Cheaters never win, and I want to win!
September 20, 2006 2:33 PM Subscribe
How do I win this online vote-off without cheating?
A sustainable umbrella I designed is in an online vote-off to win a competition hosted by treehugger.com and I.D. magazine. I worked really hard on my entry, even built a rapid prototype. The design became one of five finalists -- the only one by a female. The winner is chosen in an online vote-off at Treehugger. The voting is neck-and-neck right now. The entry with the least votes gets dropped each day, and currently that is me! I want to win without signing on to different computers around campus and voting for myself, even though this would certainly be easy. I truly do think my design is the best, and if real people enter (instead of just the entrants over and over again, or the friends of the entrants, or the frat bros of the entrants), I think they will vote for me. I think I don't have enough friends and too many morals to beat the other entrants as things currently stand. Do you have any suggestions on how I can get the word out, especially to engineers and possibly female engineers and suggestions on how I could get more votes? Thank you hivemind!
A sustainable umbrella I designed is in an online vote-off to win a competition hosted by treehugger.com and I.D. magazine. I worked really hard on my entry, even built a rapid prototype. The design became one of five finalists -- the only one by a female. The winner is chosen in an online vote-off at Treehugger. The voting is neck-and-neck right now. The entry with the least votes gets dropped each day, and currently that is me! I want to win without signing on to different computers around campus and voting for myself, even though this would certainly be easy. I truly do think my design is the best, and if real people enter (instead of just the entrants over and over again, or the friends of the entrants, or the frat bros of the entrants), I think they will vote for me. I think I don't have enough friends and too many morals to beat the other entrants as things currently stand. Do you have any suggestions on how I can get the word out, especially to engineers and possibly female engineers and suggestions on how I could get more votes? Thank you hivemind!
This post was deleted for the following reason: now that this is on projects, you don't need it to be here.
Posting on metafilter is good PR. Try that ;)
posted by mynameismandab at 2:41 PM on September 20, 2006
posted by mynameismandab at 2:41 PM on September 20, 2006
Best answer: If you are involved in organizations that promote or support women in science and engineering, then you could send out an email to thier listserv. You could send it to any engineering/science organization listserv or post it on some forums.
If you really want folks to vote for the umbrella that they think fits the guidelines then you might try to do send it out anonymously.
posted by sulaine at 2:42 PM on September 20, 2006
If you really want folks to vote for the umbrella that they think fits the guidelines then you might try to do send it out anonymously.
posted by sulaine at 2:42 PM on September 20, 2006
Sorry, but the fact that are pointing out the fact that you are the only female makes me not want to vote for you and vote for someone else.
I'm sure all the entries worked hard on it.
posted by mphuie at 2:47 PM on September 20, 2006
I'm sure all the entries worked hard on it.
posted by mphuie at 2:47 PM on September 20, 2006
Response by poster: I don't want to shamelessly self-link. People here really hate that. They would probably vote against me if I did that. The info I gave should be enough for mphuie to go and vote against me without any direct links, if he wants to. I mention it was a female entry b/c I think it would provide networking opps along the lines of what sulaine suggests (thanks for the good suggestions, sulaine and ludwig_van). I mentioned the site name and the magazine name for potentially similar networking ops. I had to give an idea of at least what audience the contest is targeted at. I am really just looking for answers, not PR. Thanks for you help.
posted by Eringatang at 2:54 PM on September 20, 2006
posted by Eringatang at 2:54 PM on September 20, 2006
Have you suggested to campus/local media that they cover the competition? If your entry is best, more votes should bear that out.
Or, just get ahold of some silver iodide and a cannon.
posted by rob511 at 3:33 PM on September 20, 2006
Or, just get ahold of some silver iodide and a cannon.
posted by rob511 at 3:33 PM on September 20, 2006
Response by poster: Okay - posted! I didn't know about MetaProjects, thanks for telling me about it, Alt F4. I have contacted the campus media, and the dept sent out an e-mail to all the Mechanical Engineers, and they want to write it up in the dept. bulletin, but the campus media is a slow machine, and the competition ends tomorrow.
posted by Eringatang at 3:52 PM on September 20, 2006
posted by Eringatang at 3:52 PM on September 20, 2006
You appear to be second at the moment, albeit not by much.
I initially liked the rotary umbrella as it had an instant "cool" vibe going on, but to be honest... I want an umbrella to be like an umbrella and carried like a walking stick. Carrying some weird curved thing is just odd.
Too odd for me.
I think MeFi projects would be a good idea for bumping the votes, but you may inadvertently bump the competition too! Flyers and local publicity seems best in my opinion.
posted by knapah at 3:58 PM on September 20, 2006
I initially liked the rotary umbrella as it had an instant "cool" vibe going on, but to be honest... I want an umbrella to be like an umbrella and carried like a walking stick. Carrying some weird curved thing is just odd.
Too odd for me.
I think MeFi projects would be a good idea for bumping the votes, but you may inadvertently bump the competition too! Flyers and local publicity seems best in my opinion.
posted by knapah at 3:58 PM on September 20, 2006
I don't see it on projects.
posted by RustyBrooks at 4:10 PM on September 20, 2006
posted by RustyBrooks at 4:10 PM on September 20, 2006
I did like yours the best but "Unable to submit survey answer."
Hippies + cgi scripts = failure.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 4:21 PM on September 20, 2006
Hippies + cgi scripts = failure.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 4:21 PM on September 20, 2006
Get it up on Fark somehow. That site gets mad traffic.
posted by ChazB at 4:21 PM on September 20, 2006
posted by ChazB at 4:21 PM on September 20, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by ludwig_van at 2:36 PM on September 20, 2006