Quote from: quarkfx on February 08, 2014, 01:17:52 AM

Barry, if there is something fishy going on, how can a distribution between the frontrunners be a fair option?

I know for all of us, especially for the contributors, it has been a tough time and all of you were waiting for ages for this poll. But can a start over really be worse than ending this flawed contest with a change of share? Good contributors like leigrecc hae already left the contest early and as far as I understand martijnp from his posts on forum.qrk-board he is also considering to leave the contest without coming back. We should use the opportunity to turn the mess into something positive for the community.

I already made a proposal and I´ll try to elaborate

Prizes:

The distribution of the prizes is changed from winner-takes-it-all to 4 different position so that competitors will identify with the result even if they don´t win the 1st place.

1st final round: 50.000 QRK
2st final round: 25.000 QRK
3rd final round: 10.000 QRK
Community prize final round: 5000 QRK (most votes in the public poll)

Additionally, the winner can dedicate 30.000 to a community project that currently needs of funding @ http://www.quarkfoundation.cc/projects/

Procedure:

1. All contestants are asked to hand in a logo for standard formats (horizontal, squared, "quark accepted") in three scaled sizes >> this way the proposals become comparable.

2. All entries are presented in a gallery >> this way the voter can actually look through it.

3. Every contributor has a max. of 5 sentences to explain the design in the gallery >> this way community members can see the "bigger picture".

4. Before the 1st public vote starts there is a vote between the contestants (3 days). The result are managed secretly (each participant sends a mail to an address kept by a neutral person) until the public poll is closed (after 7 days). The results are revealed after the poll closed and counted 50:50.

5. All contestants that reached the mark of e.g. 5% take part in a second round

6. In the 2nd round the gallery is reduced to the lasting contributors. This time everyone can present whatever else they want to present (mobile devices, webpages, metal coins etc.).

7. There is a final vote between the contestants (3 days) and after that again a public poll (7 days) like in point 4.

This whole procedure would cost us between 20 and 30 days and I believe the result will be accepted in a much broader way than a settlement between the current frontrunners. It will also ensure that this voting won´t be portrayed as a bizarre and unfair event.

The logo that wins this contest will not be the official Quark logo. That's why I suggested that the top three split the money. That way, the best three get credit for their work and Quark has an additional 3 logos to use. Seems pretty fair to me considering the circumstances.

Now if the winner WAS going to be the official logo, then the contest should be restarted. But at this point it seems like a waste of time to determine a "one and only" winner because it really holds no advantage other than receiving the total bounty.