discussing the Friendly Fire Fight Club matches outside the Fight Club forum is strongly discouraged" since I can't actually enforce it.
3.) I will amend the rules to say "Feel free to invite friends outside the Friendly Fire Fight Club or Crawlspace to participate so long as they don't just show up to vote on one of your matches and then leave." Again - I can amend the rules to say it but there's no way I can enforce it.
