I know this is a bad look on my end, but you guys really need to consider this entry: http://wildfireapp.com/website/302/contests/28347/voteable_entries/3692377?order=recency&view_entries=1

Put a lot of work into it, only for it to have been pushed back page by page, as new entries arrived.

Half of the entries in the top 20, aren’t anything to even be considered, and jealousy isn’t even the thing, it’s just a fact.

From the Wildfire Knowledge-base: “In case your question pertains to making sure people don’t cheat, we do provide protections against unfair voting, including placing cookies on browsers and saving social media profile IDs. To be honest, there are complex ways in which people could get around these measures to affect voting, which is why we enable every contest administrator to have ultimate say over which entry is chosen as a winning entry. We put the power in the administrator’s hands to ensure that everyone and every entry can be treated fairly and to protect the integrity of both the administrator’s business and their promotion.”

Since their “anti-cheat” is predominately cookie based, this can be spoofed with minimal competence. Unfortunately, Wildfire does not require a login or account to vote, so there is no way to compare votes to users.

Our stance on this is, we will take the necessary measures to ensure that the contest is fair. If we see some inconsistencies or unrealistic spikes in votes we will be sure to take the reliability of them into consideration. Please keep in mind that the community voting will help us decide which designs make it to the final rounds of the contest, but it will not be the sole deterimining factor.

We are absolutely taking into consideration a submission date to votes ratio as well as the current top 5 sticking in the top 5 due to over exposure on the main voting page. All these will be factors in what is chosen to move into the next round.

If you have any specific questions please let us know.

Thanks for your time.

Cheers!

Thanks for your comment. We are looking into it and have contacted Wildfire, the administer of the contest. If we are able to find any foul-play we will take the appropriate measures to ensure the contest is as fair as possible.

We will keep you updated.

If you take a look at the top slidedecks, you can see that half the people cheated to get up there, by clearing their cache, and revoting, numerous times, for themselves.

I am sure of this, because 1. Within seconds of being uploaded, I saw slidedecks reach the top, and 2. Quite a few of the top slidedecks are frankly, crappy… Excuse my language.

I hope the judges don’t just go by votes, and actually look at the professional type designs, because the votes have been cheated, it’s very easily seen and noticed.

That is all.

PS. typo on Ryan Singer