FlipPro, I think the what has frustrated people the most in this contest is the lack of organisation and consistency in how it has been managed. I am completely out of the running in the vote so I am only speaking in the interest of fairness for the others that worked as hard as I did.

I think your responsibilities to the contest are to set clear rules and expectations and to stick to your commitments.

Initially the contest was the design "a new logo" for Quarkcoin. This is a clear requirement.

After a while, and remember that many contestants had already made their submissions based on the brief that was given, some additional requirements were set, to include various other embodiments of the logo. This was buried in the thread and was missed by many contestants. Not an ideal situation but you are running this contest and you have stated that these are requirements for a valid submission.

Then as we approached the deadline there was mention of a community vote. I was surprised by this development. I don't think it was mentioned previously and I'm not sure I would have entered the contest at all on that basis. I thought it was a bizarre decision that the contestants should have the most influence in selecting the winner and immediately assumed there would be vote rigging. I expected that a winner would be selected by the contest organiser or a panel of judges soon after the deadline had passed. But again, you made a commitment to award the prize based to the winner of the vote.

I have no issue with the vote switching from Quarktalk to Bitcointalk, it's an unfortunate situation that added some confusion to the mix but completely outside of your control.

Finally, I only found the link for the vote by chance yesterday. i may be wrong but I don't think it was linked from the original thread. I think that may be why so many entries have no votes at all. I think a lot of the designers don't even know that a vote has taken place. In my opinion the voting has not been organised or communicated well.

So, you have made a few commitments and as the organiser of this contest you have a responsibility to live up to them. Anything less would be irresponsible and unfair to the contestants. I don't think the result will be ideal for Quarkcoin or the community at this stage but that is the end product of mismanaging the contest. It can't be corrected by pulling out of your commitments. It's an unfortunate situation but you need to ask yourself how much your word is worth now. That is the most that can be salvaged at this stage.

murt9000