Defeating The Purpose

One thing that clubs do to attract patrons is to have themed contests. It can be a great deal of fun, and it's a way to give back to the folks who regularly attend. There are a couple of problems I've noticed lately, and they tend to defeat the whole purpose of having a contest.

One of these is the group of organized contest cheaters. They will scan the Events listings for contests with large prizes and pop in just before voting begins. Once voting has opened, they TP in a bunch of folks who vote for them and immediately disappear. In this manner, they steal the prize from the loyal patron who has been at the set since the beginning. A quick profile scan of unfamiliar avies shows that they have at least one group in common to all of them. When you pull the group info, either it is not listed or it is blank. This is a dead giveaway that this is a cheater group. Another one is if the person has more votes than are avies in the club.

To stop this from happening, I have the contest boards at Freakheim set so that only Band of Freaks members can vote. It has worked pretty well, but we did have an instance of 3 or 4 folks from a cheater group joining BoF just to get around this. They were caught, however, when we tried to engage them in conversation. BoF has nearly 200 members, most of whom I know personally. Also, enrollment is by invitation only just to prevent this sort of cheating. If someone shows up with a BoF tag that neither myself, Kaedy or Sly knows, we will IM them to say hello, especially if they are not participating in general chat. When they fail to respond, we do a profile scan to check their groups and compare those groups to the groups of other unfamiliar avies. The last time we did this, we successfully thwarted a cheating attempt and ejected & banned those responsible.

I realize that posting this info may serve to give the cheaters a heads-up, but I'm hoping that it is helpful to my fellow club owners & managers as well.

The other behavior that defeats the purpose of the contest is the person that we like to refer to as "furniture". At one of the clubs I play, voting begins at 20 past the second hour. This person will rezz in at the top of that hour, dressed for the contest, and remain motionless until the end of the contest. They do not dance, and act offended if someone else happens to be occupying "their" spot. This has been going on so long that Kaedy & I sync my thrasher chim right in this very spot when I begin my set. When the furniture arrives, we end up Chuck Norrising right through her. She knows better than to say anything to me, but if other people come close she has a very nasty gesture. In addition to being a sofa in the middle of the dance floor, this person NEVER tips any of the staff. Ever. I realize that everyone likes to call attention to themselves during a contest. That's kind of the point. However, showing up just for the contest, not dancing, being rude to patrons & staff and expecting people to move out of "your" spot is annoying & juvenile.