First of all I need to apologize to anyone about the negativity that has been going on about this slimefest!
Never before have I participated in a designing contest and I regret participating in this one.
For a designing contest to succeed a strict set of rules are required. These rules were clearly not defined for this contest. And things started falling apart rather quickly when Quarks value began to rise.
I've spent an insane amount of time to deliver all elements that FlipPro requested. Many times I've tried to persuade FlipPro and others to implement rules to make this contest as fair as possible, unfortunately without success!
To me this has been an extremely insulting experience! Nobody seemed to care about the actual work that was delivered.
It was fraudulent from the beginning and everyone knew. I started noticing the insane amount of new fake memberaccounts that were being created. This and all insulting and immoral posts in the voting thread made me decide to take control myself. I simply could not accept the idea of immoral shills taking over and winning this contest by simply generating most of the votes. I have been living with a split brain ever since!
During the week I encountered four timed voting attacks entering over 30 votes every 15 minutes. Each time I've let them do their thing for a few minutes before initiating a counter-attack with double the amount of votes they were entering. For each of the cheaters this had an obvious psychological effect: as soon as they realized they couldn't win they tried to make a deal between eachother (just read their posts). As soon as they realized it wasn't working they started throwing trash. But finally boxxl has exposed his true self!
Ultimist, barrysoetoro and boxxl in particular: I've all beaten you at your very own game!
--- No need to expose me and say I cheated, I did! And in a way I'm proud I did! ---
I've explained my intentions how I would like to proceed from here. I prefer not to have another contest. It simply will not work as it is now very colored! Instead, I would leave the community out of it and simply create a small team of talented individuals to form a branding team under control of the Quark foundation. Personally I would like to invite mjbmonetarymetals, leigrecc and quarkfx to participate.
These are the right people that can give Quark the quality branding it deserves!
I have no intention sharing my idea about the 120k bounty yet. If desireable I'll provide the details later.
It is up to FlipPro to decide what to do!
And for what it's worth: the video created by quarkfx supporting my logo DID have an impact! But obviously not measurable!
I've never read a more asinine pile of rubbish in my life.
So, you suspected cheating, and so you decided that more cheating was the way to deal with it?
Holy fuck, martijnp, talk about the epitome of hypocrisy. Let's hope that at some point you don't suspect someone of murdering people, and then decide to go around murdering people yourself in order to stop it. What lunacy! I've been called insane here, but this out-does even me!
I was getting legitimate votes. I started the offers to compromise when I was in the lead. I made that offer genuinely to give others a better shot of winning. My offer was rejected by both boxxl and barrysoetoro. I even went so far as to give FlipPro permission to disqualify me if I tried to opt out of the deal later, but no deal was ever made,
And if you will notice, as a part of my plan, I suggested a highly reduced amount of QRK as the prize. If I was cheating, that makes no sense. If I had cheated, why would I want to do all the work required to cheat, for a much smaller amount of quark?
Do I think other cheating besides martijnp's (now admitted) actually took place? Yes. I highly suspect both boxxl and barrysoetoro of having cheated.
But for the zillionth time, I was getting legitimate votes. Someone even posted proof of my extensive campaigning efforts, for goodness sake.
While you were making fake accounts, I guess, martijnp, barrysoetoro's and boxxl's votes continued to rise at alarming rates along with yours, but then you pulled ahead. I suspect they were doing it by hand while you must have come up with some kind of automated way to do it.
When I noticed this, I decided to stop campaigning, remove all the sticky threads I had on several forums, and ask people not to vote for me any further. I knew something was up and I wanted the real snakes in the grass to be revealed.
But the last person I ever suspected was you, martijnp. I defended you numerous times and endorsed your logo as the one I liked the best.
So you've pulled this, somehow deluded into thinking you were doing something moral and acceptable.
I was getting legitimate votes. So basically you and the others have cheated me out of a win.
You need to understand, martijnp, that what you did was immoral, unfair, and unnecessary. You saw some rises in the votes and SUSPECTED cheating. Where is your evidence? Or are you going to tell us that you did this without any concrete evidence whatsoever?
I am overwhelmed with anger about this. I could have won legitimately. I suspected boxxl but I didn't have proof, and so I was only able to voice my concerns rather than take any actions on what I suspected.
martijnp, in your deluded crusade (or is that just an attempt to cover your cheating exposed by what boxxl posted?) you have cheated a legitimate winner out of the win.
If I had the ability, I'd probably come find you and knock your fucking teeth out.
Go ahead and try to spin your actions into some grand moral scheme to stop an evil contest full of villainy and treachery. Either way though, you robbed someone with legitimate votes of his ability to win.
Fuck you.