Hi Dad,
I think the effort to downvote other games is unnecesary. In fact, I believe this whole voting process would be much simpler if we all joined together in a focused effort on raising and maintaining Riftrunner's rating. It is both the best "defense" and the best "offense". I don't think you liked it when they downvoted your game and they wouldn't either. Their attempts to downvote our game can easily be neutralized if we all focus on keeping Riftrunner's rating up. There's no need to add downvoting to the picture when it comes to supporting Riftrunner. My suggestion is to keep track of the times when downvoting is directed at our game and seek to be ready when those times come with a sufficient number of people to vote Riftrunner up. If I am correct, those times still have not changed that much. "Downvoting" attacks directed at Riftrunner still seem most prevalent at around 3:00am to 5:00 am in Germany. That is the time to be ready. Downvoting is to me unnecesary and it might make the fans of Riftrunner look bad. It may be a short term solution but my feeling that it will create resentment in the hearts of others still stands. Over the long run, the reputation of Riftrunner is going to be a sore one. The people who bring other games down aren't too concerned about their own rating. If their game ends up dropping out of the top ten because of our efforts, they may very well just decide to forget about voting up their own games and just take the effort to downvote Riftrunner. This is the potential danger of using downvoting as a weapon. No longer is it used in an honest manner. Rather, downvoting may very well be wielded and used to express anger and as a means of just lashing out at others. What are we going to do then? I wouldn't just downvote any game that's in second place. How do we really know that it is Speedball? If I recall correctly, Riftrunner was being downvoted repeatedly even when it was out of the top ten rating and that was before Speedball entered the picture. Someone else could have been doing the downvoting. It is wrong to just assume that it was Speedball. It could just as well have been another person or another fan of another game. Please. Don't end up hurting the innocent. My idea of visibility was to address this very possibility among others. Visibility is not used to discourage downvoting but rather to encourage its expression when used in an honest manner. "Nothing breeds appropriate behavior faster than exposure to the light of public scrutiny." Visibility, if it discourages anything is deception. The ideas of registration should include this component. I feel the voting environment would improve dramatically if we kept a record of registered screen names and personal profiles at least and kept them visible. Only registered users may vote. While the moderators may feel that they can't implement this suggestion, I feel that this idea or something similar to it will be the only constructive path towards a solution.
Finally, there is another issue for us to consider and that is if we are using our time wisely. It's nice to keep Riftrunner up but is all this effort going to generate a productive return? Finding ways to generate more publicity for Riftrunner seems to be our true goal. I hope that all our efforts in the end will only bring us closer rather than further from this goal if this is our goal.
Thanks.
