Quote from: Helena Yu on Today at 03:45:01 AM

The voting process seems short enough, I think it need at least 1 week or even 2 weeks since people might forgot, busy etc.

I am also in favor of 2 weeks period for voting.

Quote from: Helena Yu on Today at 03:45:01 AM

Although merit can be used to vote, but it's not really a good choice because it would increase few dramas [...]

I think voting via poll or post are better than merit.

Indeed, looking back in the past at first two editions of BitcoinTalk Community Awars, not forbidding merit sending between nominees and those which voted for them may lead to incorrect results and, even more, to abuses. On the other hand, polls can tricked by using multiple accounts. I'd rather suggest to use the rules applied to lattest edition of BitcoinTalk Community Awards. From my perspective (which was shared by a dozen of other users -- you can read posts made inside this topic) a no merit rule combined with setting a minimum amounts of earned merits are very helpful:

Quote from: GazetaBitcoin on November 08, 2022, 02:17:41 PM

2. No merit sending is allowed from nominees to users which nominated them. This should improve dramatically the accuracy of results and offenders will have to support a penalty. For each merit sent, 1 vote is deducted. So for example, if in the voting topic Alice sent 5 merits to those who nominated her in any category, then we will not count these votes (but the rest of the votes that are addressed to other nominees will be taken into account). In addition, if a user voted for Alice in two categories, then the votes for each of the categories will be unaccounted for.

3. Eligibility-wise, the earlier rule

Quote from: icopress on January 24, 2022, 10:07:00 PM

You must have 50 merit or be a full member or higher to vote ➥ Note.

will be changed to

You must have 50 earned merits to vote ➥ Note.

I believe though in our case, of a pie making contest, there are lower chances for abuses, therefore the merit threshold can be lowered. Maybe 30 earned merits? Additionally, those two rules may be supplied by a rule for a minimum amount of activity in order to be eligible, which may be set to 30 as well. After all, the idea is to limit an eventual accounts farmer which could join with 100 Brand New accounts (although I think this is highly improbable to happen), therefore an amount of 30 activity points would be decent enough for still allowing a very large pool of users to participate, if they would be interested.

Quote from: Helena Yu on Today at 03:45:01 AM

There are 2 ways:

Every contributors just hold in their own wallet, when the winners have been announced, every contributors can send the prize to the winners
Use trusted escrow if you and other contributors doesn't want to get confused or want to be more efficient

In most likely, allowing sponsors to hold their own funds accepted, as there are low chances to have a liar or scammer pretending to offer a sponsorship.

Quote from: Helena Yu on Today at 03:45:01 AM

Quote

Should I change some rules? Or even add more? I want it to be a fair contest for everyone but also prevent double posting from users who may create new accounts for example ...

Only Full member and above are eligible to vote, or any ranks have been received at least 50 Merits
One user can vote x user(s), or there's no restriction and one user can vote all participants, as long as he want?

I believe that limiting eligible ranks to Full Member and above (combined with setting a minimum of 50 earned merits) will make the pool very small for a pie making contest. In the case of BitcoinTalk Community Awards, this rule allowed, if I remember well, about 3000 users. From these, only 141 (eligible) voted. And this was a contest with a very high exposure. Most likely, for our pie making contest the exposure will be lower, therefore the real pool of possible voters would be dramatically lowered.

Here I'd suggest instead to eliminate the rank requirement, as long as we keep the merit requirement and have the merit requirement set to 30 instead of 50. Regarding abuses, again, chances are very low: who would make some merit abuses to merit his accounts from a possible own accounts farm, in order to have 50 earned merits per profile just in order to participate at a pie making contest?

Tl; dr: my suggestion is to extend voting period to 2 weeks, set an eligibility rule allowing only users which earned at least 30 merits and 30 activity (no matter the rank), forbid merit sending from nominees to those which voted for them; and allow eventual sponsors to hold their funds and personally send them to winners