benlau | # 521 | 2010-07-30, 03:32 | Report

I would like to thanks for everybody supported PenPen! Thanks for the organizers and donators of this great contest! And special thanks to kojacker , he is hard working and organized very well.

I wish we could have a much stronger community on next comming year.

Venemo | # 522 | 2010-07-30, 09:58 | Report

Yep!
Without Kojacker, this competition would have never existed!
Hip-hip-hooray for Kojacker!

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Last edited by Venemo; 2010-07-30 at 10:01.

zehjotkah | # 523 | 2010-07-30, 19:34 | Report

using mobile hotspot on my N900 to get online on the Autobahn. (thanks by the way to the developer, used it so much in my vacation).
ok, the update arrives sooner than expected since we started the journey home sooner than expected, too... xD (logical, isn't it?!)
In this late stage of the competition I've still got some donations.
This just shows how much you support it!
Thanks for that again!

Here are the donations:
(this time I won't post the nicknames, because one asked to remain anonymous and he didn't mention his maemo username at the PayPal field, so I don't know which one of theses donations is from him...

€10,00 EUR
-€0,54 EUR
=€9,46 EUR

€20,00 EUR
-€0,73 EUR
=€19,27 EUR

€10,00 EUR
-€0,54 EUR
=€9,46 EUR

€50,00 EUR
-€2,30 EUR
=€47,70 EUR

That makes a total of (do you sit?!) €781,04 EUR !!!
How awesome is this community??

I will post the updated statistics when I've updated my sheet and calculated everything.

And by the way.
There is no need to think Nokia have decided otherwise regarding their prizes.
Nokia is very serious about this competition and made this already clear.
They btw. expect that we are very serious about this competition, too.
And I think all participants have shown that in a way I couldn't have imagined at the beginning!
kojacker, wow, I know your PM in-box must be overfilled.
You've managerd everything so great! Thanks!
All the coders, you've brought us so many new, cool apps and games (I even haven't had the time to try out everything!).
And of course our donators! Just re-read the amount of donations! And all freely given without any pressure. That is open-source at it's best!
Not to forget Nokia itself. I still have the email I sent Quim.
Nokia really showed that they really care about maemo/meego and the community!

We've shown, that the maemo community is like a brotherhood. Everyone can give something. Even if it is not money ore code (there were some really awesome ideas which brought the competition huge steps forward).

I'm still blown away!

Thanks for you all!

helex | # 524 | 2010-07-30, 19:35 | Report

Thanks to all who have voted for DreamRemote. The 4th place out of 11 with such great competitors is simpy amazing.

Thanks to all voters. And those who haven't voted, what about buying a DreamBox?

dj_steve | # 525 | 2010-07-30, 19:52 | Report

and that converts to : :

£649.15
or
$1,019.56

kojacker | # 526 | 2010-07-31, 06:07 | Report

Wow.. we really got more than $1000 collected! Awesome!


Hmmm.. we have a tricky situation with the "Others" category, everything had been going so smoothly until the last vote! Typical!

Basically it looks like a quite large number of seemingly random and fake accounts were created and voting. In the end, qexercise won the poll from tweego by 3 votes (145 vs 142). Ive been in contact with mods and admin to see if we can figure these votes out, what amount was bogus and who it was for and, hopefully not, if any are linked to the competitors account.

Lullen, the author of qexercise, to his credit did come on and explain his side earlier, which I am grateful for. Rather than carrying the discussion on the voting thread, I thought it was best we bring it here so everyone can see.

Lullen, thank you for coming on and explaining your story - nobody is calling you a cheater. But asking a lot of people on your facebook on come on and create accounts to vote for you is flying very close to the wind here. But I appreciate your honesty.

When I wrote "Voting is strictly one vote per user" I also expected the voting section in the rules to be read, which reads:

"Voting is strictly one vote per user. The use of multiple accounts to vote, creating fake accounts to register votes, or using other illegal means to register votes is strictly prohibited and may be seen as an attempt to defraud the poll and community. Your votes may be discounted and/or your entries disqualified if judged by the contest organiser that you have done so"

Now, at the same time we have this, and is it any different to what you have done?


It says
And you can start to see the difficult waters we are in

As I watched last night, it was a race to make as many fake accounts as possible. For example, as evidence was given to me, we were getting accounts created and voting in the last hours like:

asdplk
asdopl
asdkjl
asdiop

I didnt use the actual account names, but you get the picture.

At the moment, leave this situation with me. As I say, I am in contact with the mods, and trying to figure all this out. Unfortunately it takes time.

Also I was pm'd earlier to say social networking isn't cheating. What do you all think? Is using social networking to get votes cheating?.How about using it to ask people to create accounts on here and vote for you?

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Last edited by kojacker; 2010-07-31 at 06:20.

lukash | # 527 | 2010-07-31, 08:24 | Report

Oh, so thats how you get the votes for a twitter application? Ask for votes on twitter? .........

Those names are apprently fake and I'd say its for a disqualification of the app, except you probably can't prove that the author himself did it. He can always say someone else did it without his knowledge, although he probably asked for it.

I think using friends and social networks can't be exactly called cheating, but its unfair and should be forbidden. The idea mentioned a while back to allow only accounts created before the voting started and with at least 10 posts should be applied somehow. If it can't be limited by the voting system, it should be at least stated in the rules and checked in suspicious cases or something. (or possibly by writing a script to check automatically? not sure whats possible...)

Just the fact that the authors of QExcersize and TweeGo and maybe others asked for votes in this manner shows how unscrupulous and selfish they are.

Helmuth | # 528 | 2010-07-31, 11:33 | Report

Advertising is in my opinion okay. But asking for creating accounts especially only for voting is a bad thing.

As somewhere else said, I'm afraid that there are other possibilities to manipulate such a contest. What if a second or third placed creates a lot of fake accounty just short before the end of the contest and vote for a rival to get hin disqualified and to win himself the contest?

zehjotkah | # 529 | 2010-07-31, 11:45 | Report

The following is just my opinion and should not taken as rule.

The Twitter account of TweeGoN900 is clearly only about TweeGo, so we can assume, that all readers of that Twitter account are user of this very program on their N900s. They've tested it for sure, otherwise they wouldn't follow/read this Twitter account.

I haven't found Lullen's Facebook page (hence I'm even not registered on Facebook), so I can't tell if he has only readers/followers which are using maemo devices.

This competition is about developing a good program (for the developer) and to vote for the favorite program (for the user).
How can a user vote for a program if he hasn't tested it?
This competition is not about "look I can collect the most votes because I'm awesome on Twitter and Facebook".

Think about it with healthy human sense.

Edit: and to threat like this is just low, very low.

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Last edited by zehjotkah; 2010-07-31 at 11:48.

andy80 | # 530 | 2010-07-31, 12:13 | Report

The contest itself has been completly bad organized in my hopinion.

1) lot of developers didn't know about the contest. I've talked with some friends during the contest, to ask some advice about Qt ecc... and many of them replied me: a contest? what? I didn't know anything about it!

2) lot of users didn't know about this contest! How is it possible that in a Community of thousand people, only 100-150 vote for a contest?!

3) Letting users to decide the 100% of voting result causes some problems: the most known application is voted, not the best one itself. There should have been a commission to decide at least a good percentage of the vote, for example: users count for 50% of the vote, the rest is decided by the commission.

4) again: the whole contest has been very very bad advertised. On #maemo nobody knows anything, same thing on mailing list, ecc....
You should rename this contest "Talk.Maemo.Org Coding Contest", imho.

My 2 cents.