spookynutz wrote:It'll never happen, but I wish Woot! would change their policy so that voting on a shirt means that you automatically get billed for any shirts you vote on that prints.
I've liked two or three of ramyb/sekioyawhatever's shirts (own one), but the rest tend to be sub-par artwork without a lot of thought to the concept. Just my opinion. I've also watched controversy abound as mediocre shirt after mediocre shirt of theirs gets upvoted into the fog over some truly good-looking, well-thought-out designs.
The same happens with other artists as well, which is why I haven't purchased a shirt from this site in a long time: too much favoritism, not enough originality. If people were committing to pay for a shirt they voted on, we'd see a lot less favoritism, I'm sure.
This is the only remotely supportive thing you'll ever see on a Ramy shirt from me: this idea is purely ignorant.
1) This will lead to fewer votes overall. People do not like their money to go into limbo. There have been shirt sites that prove this. If I give you my money, I expect product from it. And of course, there's the question of whether woot would take $10 tentative bucks from the user's account for every tee voted for. We would get far lower vote counts, and it would be totally unrepresentative.
2) This will disenfranchise poorer users. If I vote for three shirts I want, and all three win, I have to spend $30 in a weekend. As it is now, I can vote for all three and, if my favorite wins, I can choose later to buy the others or not. This should be in my ability.
3) Fanbois would still vote, bar none. Any unfair advantage anyone has due to rabid or ignorantly obsessed fans would still exist. It would only make it HARDER for marginally popular but better work to succeed. We'd see far more status quo, because people would be less likely to vote for their 3rd favorite shirt. If 1000 people like a shirt as their first favorite, but 2000 like a shirt as their 5th favorite, that shirt will win in the current derby. That is how the rare good designs win. People won't vote for their 5th favorite if they need to lock $10 into the vote
4) There are other reasons this is horrible idea: someone might use a maxed-out credit card as their primary card and then get hit with a winning print... someone might want to switch payment methods for some reason and have forgotten to do so a week in advance... some huge financial issue might come up (hospital visit? car wreck) which puts someone in a position where they shouldn't buy ANY shirts in a weekend, despite their earlier intentions... a shirt might be found to be stolen upon printing, and a user might say "well damn, I shouldn't have voted, I'm not going to buy!" ... someone might vote for a non-wooting friend, and said friend might, upon the win, say "nah, I actually hate that"...
Simply put, it is less fair to REQUIRE a sale from someone on a tee that might not win. The only overall fair way to stop the status quo and disgusting, pathetic work from winning is to weaken the power of votes. so long as votes can be cast by people who don't know what they're doing, we need a system that says "screw that, we're printing what's good." there should be no limit on why someone votes. there should just be a check in place at the end that says "hmm, between the comments and votes and overall quality, I don't think this deserves it." I'm fairly confident that would solve a lot more problems than making voting, in effect, a class based decision.
The VAST majority of woot derby winners outsell their votes. We all know that sales are not representative of quality (which in and of itself should be proof not to require a sale with a vote), but even if they were, almost all woot shirts are proven to be "higher quality" by sales than by votes. So requiring sales really won't change anything... if 800 people vote on a shirt, and 1000 sell, there's no real way to be sure any one of those 800 didn't buy it. Reform must come with a wholly different vote method.
