I'm a Habbo... Feedback

Right, let’s start at the very beginning. The competition started by putting Mike into PP and Cassie into LL, and the idea was all the other contestants wouldn’t know they were in the competition until they were picked or rejected. Cool idea on paper, but a slight flaw when it actually played out.

Cassie managed to get the first task correct first and picked Aqua, so I would join Mike’s team when he finished Task 1. Cassie and Aqua went straight onto task 2, meanwhile, whilst I knew I was going into the jungle later, I could see LL’s Task 2 and solved it. A few minutes later, Mike solved Task 1, I got put in, we got the same Task 2 and I just pasted my answer within seconds.

We then solved tasks 3, 4 and 5 before Cassie and Aqua got task 2 done, and I imagine Bolt could have done what I did, and told them the answers to tasks 3, 4 and 5 that we had posted.

So if this is done again in the future, either just tell the people who are in the jungle (personally I don’t think the twist of not knowing who was in till launch night added anything to the experience), or give each camp a different task (So a different Sudoku, a different anagram) – this is pretty much a big theme throughout the feedback post really.

So eventually we were put into two different camps, I can’t comment much on what happened with LL, I did get a brief time to view their private forum after I got evicted though, so I’ll try.
Our team voted and gave buttons an exemption, and the other team voted and kicked Emily out, seems strange to kick someone out so early when they’ve not really had the chance to do much, but meh, not the end of the world. Made things interesting.

Task 2 I think was the battleships. The first of the RNG tasks. Personally I’m not a fan of RNG tasks, especially when it results in one team being up for eviction, but in the end I didn’t get evicted from it, so not the end of the world for me. There was the case of LL somehow getting 4 more turns than PP, and whilst it may have not made much of a difference, it still sucks when another team is getting a significant advantage, once again, I feel this will be mentioned quite a bit later on.
Also worth noting, that buttons had the exemption from Day 1, so how lucky it was that we lost the task the next day so buttons’ exemption would actually have a purpose. I wonder what would have happened if PP had won Day 2’s task.

Task 3 was I think was one of the few days to have more than one task. One was a simple drawing task which decided eviction. Plain and simple task really. The 2nd one was the anagram one. And basically, what a screwed up task that was.

PP managed to solve one of the anagrams, and a few hours later LL manage to pull the answer out of thin air. Clear and obvious cheating, and we lost some of the prize fund due to that. Good job that the other team (well, really both teams) were punished for that. They were also asked to provide a chat log as evidence, and nobody could. The other anagram was even more of a disaster really, there was an error. PP for hours thought there was an hour, and asked (and tagged) all the hosts multiple times to get an answer, but we got ignored. However, Phil decided to tell Bolt over Skype that there was an error and where the error was, and they managed to figure it out! Now, in the end it didn’t matter as they acknowledged the error and we got the prize, but it is a serious issue.

Not only does the task have an error that makes the task impossible (Also happened in the word grid for Day 1, and the logic puzzle White/Red Wine puzzle), but Phil actually gave information out to Bolt, and Bolt only – and they used this to their advantage. At the start of the competition we were asked to not have any outside contact, so whilst PP is busy posting on the forum, LL is busy only having outside contact (on skype) and not only with each other, but to the people hosting the competition in the first place. It’s pretty obvious that the hosts should remain impartial and not favour any contestants. Now, as I said, PP didn’t lose out because of that, thank god, but we all now knew that Bolt was getting information we weren’t, which is probably why PP felt a bit sour about the whole deal. (This also gets mentioned again later).

Here is probably the time to mention a few things: Cassie and her vote begging. A shame to see that happen really, but she got an appropriate punishment for it. I’m very glad that the hosts didn’t less this slip by. Would still love to know who the other two people that asked @Empired; to vote for them though.

Skandair’s clone account – as far as I’m aware, nothing was done on the matter at all – would be very interesting to see if @ghcgh; ever voted for anyone during the evictions. What happened with this then? I’m pretty sure the whole forum suspected it was Skandair (he didn’t do much to exactly deny it either), but as far as I’m aware, nothing was said by the people organising the competition?

Luckily these two aspects didn’t impact much on the competition as a whole since they were both out pretty early on, but it really took the shine off the competition for me, and probably the rest of PP. We were playing by the rules, having a good time whilst LL were pulling answers out of thin air, only talking on skype, having clone accounts and begging for votes. At the time, I thought to myself, ‘At least it will get better when the camps merge’.

Nope.

The camps merge, and you might as well have renamed ‘Base Camp’ to ‘Plasto Plateau ft. guests’ because the others talked so very little (Maybe they were still talking on skype?).

Day 4 Task, The dice poker. This was complete and utter 100% RNG. At least in Battleships you could eliminate certain areas and not rely wholly on luck, but this was pure and random chance, and rather predictably we lost everything (pretty sure there’s a mathematical theorem that states if you stay in a casino forever, you will eventually lose all your money if you keep playing). Now, my personal thoughts are that the previous prize fund shouldn’t have been touched – instead we should have had a specific pot awarded for just that task. But that wasn’t the case, and it made all the previous tasks pointless. This also meant that the future tasks had to have ridiculous high rewards compared to the early tasks, to try and make up for the loss.

Day 5 Task, this was the last one I did, and it was a good task (essentially a repeat of a task I’ve done before in the Mole) – but once again, the puzzle was impossible to solve because of an error, despite apparently it being double checked with various people. Now, it was annoying when one of the first tasks had an error (especially when we were in a race with the other team), but with the amount of errors over the whole competition, it just sucked – and really, I guess it all comes down to preparation. Apparently Phil was creating all these tasks the night before they were posted (which I guess means a higher chance of errors if they were being rushed), but I don’t understand why that was the case. These tasks should have been created before the competition even started, or at least in the week between the competition being announced and it getting under way.

I guess the rushing of tasks also meant that they only managed (most of the time) to have a task a day, and this wasn’t a good thing either I don’t think. Look at the Day 6 task for example, Kyle solved it within 3 minutes of being posted, so for the rest of the 24 hours, all the other camp mates had absolutely nothing to do. And that’s really what contributes to people not being interested in the competition, and the lack of posting from contestants from then on really. There was nothing to do.

Then of course, the competition is a popularity contest, but I’m not going to say anything negative about that. Everyone knew it would be a popularity contest, and I’m not sure how the competition would work without a ‘Vote to save’ or ‘Vote to evict’ – but because it was a popularity contest, it meant that the most popular people would be kept in and not the most interesting/active people. So considering Inseriousity, myself, Kyle and buttons were probably the most avid posters in the competition, activity certainly dropped a lot when we got evicted in that order. Now, as I said, there’s not much that can be done – but it certainly meant reduced activity as a whole, and maybe something could have been done to try and counter act this somewhat. You did try secret tasks, but people simply weren’t online to do it (except Liva) – and whilst Liva had 12 hours to carry her task out, Bolt ended up doing his over a few days? The secret tasks were a good idea, just needed some improvement.

Another thing I wish to add was the timing of things. When we were in the jungle we pretty much had no information. We had no information when the new task would be, no information when voting would start, all we ever got told was when voting would end, so that was the only time we could actively decide to all be on the forum at that time. I felt it would have been better if certain times would have been set, so everyone knew the polls would open and close at the same time, and that tasks would start and finish at the same time.

Of course, this really depends on the availability of those running the competition. From what I understand, Phil was busy with work (or at least that’s what he told Bolt to tell the rest of the group). Now, clearly you can’t do much if you are busy in real life, but why would you hold a forum competition if you are really busy? I think the forum SMODs had access to Ant and Dec, but I feel maybe they should have had access to KK as well, so things could move slightly faster.
The last few tasks aren’t much to talk about (Except that the ‘Men in Black’ theme is apparently from a TV programme?), and there wasn’t even a task on the last day (I was expecting a task per person like in the TV show), so I guess I should talk about things generally now.

Audience participation was promised but nothing happened. It was even re-promised when it was brought up that nothing happened, but still nothing happened. Would it have improved audience interest? For sure. Would it have improved it enough? Who knows? But from what I gather, there was very little interest in what was going on in the contest – there was also supposed to be a jungle discussion forum, but that never happened, so any discussion took place in spam and wasn’t really organised. I’ve spoken to a few of the forum members about how they felt about the competition, and the general consensus I got was that they didn’t know much about it – didn’t know what was going on, how to vote etc.

And I guess I can understand this – as a contestant, I hadn’t got a clue what was going on either. We got barely any information relayed down to us, and clearly the audience didn’t either. If you wanted to vote (or at least know that voting was open), you would have to be online at the time the thread was posted, otherwise it would fall behind all the threads with new posts. No reminders were posted in the voting threads to bump it up the ‘new posts’ or ‘activity stream’ results, but there were no general forum reminders that I expected people would get either. Also, looking at the ‘Jungle Announcements’ forum now – Day 6’s vote is locked and stickied, whilst the final voting thread isn’t really noticeably visible from the rest of the threads.

This, combined with a lack of incentives for the audience to be involved, and increasingly less activity from the contestants meant that there was less and less interest from the audience.

Now, just to reiterate my main point from all of this really, preparation. I don’t know if @Wispur; had anything to do with this event before he left the FM position, or if it was all down to @Phil; and him wanting to do something interesting in his first few months as FM (I’ll mention this later as well) – but I feel like more time should have been spent on this before hand. I say more time should have been spent, but I’m not sure what work was even done on this before the competition started. Even just a week of planning tasks, making sure they all worked, and were ready in a forum to be copy and pasted as a task would have improved the quality of the event.

A few other things that are cropping up in the last day or so: Turns out Dec voted in a poll, but it didn’t change the result – clearly that means that at the time of the polls closing, it wasn’t checked who voted for who (so to check for clone accounts etc) – this should be done before the eviction starts, because if we did have a case where someone shouldn’t have been evicted, and the game has progressed significantly when that gets found out (Imagine Inseriousity being told he shouldn’t have been evicted, but only being told in the final day for example), then that would make the competition void pretty much. I assumed that this would have already have been checked.

So generally, things to improve for next time:

Planning and prep – Make sure the event is a good quality before it even gets mentioned on the forum. People involved should know what is happened and when rather than making it up as it goes along. Error checking is essential.

Audience interest – Make the forum want to know what’s going on. Perhaps enter people that vote into a prize draw for VIP? Perhaps get people to vote for which twist they want to happen in the competition. Maybe even a competition in the comps department: ‘Design Day 7’s Task’ or something.

Fair play – None of the contestants should have contact with anyone organising the competition, let alone giving information out. It annoys other people and doesn’t look good. Also ensuring similar punishments for similar offences.
And now, I want to end on a positive note, because I’m not completely mean.

I’m very glad this event went ahead – for quite some time the forum department have only done the same usual events (usually finding hidden images in threads) and it’s good to see something different. And thank god! Usually when a new manager comes in, nothing changes at all within that department, so it’s good to see something different. I’m glad you are taking a risk by doing something different Phil, and I know this event hasn’t gone exactly to plan – but don’t let it put you off. This is a good learning experience and I would be very interested to see an event like this again if improvements were made.

I would much rather see management take risks and for them not to work so well rather than be plain and boring all the time – and with enough practice these events could become really successful I reckon.

I know I’ve mentioned a lot of negative points, but I think pretty much all of them could be improved/solved with more preparation/time.

And now, a TL;DR for those that can’t be bothered to read:

• Different tasks for different camps – this stops answer sharing
• No pure RNG tasks
• If prizes can be lost via tasks, you shouldn’t be able to lose prizes already won. (Losing prizes as a punishment is fine)
• Fairness between camps/contestants from hosts
• No outside contact (and help/information) between hosts and contestants
• Check for task errors before hand
• All posts (Tasks, Announcements) should be written before hand so they can be directly copy and pasted
• Check polls for vote irregularities (clone accounts etc) before the result is announced. Delay the announcement of results if in depth investigation is needed.
• Audience participation is crucial
• Have a set time for the release of tasks/evictions/poll openings
• Forum announcements for the release of a new poll, regular bumping of voting threads
• Plan tasks in full (With the initial post ready to be copy and pasted) before the event
• More than 1 task per day (Or at least more interaction during the game between hosts and contestants)

Posting on behalf of @Kardan; as he can't make it and @Kyle; wants to reply with his thoughts rather than post it

Cool, I got back just now, so thanks for my post :P

Oh I looked through Online List to see if you're online first, but no ;l come on a second after I post it

No worries :P If people react badly I'll just say you really wrote it :P

Lmao I said at the bottom I was posting on behalf of you though, so all bad credit goes to @Kardan; as well as good

Just making it clear that I'm not ignoring this or anything. I'm just getting everyone out of that forum, getting their perms fixed up and then having dinner so will be about an hour before I get a chance to reply properly (maybe longer because the length of it :P)

I know most of it is probably negative and I already know what's gonna be in it but I appreciate it all the same guys.

i agree with everything you said

let's do habbox big brother

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Originally Posted by Phil

Just making it clear that I'm not ignoring this or anything. I'm just getting everyone out of that forum, getting their perms fixed up and then having dinner so will be about an hour before I get a chance to reply properly (maybe longer because the length of it :P)

I know most of it is probably negative and I already know what's gonna be in it but I appreciate it all the same guys.

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That was clear to me at least, I didn't expect a reply tonight to be fair :P

also reveal voting statistics

@Kardan; I'm still writing my reply :eek: !!! it's not too long yet but I have a few things to add onto the points you've already made. hope to see the views of some of those that weren't actually involved so a more rounded feedback thread can be created.

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Originally Posted by Kyle

@Kardan; I'm still writing my reply :eek: !!! it's not too long yet but I have a few things to add onto the points you've already made. hope to see the views of some of those that weren't actually involved so a more rounded feedback thread can be created.

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I agree - it would be very handy to have feedback from someone that didn't take part and did watch quite often - @cupcake; (Don't know anyone else that regularly paid attention other than habbic)

Things that could be improved

- Preparation
I was shocked to learn that it was being done as it went along. This explains a lot of the huge gaps between tasks. All the tasks should've been thought out beforehand really.

- Team work
Where were all the moderators? It is sad that 99% of the event was placed on Phil's shoulders. If the moderators got involved more, there could've been a lot more done. Also general management (sam in particular but anyone could've pitched in I suppose) could've helped out a bit when it became apparent that Phil was struggling to maintain momentum alone.

- Audience participation
A lot of potential to use the audience here. Jungle Discussion forum, more involvement with secret tasks (someone ordered to do what the audience decides, for instance). I've always personally been against doing the 'limited events' - events that are limited to a certain number of people - I prefered hosting the events that anyone could join at any time but the success of the Mole means there is room for both. Would be better to give outsiders a reason to get involved too though.

- Skype
Other camp used Skype to chat tactics giving them a distinct advantage and allowing others - hi zebbadi ;) - to see our tactics and feedback to the other team with no knowledge that its been received.

- Dingo Dollars
Could've had a seperate forum that you forced 2 people into to do small challenges just like the real show. It's a good way to isolate people and get a different perspective than it would when they're all together in one.

Things I liked

- The beginning.
Unlike Kardan, I thought it was a good system and the flaw that he points out was fixed straight away when you realised that Kardan had access to the task early.

- Battleships.
I really enjoyed this task as well. It lasted a long time, sure it was luck-based but being luck-based isn't necessarily an inferior thing imo. It was fun and a task that meant the teams had to work together. As I mentioned teamwork earlier, I think it's only fair that I point out Calum helped out with this task.

- Secret tasks
Sure they were all crowded together but they were good. Liva's random argument, Martin talking bout random topics just to get the answers to his questions, Ross' forgiveness thread and kyle being wtf

- Team plasto
We were the best team woooo.

- Doing the event
I agree with Kardan completely here. It is great that this event was put on after a long time of inactivity in this area. It is good that Phil took that risk and I hope to see many more in the future.

Congratulations Liva, a well deserved victory :D

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Originally Posted by Kardan

I agree - it would be very handy to have feedback from someone that didn't take part and did watch quite often - @cupcake; (Don't know anyone else that regularly paid attention other than habbic)

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Yeah I'd love to offer an opinion but I really didn't take any notice of the event, probably because of the reasons mentioned in the first post @scottish;

Apart from the creation of that forum, what else really was there to advertise the event to the 'audience'? With the exception of voting it almost turned into a competition for the select 'lucky' few who were accepted in rather than (what IMO would have been better) a forum wide event, at least where everyone can take part in something.

Anyway I don't want to criticize or anything as I know the planning and stuff has been going on for some time, although maybe it needed more planning still! I'm sure Phil will take the positives from the experience and next time will be great :).

Ok I'll reply to each bit and put my thoughts on it

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Right, let’s start at the very beginning. The competition started by putting Mike into PP and Cassie into LL, and the idea was all the other contestants wouldn’t know they were in the competition until they were picked or rejected. Cool idea on paper, but a slight flaw when it actually played out.

Cassie managed to get the first task correct first and picked Aqua, so I would join Mike’s team when he finished Task 1. Cassie and Aqua went straight onto task 2, meanwhile, whilst I knew I was going into the jungle later, I could see LL’s Task 2 and solved it. A few minutes later, Mike solved Task 1, I got put in, we got the same Task 2 and I just pasted my answer within seconds.

We then solved tasks 3, 4 and 5 before Cassie and Aqua got task 2 done, and I imagine Bolt could have done what I did, and told them the answers to tasks 3, 4 and 5 that we had posted.

So if this is done again in the future, either just tell the people who are in the jungle (personally I don’t think the twist of not knowing who was in till launch night added anything to the experience), or give each camp a different task (So a different Sudoku, a different anagram) – this is pretty much a big theme throughout the feedback post really.

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I didn't really follow it at the start as I had absolutely no idea that it was even up, was I just completely blind or was there a lack of advertisement on the event? The first I had heard of it was when @buttons; told me she got in the jungle and I was like what.. So towards start I didn't really follow anything that was going on but I'd have to agree, if they knew beforehand who was going into the jungle then either isolate them from the forums (even if it means changing their own user perms so they can't see the forum then change back once they've been picked) so they can't see the other groups users and find the answers to the competitions that have already been answered. So it's basically putting the faster / more active / smarter / etc users at a disadvantage because they can complete it quicker than the others.

Or at worst, as you said djuts put them all the group so there isn't a build up to them being entered, but it wasn't that great anyway as I imagine not many people were sitting with anticipation waiting to see who had been put in and who hadn't? Maybe they have as I said I missed the start of it so.

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So eventually we were put into two different camps, I can’t comment much on what happened with LL, I did get a brief time to view their private forum after I got evicted though, so I’ll try.
Our team voted and gave buttons an exemption, and the other team voted and kicked Emily out, seems strange to kick someone out so early when they’ve not really had the chance to do much, but meh, not the end of the world. Made things interesting.

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Again I agree, there should have been a few days before anyone had been getting any exemptions or getting kicked out, what's the point getting put in if you're basically out the next day. I also believe exemptions should have been a rare thing rather than one person getting one a day, but then I suppose you wanting each group to vote for something so gave them that.

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Task 2 I think was the battleships. The first of the RNG tasks. Personally I’m not a fan of RNG tasks, especially when it results in one team being up for eviction, but in the end I didn’t get evicted from it, so not the end of the world for me. There was the case of LL somehow getting 4 more turns than PP, and whilst it may have not made much of a difference, it still sucks when another team is getting a significant advantage, once again, I feel this will be mentioned quite a bit later on.
Also worth noting, that buttons had the exemption from Day 1, so how lucky it was that we lost the task the next day so buttons’ exemption would actually have a purpose. I wonder what would have happened if PP had won Day 2’s task.

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RNG tasks are fine if they're a one-off so maybe like 1 or 2 in the entire event (1 or 2 if there was multiple events a day, not the way it turned out), I doubt they've planned enough to know what would have happened if your team has won the second day, so the exemption would have probably been useless.

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Task 3 was I think was one of the few days to have more than one task. One was a simple drawing task which decided eviction. Plain and simple task really. The 2nd one was the anagram one. And basically, what a screwed up task that was.

PP managed to solve one of the anagrams, and a few hours later LL manage to pull the answer out of thin air. Clear and obvious cheating, and we lost some of the prize fund due to that. Good job that the other team (well, really both teams) were punished for that. They were also asked to provide a chat log as evidence, and nobody could. The other anagram was even more of a disaster really, there was an error. PP for hours thought there was an hour, and asked (and tagged) all the hosts multiple times to get an answer, but we got ignored. However, Phil decided to tell Bolt over Skype that there was an error and where the error was, and they managed to figure it out! Now, in the end it didn’t matter as they acknowledged the error and we got the prize, but it is a serious issue.

Not only does the task have an error that makes the task impossible (Also happened in the word grid for Day 1, and the logic puzzle White/Red Wine puzzle), but Phil actually gave information out to Bolt, and Bolt only – and they used this to their advantage. At the start of the competition we were asked to not have any outside contact, so whilst PP is busy posting on the forum, LL is busy only having outside contact (on skype) and not only with each other, but to the people hosting the competition in the first place. It’s pretty obvious that the hosts should remain impartial and not favour any contestants. Now, as I said, PP didn’t lose out because of that, thank god, but we all now knew that Bolt was getting information we weren’t, which is probably why PP felt a bit sour about the whole deal. (This also gets mentioned again later).

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At very least, the SMOD's should have been attempting each task to make sure it's actually correct and do-able before putting it to the public/jungle. I posted the answer to the first one in spam and as you said *~*mysteriously*~* Cassie knew the answer without any working out in the Skype convertsation. While you were in the jungle I made a post in feedback asking for the Skype conversation, Skandair posted but then within about 10 minutes removed it again when I asked how she suddenly knew the first answer with no working out. There was a few lines of them actually attempting to get the second one and as you said, bolt660 pasted in a chat log from Phil over skype saying that there was an error and lawrawrrrr was indeed in it (iirc).

Something like this should have been instantly posted in the appropriate threads rather than something relayed over Skype as it's completely unfair on the other team who are asking (constantly) if it's an error and getting no reply.

[quote]Here is probably the time to mention a few things: Cassie and her vote begging. A shame to see that happen really, but she got an appropriate punishment for it. I’m very glad that the hosts didn’t less this slip by. Would still love to know who the other two people that asked @Empired; to vote for them though./quote]

I'd like to see the voting statistics (for every vote) but also specifically for that period where Cassie was begging for votes via skype and asking HxL DJ's to beg in the staff forums to see how much it actually impacted her voting and see if the punishment was actually fair (say she had 30 and next person has 5, hardly fair with a 50% reduction :P). I highly doubt anyone else did as no-one from the other group speaks to Empired so it's most likely just Empired trying to stick up for Cassie so she doesn't look as pathetic.

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Skandair’s clone account – as far as I’m aware, nothing was done on the matter at all – would be very interesting to see if @ghcgh; ever voted for anyone during the evictions. What happened with this then? I’m pretty sure the whole forum suspected it was Skandair (he didn’t do much to exactly deny it either), but as far as I’m aware, nothing was said by the people organising the competition?

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Another reason we'd like to see who voted who on polls to see if this was infact Skandairs clone or Bolts, as both were in our 'suspect' list but then we limited it to Skandair due to bolt660 not knowing what a proxy is let alone use one, but when we did ask on Habbo he just laughed and tried to pass it off, so most likely was. I spoke with MattG about it and he said SMOD's were told about it, so I wonder if the vote was taken off in the voting thread, or if it was just used to view the other forums?

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Luckily these two aspects didn’t impact much on the competition as a whole since they were both out pretty early on, but it really took the shine off the competition for me, and probably the rest of PP. We were playing by the rules, having a good time whilst LL were pulling answers out of thin air, only talking on skype, having clone accounts and begging for votes. At the time, I thought to myself, ‘At least it will get better when the camps merge’.

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I'm not sure, as it would have impacted a bit if the people Cassie begged to vote kept voting (obviously not enough to keep her in but yeah, she should probably have been out before then)

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The camps merge, and you might as well have renamed ‘Base Camp’ to ‘Plasto Plateau ft. guests’ because the others talked so very little (Maybe they were still talking on skype?).

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I'd hope not, they were warned not to use it. The only time they seemed to post was when everyone else was out, even then it was limited to like once a day other than tasks..

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Day 4 Task, The dice poker. This was complete and utter 100% RNG. At least in Battleships you could eliminate certain areas and not rely wholly on luck, but this was pure and random chance, and rather predictably we lost everything (pretty sure there’s a mathematical theorem that states if you stay in a casino forever, you will eventually lose all your money if you keep playing). Now, my personal thoughts are that the previous prize fund shouldn’t have been touched – instead we should have had a specific pot awarded for just that task. But that wasn’t the case, and it made all the previous tasks pointless. This also meant that the future tasks had to have ridiculous high rewards compared to the early tasks, to try and make up for the loss.

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Again, I agree with you that having too many RNG tasks is just silly in something like this. As well as the method that was used (using prize already in the pot rather than having a pot). I believe it should have worked something a long the lines of you have 50 of everything in the pot, leave it or bet it. Bet it you win 2x, whatevers left end of day you have it in your prize pot including what you had before. So you can bet but you're not losing rewards you have already achieved.

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Day 5 Task, this was the last one I did, and it was a good task (essentially a repeat of a task I’ve done before in the Mole) – but once again, the puzzle was impossible to solve because of an error, despite apparently it being double checked with various people. Now, it was annoying when one of the first tasks had an error (especially when we were in a race with the other team), but with the amount of errors over the whole competition, it just sucked – and really, I guess it all comes down to preparation. Apparently Phil was creating all these tasks the night before they were posted (which I guess means a higher chance of errors if they were being rushed), but I don’t understand why that was the case. These tasks should have been created before the competition even started, or at least in the week between the competition being announced and it getting under way.

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Again with the comment I made before, at least the SMOD's should be testing (maybe a few more people from before the event started that you could trust to do it), but then again that would require preparation where as this all seemed last minute rush rather than carefully thought through. I don't see why it had to be rushed either, @e5; posted saying the plan originated in January, so you've had 3 months to come up with ideas for tasks and plan it out, and instead you're rushing the tasks the night before the day you have to post it. This is why the 'jungle' was dead essentially, there was nothing to do and when there was it was wrong.

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I guess the rushing of tasks also meant that they only managed (most of the time) to have a task a day, and this wasn’t a good thing either I don’t think. Look at the Day 6 task for example, Kyle solved it within 3 minutes of being posted, so for the rest of the 24 hours, all the other camp mates had absolutely nothing to do. And that’s really what contributes to people not being interested in the competition, and the lack of posting from contestants from then on really. There was nothing to do.

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Yup, short of talking the tasks were the main thing in the jungle, having 1 a day just made the environment of the jungle dead. When there was tasks there was a lot of discussion and it was going fine (except with errors, and of course the Lodge Lake group who kept everything to Skype).

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Then of course, the competition is a popularity contest, but I’m not going to say anything negative about that. Everyone knew it would be a popularity contest, and I’m not sure how the competition would work without a ‘Vote to save’ or ‘Vote to evict’ – but because it was a popularity contest, it meant that the most popular people would be kept in and not the most interesting/active people. So considering Inseriousity, myself, Kyle and buttons were probably the most avid posters in the competition, activity certainly dropped a lot when we got evicted in that order. Now, as I said, there’s not much that can be done – but it certainly meant reduced activity as a whole, and maybe something could have been done to try and counter act this somewhat. You did try secret tasks, but people simply weren’t online to do it (except Liva) – and whilst Liva had 12 hours to carry her task out, Bolt ended up doing his over a few days? The secret tasks were a good idea, just needed some improvement.

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Yeah when I seen it, the tasks were given out then people were like well how long do I have? I think it was Liva? then she was given 12 hours, no-one else asked how long they had so had no time limit imposed on them, and as you said Bolt spent a few days going over it which is unfair as Liva only has 12 hours (which she managed easily enough). It also meant that people would have been voted out before he could find the answer. Like one of the questions was about Kyle but he had been voted out the day after so obviously he couldn't find out the question regarding him.

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Another thing I wish to add was the timing of things. When we were in the jungle we pretty much had no information. We had no information when the new task would be, no information when voting would start, all we ever got told was when voting would end, so that was the only time we could actively decide to all be on the forum at that time. I felt it would have been better if certain times would have been set, so everyone knew the polls would open and close at the same time, and that tasks would start and finish at the same time.

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Again I agree, there should have been a rough plan of stuff so for example 12PM Midday - Task 1, 6PM - Task 2, 12AM Midnight - Tasks close vote opens, 11AM - Votes close, 12PM Midday vote announced and next task.

Although as it was only phil 'winging' half of it obviously didn't expect it to be planned and as he was working around his work schedule there was no specific time for anything. I also think 24 hour for a task was way too much.

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Of course, this really depends on the availability of those running the competition. From what I understand, Phil was busy with work (or at least that’s what he told Bolt to tell the rest of the group). Now, clearly you can’t do much if you are busy in real life, but why would you hold a forum competition if you are really busy? I think the forum SMODs had access to Ant and Dec, but I feel maybe they should have had access to KK as well, so things could move slightly faster.
The last few tasks aren’t much to talk about (Except that the ‘Men in Black’ theme is apparently from a TV programme?), and there wasn’t even a task on the last day (I was expecting a task per person like in the TV show), so I guess I should talk about things generally now.

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I have a habbit of agreeing with you, but again I agree the SMODs should have had access to KK and been given the list of tasks (which didn't exist as it was unorganised) so they could work to the schedule and not have everyone wondering whats happening now..

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Audience participation was promised but nothing happened. It was even re-promised when it was brought up that nothing happened, but still nothing happened. Would it have improved audience interest? For sure. Would it have improved it enough? Who knows? But from what I gather, there was very little interest in what was going on in the contest – there was also supposed to be a jungle discussion forum, but that never happened, so any discussion took place in spam and wasn’t really organised. I’ve spoken to a few of the forum members about how they felt about the competition, and the general consensus I got was that they didn’t know much about it – didn’t know what was going on, how to vote etc.

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I think for the first few days we spoke a little in spam regarding Cassie's cheating etc then after that there was very little talk about it in spam as it seemed no-one was interested as we had no impact on it or anything to do really, sure we could read it but for what we're just watching people guessing a task then get nothing out of it essentially. If specific people weren't in it I would have instantly added the forum to my ignore list.

and I agree again, at the start I never even heard about the competition let alone any information regarding it after it was released.

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And I guess I can understand this – as a contestant, I hadn’t got a clue what was going on either. We got barely any information relayed down to us, and clearly the audience didn’t either. If you wanted to vote (or at least know that voting was open), you would have to be online at the time the thread was posted, otherwise it would fall behind all the threads with new posts. No reminders were posted in the voting threads to bump it up the ‘new posts’ or ‘activity stream’ results, but there were no general forum reminders that I expected people would get either. Also, looking at the ‘Jungle Announcements’ forum now – Day 6’s vote is locked and stickied, whilst the final voting thread isn’t really noticeably visible from the rest of the threads.

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The forum was also poorly organised, the voting poll for old posts should have been archived or unstickied, but instead we had out of date ones as the sticky and the latest ones down the bottom behind other announcements and votes.

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Now, just to reiterate my main point from all of this really, preparation. I don’t know if @Wispur; had anything to do with this event before he left the FM position, or if it was all down to @Phil; and him wanting to do something interesting in his first few months as FM (I’ll mention this later as well) – but I feel like more time should have been spent on this before hand. I say more time should have been spent, but I’m not sure what work was even done on this before the competition started. Even just a week of planning tasks, making sure they all worked, and were ready in a forum to be copy and pasted as a task would have improved the quality of the event.

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I agree it was a good idea and something nice to do for a change, but you also shouldn't be expected to be able to wing it and just go with the flow, it should have been carefully planned and executed accordingly, it should also have involved more people on the management behalf rather than just Phil if he's busy with work.

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A few other things that are cropping up in the last day or so: Turns out Dec voted in a poll, but it didn’t change the result – clearly that means that at the time of the polls closing, it wasn’t checked who voted for who (so to check for clone accounts etc) – this should be done before the eviction starts, because if we did have a case where someone shouldn’t have been evicted, and the game has progressed significantly when that gets found out (Imagine Inseriousity being told he shouldn’t have been evicted, but only being told in the final day for example), then that would make the competition void pretty much. I assumed that this would have already have been checked.

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I think so much has been screwed up with regards to polls, we really need to have the voting results posted so everyone can see. None of the people behind the event should be voting for anyone on their own account, let alone 'accidently' voting on an official account used for the organisation of the event. The management team should have been checking who was being voted and if anything abnormal occurred (such as @ghcgh; voting or any other seemingly obvious 'clone'). So much has gone wrong I was expecting them to say ms.aqua actually won it and they accidently announced wrong...

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Planning and prep – Make sure the event is a good quality before it even gets mentioned on the forum. People involved should know what is happened and when rather than making it up as it goes along. Error checking is essential.

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It should have been advertised within the hotel (HxHD, events, etc), it should have been advertised on Habbox.com (banned, page about it, etc), it should have been advertised on the forum (community announcements, a notification at the top, etc). Not sure if it was any of those but I certainly didn't see any, so if it was there wasn't enough.

There should have been more people involved in the preparation to come up with unique tasks, to test the tasks and to follow a schedule for tasks/voting.

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Audience interest – Make the forum want to know what’s going on. Perhaps enter people that vote into a prize draw for VIP? Perhaps get people to vote for which twist they want to happen in the competition. Maybe even a competition in the comps department: ‘Design Day 7’s Task’ or something.

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There should have been a public area in the jungle forum for everyone to discuss, there should have been daily bulletins on what's happened in the jungle that day, there should have been competitions or other ways for the audience to get involved rather than just having a vote each day. Not so sure on coming up with tasks as then that could lead to cheating, but yeah. Even involving other departments in the jungle events (so for example a habbo maze/quiz they have to complete to get the answer or part of the answer).

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Fair play – None of the contestants should have contact with anyone organising the competition, let alone giving information out. It annoys other people and doesn’t look good. Also ensuring similar punishments for similar offences.
And now, I want to end on a positive note, because I’m not completely mean.

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Again I agree, it's completely unfair on the other team if one team is received information the other team isn't, I'd go as far as saying that's cheating and should have been punished for it, but yeah. They shouldn't have contact with anyone really outside of the competition regarding the competition (even with your own team).

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

Unlike Kardan, I thought it was a good system and the flaw that he points out was fixed straight away when you realised that Kardan had access to the task early.

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Ahh, was this flaw fixed? Makes sense, I did wonder why bolt didn't just copy our answers (since he wasn't in the jungle when we finished all the tasks) and they didn't do the last tasks within minutes of each other. Good job for fixing this.

Also, with regards to the 'secret visitor' or whatever, how did that come about?

It just seemed to be completely random then he just randomly got stuck in?

Should have been more audience participation on that behalf as well, maybe the winner of some public task got put in rather than just random, and they had to do something for you to win the chance to be put in, rather than just randomly planting you in.

Yeah that was sorted. As soon as we'd completed the task, he must've known what had happened - I didn't have a clue I was like "WTF" LOL - and then he removed perms before posting the next one (that's why task 3 took a while to get posted if you recall).

Also another thing under the preparation, the groups and forums.

Soon as the groups got merged to the Base Camp forum, the forum wasn't set up and @Phil; had to rush and mess about to get the perms working so public people couldn't post but jungler's could. This should have been set up wellllll in advance and just hidden the forum from everyone until the right time. As it was a massive screw up at the time allowing any of us to post in it, then you removed it, re-added it then the jungler's couldn't post in other peoples or view other peoples. Then you eventually fixed it.

Oh, I agree about the battleships task. The task itself was good, there was some RNG involved, but it wasn't wholly RNG - you were able to organise tactics etc. The only thing that I could criticise about that task was one team got more moves than the other. My RNG annoyance was more with the dice task (but again that wouldn't have been so bad if we were allowed to bet a prize pot for that task, rather than the whole prize fund so far).

- - - Updated - - -

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

Yeah that was sorted. As soon as we'd completed the task, he must've known what had happened - I didn't have a clue I was like "WTF" LOL - and then he removed perms before posting the next one (that's why task 3 took a while to get posted if you recall).

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Nah, I was too busy stressing about the test (that I did fail :P)

Going to answer this bit by bit, it's gonna take a while so if I've posted and not mentioned your post it's either because it's been posted since I started writing a reply or there's nothing to reply to it.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Right, let’s start at the very beginning. The competition started by putting Mike into PP and Cassie into LL, and the idea was all the other contestants wouldn’t know they were in the competition until they were picked or rejected. Cool idea on paper, but a slight flaw when it actually played out.

Cassie managed to get the first task correct first and picked Aqua, so I would join Mike’s team when he finished Task 1. Cassie and Aqua went straight onto task 2, meanwhile, whilst I knew I was going into the jungle later, I could see LL’s Task 2 and solved it. A few minutes later, Mike solved Task 1, I got put in, we got the same Task 2 and I just pasted my answer within seconds.

We then solved tasks 3, 4 and 5 before Cassie and Aqua got task 2 done, and I imagine Bolt could have done what I did, and told them the answers to tasks 3, 4 and 5 that we had posted.

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I thought the entry of everyone was quite good if I say so myself. I know there was the flaw with @Kardan; knowing all of the answers already and I just completely over looked it and it was solved straight away. I don't think it made a difference to the end result since PP finished hours before LL.

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Originally Posted by scottish

So if this is done again in the future, either just tell the people who are in the jungle (personally I don’t think the twist of not knowing who was in till launch night added anything to the experience), or give each camp a different task (So a different Sudoku, a different anagram) – this is pretty much a big theme throughout the feedback post really.

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I wasn't doing this for the twist as such but more so the contestants wouldn't be leaked ahead of the competition starting which is something that happened in Big Brother.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Task 2 I think was the battleships. The first of the RNG tasks. Personally I’m not a fan of RNG tasks, especially when it results in one team being up for eviction, but in the end I didn’t get evicted from it, so not the end of the world for me. There was the case of LL somehow getting 4 more turns than PP, and whilst it may have not made much of a difference, it still sucks when another team is getting a significant advantage, once again, I feel this will be mentioned quite a bit later on. Also worth noting, that buttons had the exemption from Day 1, so how lucky it was that we lost the task the next day so buttons’ exemption would actually have a purpose. I wonder what would have happened if PP had won Day 2’s task.

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Battleships isn't really a RNG though. Sure the first few moves of each team will be random guesses but there's also skill to it which you showed with the Graphics you posted in the task? Looking back I agree I should have done PP, LL, PP, LL etc. but I didn't think of that at the time because I thought it'd be unfair to keep one team waiting. Pretty much the whole task ended up being PP, LL, PP, LL etc. but the reason for those having the four extra moves was you guys were talking tactics and worrying about taking in turns (which wasn't a criteria for the task) while LL were just posting guess after guess.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Task 3 was I think was one of the few days to have more than one task. One was a simple drawing task which decided eviction. Plain and simple task really. The 2nd one was the anagram one. And basically, what a screwed up task that was.

PP managed to solve one of the anagrams, and a few hours later LL manage to pull the answer out of thin air. Clear and obvious cheating, and we lost some of the prize fund due to that. Good job that the other team (well, really both teams) were punished for that. They were also asked to provide a chat log as evidence, and nobody could. The other anagram was even more of a disaster really, there was an error. PP for hours thought there was an hour, and asked (and tagged) all the hosts multiple times to get an answer, but we got ignored. However, Phil decided to tell Bolt over Skype that there was an error and where the error was, and they managed to figure it out! Now, in the end it didn’t matter as they acknowledged the error and we got the prize, but it is a serious issue.

Not only does the task have an error that makes the task impossible (Also happened in the word grid for Day 1, and the logic puzzle White/Red Wine puzzle), but Phil actually gave information out to Bolt, and Bolt only – and they used this to their advantage. At the start of the competition we were asked to not have any outside contact, so whilst PP is busy posting on the forum, LL is busy only having outside contact (on skype) and not only with each other, but to the people hosting the competition in the first place. It’s pretty obvious that the hosts should remain impartial and not favour any contestants. Now, as I said, PP didn’t lose out because of that, thank god, but we all now knew that Bolt was getting information we weren’t, which is probably why PP felt a bit sour about the whole deal. (This also gets mentioned again later).

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Drawing task "plain and simple", does that mean it was a good task or what? :P
I know the anagram task was a bit of a disaster and I know that is could have been resolved by writing all the tasks in advance but that'll be addressed later. The morning I was heading out to a funeral and then to work that evening so it was very rushed. This answers your query regarding the other hosts not knowing. When I came home from work, Martin messaged me and told me there was an error in the task. Straight away I told him that it is indeed and error and "lawrawrrr" is a word in the anagram but I do not accept you telling me that only LL were told because the second I got that information from Martin I came online and I posted in that task thread.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Here is probably the time to mention a few things: Cassie and her vote begging. A shame to see that happen really, but she got an appropriate punishment for it. I’m very glad that the hosts didn’t less this slip by. Would still love to know who the other two people that asked @Empired; to vote for them though.

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Very disappointed by this. It was really fowl behaviour and I really was not happy at all especially with the thread that was posted in the HxL Forums which I have recently discovered was actually moved out of the staff's view anyway.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Skandair’s clone account – as far as I’m aware, nothing was done on the matter at all – would be very interesting to see if @ghcgh; ever voted for anyone during the evictions. What happened with this then? I’m pretty sure the whole forum suspected it was Skandair (he didn’t do much to exactly deny it either), but as far as I’m aware, nothing was said by the people organising the competition?

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Wen this came to late, I investigated this as much as I possibly could. As it is rumoured that he used the account in school there were no IP matches. I couldn't ban the account because I hadn't any proof aside from some suspicions. Once he was evicted from the competition I've kind of pushed it to the side but now that it's over, it's on my to do list and I will look into it some more shortly.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Day 4 Task, The dice poker. This was complete and utter 100% RNG. At least in Battleships you could eliminate certain areas and not rely wholly on luck, but this was pure and random chance, and rather predictably we lost everything (pretty sure there’s a mathematical theorem that states if you stay in a casino forever, you will eventually lose all your money if you keep playing). Now, my personal thoughts are that the previous prize fund shouldn’t have been touched – instead we should have had a specific pot awarded for just that task. But that wasn’t the case, and it made all the previous tasks pointless. This also meant that the future tasks had to have ridiculous high rewards compared to the early tasks, to try and
make up for the loss.

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I agree that this was an RNG but it also required some team work in terms of talking about the bets, what you think you should do. I know you didn't want to bet it and stuff but did you mention that in the thread? Maybe you did and I just can't remember.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Day 5 Task, this was the last one I did, and it was a good task (essentially a repeat of a task I’ve done before in the Mole) – but once again, the puzzle was impossible to solve because of an error, despite apparently it being double checked with various people. Now, it was annoying when one of the first tasks had an error (especially when we were in a race with the other team), but with the amount of errors over the whole competition, it just sucked – and really, I guess it all comes down to preparation. Apparently Phil was creating all these tasks the night before they were posted (which I guess means a higher chance of errors if they were being rushed), but I don’t understand why that was the case. These tasks should have been created before the competition even started, or at least in the week between the competition being announced and it getting under way.

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Again, this was down to failing to prepare properly which will be mentioned later on.

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Originally Posted by scottish

I guess the rushing of tasks also meant that they only managed (most of the time) to have a task a day, and this wasn’t a good thing either I don’t think. Look at the Day 6 task for example, Kyle solved it within 3 minutes of being posted, so for the rest of the 24 hours, all the other camp mates had absolutely nothing to do. And that’s really what contributes to people not being interested in the competition, and the lack of posting from contestants from then on really. There was nothing to do.

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Yeah this was really unfortunate and again, down to the planning. I was working the next day so I didn't even have the chance to think about tasks and post them. The team mates not talking isn't really down to me though. In HxBB there were four tasks throughout the whole competition but the forums were always active.

[QUOTE=scottish;8140202]Then of course, the competition is a popularity contest, but I’m not going to say anything negative about that. Everyone knew it would be a popularity contest, and I’m not sure how the competition would work without a ‘Vote to save’ or ‘Vote to evict’ – but because it was a popularity contest, it meant that the most popular people would be kept in and not the most interesting/active people. So considering Inseriousity, myself, Kyle and buttons were probably the most avid posters in the competition, activity certainly dropped a lot when we got evicted in that order. Now, as I said, there’s not much that can be done – but it certainly meant reduced activity as a whole, and maybe something could have been done to try and counter act this somewhat. You did try secret tasks, but people simply weren’t online to do it (except Liva) – and whilst Liva had 12 hours to carry her task out, Bolt ended up doing his over a few days? The secret tasks were a good idea, just needed some improvement.[QUOTE]
It was a popularity contest but there's nothing any of us can do to stop that. I prefer put something on and have it as a popularity contest rather than have nothing at all. I did try secret tasks and they were done? The only person who wasn't online to do their task was Kyle, the other three completed the successfully. Yeah I agree they needed some improvement (and tbh I think I should have started them earlier). In one of the announcements I said if anyone has ideas for Secret Tasks to PM Forum God and you'll get some rep but I didn't receive any suggestions so didn't do any more Secret Tasks.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Another thing I wish to add was the timing of things. When we were in the jungle we pretty much had no information. We had no information when the new task would be, no information when voting would start, all we ever got told was when voting would end, so that was the only time we could actively decide to all be on the forum at that time. I felt it would have been better if certain times would have been set, so everyone knew the polls would open and close at the same time, and that tasks would start and finish at the same time.

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Yeah, again, down to preperation and as you mentioned below, availability. Have no other reason for this, sorry about that!

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Originally Posted by scottish

Of course, this really depends on the availability of those running the competition. From what I understand, Phil was busy with work (or at least that’s what he told Bolt to tell the rest of the group). Now, clearly you can’t do much if you are busy in real life, but why would you hold a forum competition if you are really busy? I think the forum SMODs had access to Ant and Dec, but I feel maybe they should have had access to KK as well, so things could move slightly faster.
The last few tasks aren’t much to talk about (Except that the ‘Men in Black’ theme is apparently from a TV programme?), and there wasn’t even a task on the last day (I was expecting a task per person like in the TV show), so I guess I should talk about things generally now.

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I hold a competition because I'm the Forum Manager and I want my management reign to be more Community based that it has been since whenever. Elliot had access to Ant and Nick had access to Dec. They would have had access to Kiosk Keith but there was simply no reason for this because the team didn't pull together and come up with tasks so the SMOD's didn't know any tasks so I had to make them up last minute every time.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Audience participation was promised but nothing happened. It was even re-promised when it was brought up that nothing happened, but still nothing happened. Would it have improved audience interest? For sure. Would it have improved it enough? Who knows? But from what I gather, there was very little interest in what was going on in the contest – there was also supposed to be a jungle discussion forum, but that never happened, so any discussion took place in spam and wasn’t really organised. I’ve spoken to a few of the forum members about how they felt about the competition, and the general consensus I got was that they didn’t know much about it – didn’t know what was going on, how to vote etc.

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This is my biggest regret for the competition. When it came to audience participation, I literally had no ideas. You mention somewhere that I should have said that one voter gets VIP and I'm actually kicking myself for not thinking of such an obvious participation incentive. In terms of the forum this was pretty much down to me not being able to figure it out perms wise. You all know, even at this point I'm only getting used to the role and the admin cp is a complicated place :P Due to work and stuff, I was never online at the same time as Chris or Matt so I couldn't ask them (the only times I was on at the same time as Matt is when he was working but I wasn't going to bother him with something like this.) and by the time I actually had time to sit down and do it, it was too late.

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Originally Posted by scottish

And I guess I can understand this – as a contestant, I hadn’t got a clue what was going on either. We got barely any information relayed down to us, and clearly the audience didn’t either. If you wanted to vote (or at least know that voting was open), you would have to be online at the time the thread was posted, otherwise it would fall behind all the threads with new posts. No reminders were posted in the voting threads to bump it up the ‘new posts’ or ‘activity stream’ results, but there were no general forum reminders that I expected people would get either. Also, looking at the ‘Jungle Announcements’ forum now – Day 6’s vote is locked and stickied, whilst the final voting thread isn’t really noticeably visible from the rest of the threads.

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My main reason for not bumping the threads is because the thread would always be displayed as the most recent post in "Jungle Announcements" on the right hand side of the Forum Index. I didn't want to clog up New Posts with bumps because a lot of the members on the forum just didn't want to see anything to do with The Jungle and I tried to minimise it as much as possible.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Now, just to reiterate my main point from all of this really, preparation. I don’t know if @Wispur; had anything to do with this event before he left the FM position, or if it was all down to @Phil; and him wanting to do something interesting in his first few months as FM (I’ll mention this later as well) – but I feel like more time should have been spent on this before hand. I say more time should have been spent, but I’m not sure what work was even done on this before the competition started. Even just a week of planning tasks, making sure they all worked, and were ready in a forum to be copy and pasted as a task would have improved the quality of the event.

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I just want to clarify that Chris didn't have anything to do with this competition and all flaws are 100% my responsibility. The only thing he did was request the graphics but that was before I became manager. I saw Elliott arguing with someoen in Spam about "months of work" being put into this. The time was spent on it in a sense. I posted my first thread back in late January and between then and me becoming manager I was trying to pull tasks out of the dept but it wasn't happening and I assumed it was because I wasn't manager and I wasn't being taken seriously.

The very first thing I did when I became FM was set a date for this so there would be a deadline but still no tasks were posted. I thought if I set a date, it would put everyone under pressure and it'd get done but I was wrong. I thought of all of those tasks except for three (thanks to Laura, James & Sian for thinking of one each). I agree that better preperation of the tasks would have greatly improved the execution of the event.

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Originally Posted by scottish

A few other things that are cropping up in the last day or so: Turns out Dec voted in a poll, but it didn’t change the result – clearly that means that at the time of the polls closing, it wasn’t checked who voted for who (so to check for clone accounts etc) – this should be done before the eviction starts, because if we did have a case where someone shouldn’t have been evicted, and the game has progressed significantly when that gets found out (Imagine Inseriousity being told he shouldn’t have been evicted, but only being told in the final day for example), then that would make the competition void pretty much. I assumed that this would have already have been checked.

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This should have been done but I'm going to straight up admit that I though that if the poll was hidden, it was hidden and end of story. I knew I could see the results but didn't know I could see voters via the panel. The first day I knew I could even do this was the other day when I messed up the polls and I was checking it everyday (although there weren't many left) since. I was running IP checks on all contestants daily, just saying.

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Originally Posted by scottish

So generally, things to improve for next time:

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omg does that mean I'm nearly done!??!?!

[QUOTE=scottish;8140202]Planning and prep – Make sure the event is a good quality before it even gets mentioned on the forum. People involved should know what is happened and when rather than making it up as it goes along. Error checking is essential.[QUOTE]

Check.

[QUOTE=scottish;8140202]Audience interest – Make the forum want to know what’s going on. Perhaps enter people that vote into a prize draw for VIP? Perhaps get people to vote for which twist they want to happen in the competition. Maybe even a competition in the comps department: ‘Design Day 7’s Task’ or something.[QUOTE]

Check.

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Originally Posted by scottish

I’m very glad this event went ahead – for quite some time the forum department have only done the same usual events (usually finding hidden images in threads) and it’s good to see something different. And thank god! Usually when a new manager comes in, nothing changes at all within that department, so it’s good to see something different. I’m glad you are taking a risk by doing something different Phil, and I know this event hasn’t gone exactly to plan – but don’t let it put you off. This is a good learning experience and I would be very interested to see an event like this again if improvements were made.

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Despite how I feel about it now, I am glad I did it. It was really time to see something a bit different. I had an idea for April which is why I wanted to get The Jungle over with (but that won't be happening now as the achievement system is coming in. It was basically that but a smaller scale). I know people think I probably should have waited a few months to get settled and then do this but I was already planning it and I wanted to start off with a bang (okay it's more like a 'toot'). I said before I want to make the dept more community based and this was just Step 1.

Thanks Aiden, I really appreciate it.

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

I]- Team work[/I]
Where were all the moderators? It is sad that 99% of the event was placed on Phil's shoulders. If the moderators got involved more, there could've been a lot more done. Also general management (sam in particular but anyone could've pitched in I suppose) could've helped out a bit when it became apparent that Phil was struggling to maintain momentum alone.

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Dunno! The SMOD's were a help with the Bush Telegraphs, I didn't do so much of those and @Calum0812; was really great help throughout the competition and I can't thank him enough. For example, the Battleships trial was basically a 4 hour Skype call of me shouting "PLASTO PLATEAU B6, LODGE LAGE A10" and him creating a new graphic each time :P

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

- Skype
Other camp used Skype to chat tactics giving them a distinct advantage and allowing others - hi zebbadi ;) - to see our tactics and feedback to the other team with no knowledge that its been received.

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Agree with everything said in this point and really disappointed with everyone involved ngl.

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

- Dingo Dollars
Could've had a seperate forum that you forced 2 people into to do small challenges just like the real show. It's a good way to isolate people and get a different perspective than it would when they're all together in one.

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This was the original plan but it would have been difficult in terms of getting people online at the same time especially those in different timezones. I was event going to call them Crocodile Credits :( We also didn't have the tasks done and lets face it, I probably would have messed up the perms.

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

Things I liked

- The beginning.
Unlike Kardan, I thought it was a good system and the flaw that he points out was fixed straight away when you realised that Kardan had access to the task early.

- Battleships.
I really enjoyed this task as well. It lasted a long time, sure it was luck-based but being luck-based isn't necessarily an inferior thing imo. It was fun and a task that meant the teams had to work together. As I mentioned teamwork earlier, I think it's only fair that I point out Calum helped out with this task.

- Secret tasks
Sure they were all crowded together but they were good. Liva's random argument, Martin talking bout random topics just to get the answers to his questions, Ross' forgiveness thread and kyle being wtf

- Team plasto
We were the best team woooo.

- Doing the event
I agree with Kardan completely here. It is great that this event was put on after a long time of inactivity in this area. It is good that Phil took that risk and I hope to see many more in the future.

Congratulations Liva, a well deserved victory :D

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Just gonna reply to all these at once because I'm getting tired of quoting individual bits lmao.

Yeah I really liked the beginning too and I wouldn't change that if I were to do it again.

Battleships was my favourite task, was a lot of fun!

PP were the best team ngl wd guys lol

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for the feedback Michael!

I've covered up to post #12. If I do not mention a point it's because I've replied to it elsewhere.

Thanks to Kardan (and Scott for reaping the 40 tokens for a post that he didn't write!!!) for laying out the event chronologically so as to make it a little easier to digest and even easier to point out the flaws.

Not much was really said about it and the run up was more of a brisk walk. Creating a few graphics does not equal creating a hype. Personally, I have signatures disabled so IDK if it was being advertised in those like the normal big events (HXSS etc) are but it would be nice to have seen more images and links to the event all over the site. What would actually happen during the event wasn't really (not even loosely) outlined anywhere and my own experience is that it felt like Phil was just bumbling along, posting tasks when he was free and not really devoting as much time as the sole host (with the exception of e5 and nick who participated for all of 10-15 posts on the ant/dec accounts) of an event like this should have done.

The choosing of participants was a little weird and by not BCCing names in reply to applicants everybody was aware of who had applied and it was easy enough to predict who would be entering next. After seeing the distribution of participants through both camps I think we can all come to the consensus that allowing us to choose who we had with us was a bad idea. Those who were quickest at tasks picked those that they thought would also be good with tasks or more entertaining to be stuck with, leaving the other camp with slow or boring people. Picking campmates was all about self interest and what could be gained or how to disadvantage the other team (putting cornbix with them, for example) and no regard for how this could impact on the potential audience. As a result, Plasto Plateau was populated with the most active forum members and Loser Lake were given the dregs that we didn't want. Perhaps if the organiser(s) had considered this then both camps would have been a little more active/entertaining. Who knows.

Punishments were erratic and inconsistent. Before I go on I want to point out that I asked for @Cassiieee;s punishment to be less harsh because I felt that she would become an interesting character to watch and hadn't been allowed to reveal her true entertainment value considering who she was placed with. Ok, so... Just because you tweak a punishment to keep one user in, doesn't mean that this is a trend that should go on throughout the event. Later on in the event GoldenMerc was revealed to have been asking people for votes in a similar fashion to cassie but was given a significantly lighter punishment - taking 7 days of vip from a prize fund that as a Habbox God would not affect him if he had won. Cutting his votes in half like you did to Cassie would mean he was evicted and I would have stayed. and no, the screenshot wasn't edited, phil was there at the time. Coincidentally, this was the day that Dec has now been revealed to have voted in the event. Individuals involved in hosting the event should remain impartial in all respects and so to allow smods to vote and therefore show that they have clear favourites is a little bit iffy.

The "audience" had about as much knowledge of what was going on as those confined to the jungle did, by the looks of things. Secret tasks were introduced extremely late and there was no incentive (despite what has already been said...) to think up secret tasks. You may well have been offering rep but the post made was a short halfhearted addition to the day 6 breakdown that essentially asked "pls pm forum god some sekrit tasks thxx" with no mention of incentive. Still think bolt and msaqua should have been forced to rap battle.

Overall it was subjectively interesting (inside) but ultimately objectively boring (outside) experience. Not enough effort was put into getting the outsiders discussing it and I know that myself and others made conscious efforts when inside to keep discussion alive, just wish that the same could be said for forum team when it came to the audience.

I mentioned my thoughts on the voting system in a previous thread so feel like I should reiterate and explain my thinking. During the event, the vote was to SAVE individuals from eviction/execution/whatever you want to call it and I don't think this was a good idea. Voting to GET RID of individuals would have imho been a better way of dealing with things.

As you say, it was a popularity contest. Checks and balances can be put into place to reduce that aspect of the competition as much as possible and vote to kick would have had the benefit of meaning that those begging for votes wouldn't need to, so would instead have to rely on people actually following their activity in the jungle itself, taking votes away from preconceived notions of how a person is and onto judging them based on their more recent actions. Who's going to vote to kick Cassie, for example, when bolt/msaqua (sorry, I have nothing against you, you're just boring to watch for me and I'm not exactly gonna call myself out for being boring..) are not really contributing anything entertaining. The same 5-10 people voted for these two specifically every single week and lets be honest, it's not because they're following their activity, it's because they're "nice". Might have added a new layer of entertainment to it, too, what with individuals having to persuade the audience somebody else deserved to leave more than them.

Not a fan of the fact that I deliberately got rid of the entire prize fund (it shouldn't have been there to just throw away, read above posts for suggestions on how to work that task in future) and the next day they are given a prize pot bigger than the one that took us a week to obtain.

Very interested to see what users that didn't actually follow the event thought of it, and why they didn't follow it. A few people I'd specifically like some thoughts on how successful the event was from are
@Sianness; who told me that "I dont think they put the right people in",
@Yuxin; who said "what? i dont udnerstand
i dont
i dont even
i dont know what
i dont understand the jungle"... or something to that effect
@:odey:;, @TheJokerEffect; and... *takes deep breath* @NoNoNoNoDPWMH; who voted every week but didn't talk about the event.

That's all for now. Probably missed something.

@Kyle; I've talked about the event a lot, but not on the forums, and I talked about it a little at the start of the event, If you want my thoughts, I'd love to give them to you when i get home from school :)

look forward to it :)

ooh alo. I think my opinion involving not the right people, was mainly down to pure surprise about who did get in, though some of them worked there wasnt really any fresh habbox faces (i dont know if anyone relatively new bothered to apply though). As a lot of people were saying, it wasn't particularly interesting to watch in the end, which is down half to the people who were put in and half to the little amount they had to do.

Some improvements for next time (as I think a next time is plausable);

- create tasks that they have to do each day, try to add more roleplay into it? (not heavily, but just to imitate being in a jungle more.

- A lot more audience participation, giving us chances to control what happens within the jungle, not just by voting.

oh god you all have too much to say

Even since the events ended, @Liva; has no VIP yet she just won something like 195 days? (isn't she also meant to get jungle VIP for so long? or is it for that 195 days?)

There's no community announcement (only posted in the thread where the final contestants were getting eliminated one by one) or anything else to state the events or, that there's even been a winner or anything?

Considering that forum will soon be removed, there should be at least a CNB regarding it.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Even since the events ended, @Liva; has no VIP yet she just won something like 195 days? (isn't she also meant to get jungle VIP for so long? or is it for that 195 days?)

There's no community announcement (only posted in the thread where the final contestants were getting eliminated one by one) or anything else to state the events or, that there's even been a winner or anything?

Considering that forum will soon be removed, there should be at least a CNB regarding it.

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They mentioned HERE that there'll be an announcement later on, unless that has already been posted somewhere?, so I'm sure it'll be posted outside of the Jungle forum then n the prizes will be given out :D.

Liva should get all the VIP as Jungle VIP - or at least that's how I understood it.

Have the voting details been released somewhere or something?

And glad you read the post Phil, and there's really not much to reply to since it's pretty self explanatory. Only one bit though:

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but I do not accept you telling me that only LL were told because the second I got that information from Martin I came online and I posted in that task thread.

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Yes, you did tell us that Laura's username was in the anagram - not denying that. What we didn't know was the other error that the other team knew about. Laura's 9 letter username actually went in the 10 letter word slot - which the other team knew about. We never knew about this, so we were like 'Well, Laura's 9 letter username has to go in the only 9 letter word slot at the end - which was actually assistant).

As I said, it didn't matter because we got the VIP anyway (but then lost it because LL cheated anyway) - just want to clarify what I meant :)

LALALA NOTHING TO SEE HERE THIS ISN'T EDITED DW

thanks mr-traitor

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Originally Posted by cameron

oh god you all have too much to say

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phil asked for feedback, it's only right to be as thorough as possible! :P

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

Things that could be improved

- Preparation
I was shocked to learn that it was being done as it went along. This explains a lot of the huge gaps between tasks. All the tasks should've been thought out beforehand really.

- Team work
Where were all the moderators? It is sad that 99% of the event was placed on Phil's shoulders. If the moderators got involved more, there could've been a lot more done. Also general management (sam in particular but anyone could've pitched in I suppose) could've helped out a bit when it became apparent that Phil was struggling to maintain momentum alone.

- Audience participation
A lot of potential to use the audience here. Jungle Discussion forum, more involvement with secret tasks (someone ordered to do what the audience decides, for instance). I've always personally been against doing the 'limited events' - events that are limited to a certain number of people - I prefered hosting the events that anyone could join at any time but the success of the Mole means there is room for both. Would be better to give outsiders a reason to get involved too though.

- Skype
Other camp used Skype to chat tactics giving them a distinct advantage and allowing others - hi zebbadi ;) - to see our tactics and feedback to the other team with no knowledge that its been received.

- Dingo Dollars
Could've had a seperate forum that you forced 2 people into to do small challenges just like the real show. It's a good way to isolate people and get a different perspective than it would when they're all together in one.

Things I liked

- The beginning.
Unlike Kardan, I thought it was a good system and the flaw that he points out was fixed straight away when you realised that Kardan had access to the task early.

- Battleships.
I really enjoyed this task as well. It lasted a long time, sure it was luck-based but being luck-based isn't necessarily an inferior thing imo. It was fun and a task that meant the teams had to work together. As I mentioned teamwork earlier, I think it's only fair that I point out Calum helped out with this task.

- Secret tasks
Sure they were all crowded together but they were good. Liva's random argument, Martin talking bout random topics just to get the answers to his questions, Ross' forgiveness thread and kyle being wtf

- Team plasto
We were the best team woooo.

- Doing the event
I agree with Kardan completely here. It is great that this event was put on after a long time of inactivity in this area. It is good that Phil took that risk and I hope to see many more in the future.

Congratulations Liva, a well deserved victory :D

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I'm only up to this part on the thread - I informed SMODs and Phil before it began that he'd have AGMs there if he needed help (as he said he was busy with work or whatever), but I think he thought/did cope with himself, Elliott and nick.

I got in with this a lot more than I did Big Brother, as I never watched BB previous to the event that took place (I still have on my signature picture 'BlackTux To Win HxFBB 2010' lmao!)

Anyway, as I haven't read the full thread yet, and Phil might have replied by now - a lot of planning did go into this, when he got SMOD/acting SMOD he posted the idea in the forum and asked for help from me, Nick and Chris mainly for feedback and ideas. Then as far as I was aware the tasks were planned or so I thought? I remember because Calum told me that he was coming up with tasks and this was a good while before it started too. Not sure what fully happened there.

What I think would have been good, would have been getting say one of the GM members to double check and proof read the tasks if this wasn't done (I'll assume) that they were in the forum threads, which I would have looked at more with mentions/quotes.

It was a real shame people felt the need to cheat and the majority who did to be honest just made themselves get evicted for it too. Audience participation more would have been good, as it led to the spam threads turning into heated debates instead which was a shame too.

However, I think it was a lovely event overall, balancing the good and bad a bit and I think it's nice to see something different.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sianness

ooh alo. I think my opinion involving not the right people, was mainly down to pure surprise about who did get in, though some of them worked there wasnt really any fresh habbox faces (i dont know if anyone relatively new bothered to apply though). As a lot of people were saying, it wasn't particularly interesting to watch in the end, which is down half to the people who were put in and half to the little amount they had to do.

Some improvements for next time (as I think a next time is plausable);

- create tasks that they have to do each day, try to add more roleplay into it? (not heavily, but just to imitate being in a jungle more.

- A lot more audience participation, giving us chances to control what happens within the jungle, not just by voting.

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Oh yeah forgot about that. the jungle theme could've been used more. not really a big deal if its not especially as the tasks were rushed but tasks with a jungle theme (instead of battleships, perhaps poisonous snakes. same game, jungle themed).

liva was fairly new (in the sense people are like 'whos that'), perhaps there could've been more but hx is quite lacking in the newcomers atm!

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

Oh yeah forgot about that. the jungle theme could've been used more. not really a big deal if its not especially as the tasks were rushed but tasks with a jungle theme (instead of battleships, perhaps poisonous snakes. same game, jungle themed).

liva was fairly new (in the sense people are like 'whos that'), perhaps there could've been more but hx is quite lacking in the newcomers atm!

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Oh, I like that idea - I think that'd really emphasised the jungle theme a bit more.

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Originally Posted by Samanfa

I'm only up to this part on the thread - I informed SMODs and Phil before it began that he'd have AGMs there if he needed help (as he said he was busy with work or whatever), but I think he thought/did cope with himself, Elliott and nick.

I got in with this a lot more than I did Big Brother, as I never watched BB previous to the event that took place (I still have on my signature picture 'BlackTux To Win HxFBB 2010' lmao!)

Anyway, as I haven't read the full thread yet, and Phil might have replied by now - a lot of planning did go into this, when he got SMOD/acting SMOD he posted the idea in the forum and asked for help from me, Nick and Chris mainly for feedback and ideas. Then as far as I was aware the tasks were planned or so I thought? I remember because Calum told me that he was coming up with tasks and this was a good while before it started too. Not sure what fully happened there.

What I think would have been good, would have been getting say one of the GM members to double check and proof read the tasks if this wasn't done (I'll assume) that they were in the forum threads, which I would have looked at more with mentions/quotes.

It was a real shame people felt the need to cheat and the majority who did to be honest just made themselves get evicted for it too. Audience participation more would have been good, as it led to the spam threads turning into heated debates instead which was a shame too.

However, I think it was a lovely event overall, balancing the good and bad a bit and I think it's nice to see something different.

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Well how much exactly did Elliott and Nick get involved? By sounds of things, Phil was practically juggling Ant, Dec and Keith singlehandedly 99% of the time (we know that they must've used it a little if someone accidently voted on Dec). Perhaps pride meant Phil didn't reach out for help or maybe he did, I won't be able to answer that, but either way if it was apparent to everyone outside of the event that someone needed to jump in and provide a bit of assistance - even if it was something simple like chatting with the contestants more - then it could've been recognised by yourself too.

I know that you have a lot of forums so these things can get missed though so I understand the mentions point but a closer eye on things in future should aid the planning process.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Again I agree, there should have been a few days before anyone had been getting any exemptions or getting kicked out, what's the point getting put in if you're basically out the next day. I also believe exemptions should have been a rare thing rather than one person getting one a day, but then I suppose you wanting each group to vote for something so gave them that.

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I think there were a total of three maybe four exemptions throughout the competition and I don't think that's too many. I don't tihnk leaving it a few days would have been a very good idea because then the task would still be going on now and would be for another two days.

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Originally Posted by scottish

RNG tasks are fine if they're a one-off so maybe like 1 or 2 in the entire event (1 or 2 if there was multiple events a day, not the way it turned out), I doubt they've planned enough to know what would have happened if your team has won the second day, so the exemption would have probably been useless.

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Was supposed to say this in my first reply. I actually had a plan laid out for the two/three days before the camps merged and I had it so if buttons team had won and her exemption was pointless, she would have kept the immunity for the first eviction that otherwise applied to her and as a twist we would have asked her to choose one person from her own team to join LL in the eviction @Kardan; tagging you because you asked this and forgot to answer soz)

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Originally Posted by scottish

I'd like to see the voting statistics (for every vote) but also specifically for that period where Cassie was begging for votes via skype and asking HxL DJ's to beg in the staff forums to see how much it actually impacted her voting and see if the punishment was actually fair (say she had 30 and next person has 5, hardly fair with a 50% reduction :P). I highly doubt anyone else did as no-one from the other group speaks to Empired so it's most likely just Empired trying to stick up for Cassie so she doesn't look as pathetic.

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I will be releasing the polls but I will not be releasing who voted in each and who they voted for.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Again, I agree with you that having too many RNG tasks is just silly in something like this. As well as the method that was used (using prize already in the pot rather than having a pot). I believe it should have worked something a long the lines of you have 50 of everything in the pot, leave it or bet it. Bet it you win 2x, whatevers left end of day you have it in your prize pot including what you had before. So you can bet but you're not losing rewards you have already achieved.

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Only one of the tasks was RNG and I agree I should have put a seperate prize. That was a bad call on my behalf but I'll keep that in mind if I ever do something like that again.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Again with the comment I made before, at least the SMOD's should be testing (maybe a few more people from before the event started that you could trust to do it), but then again that would require preparation where as this all seemed last minute rush rather than carefully thought through. I don't see why it had to be rushed either, @e5; posted saying the plan originated in January, so you've had 3 months to come up with ideas for tasks and plan it out, and instead you're rushing the tasks the night before the day you have to post it. This is why the 'jungle' was dead essentially, there was nothing to do and when there was it was wrong.

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Yeah there was little preperation in terms of tasks, I'll happily admit to that but I don't want people to think the idea was just rushed. I spoke about this in my other reply so won't say much here. The thread was out three motnhs ago, there was just very little contribution.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scottish

Yup, short of talking the tasks were the main thing in the jungle, having 1 a day just made the environment of the jungle dead. When there was tasks there was a lot of discussion and it was going fine (except with errors, and of course the Lodge Lake group who kept everything to Skype).

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While the lack of tasks contributed to that, I couldn't do anything about the lack of interaction between campmates. As I said in my last reply, HxBB has four tasks throughout the competition but at the same time, the forums were constantly active with the housemates?

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Originally Posted by scottish

It should have been advertised within the hotel (HxHD, events, etc), it should have been advertised on Habbox.com (banned, page about it, etc), it should have been advertised on the forum (community announcements, a notification at the top, etc). Not sure if it was any of those but I certainly didn't see any, so if it was there wasn't enough.

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All the mods had signatures, there were teaser in Spam about 12 hours before to get people talking and there were Forum Notices during the week and of course, the application thread in Habbox Announcements.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Again I agree, it's completely unfair on the other team if one team is received information the other team isn't, I'd go as far as saying that's cheating and should have been punished for it, but yeah. They shouldn't have contact with anyone really outside of the competition regarding the competition (even with your own team).

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Both teams received the information in this case.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Also, with regards to the 'secret visitor' or whatever, how did that come about?

It just seemed to be completely random then he just randomly got stuck in?

Should have been more audience participation on that behalf as well, maybe the winner of some public task got put in rather than just random, and they had to do something for you to win the chance to be put in, rather than just randomly planting you in.

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I assume you mean GoldenMerc here? I had decided that previously going by who people put for "Who you do not want to be in The Jungle with" and who applied.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by scottish

Also another thing under the preparation, the groups and forums.

Soon as the groups got merged to the Base Camp forum, the forum wasn't set up and @Phil; had to rush and mess about to get the perms working so public people couldn't post but jungler's could. This should have been set up wellllll in advance and just hidden the forum from everyone until the right time. As it was a massive screw up at the time allowing any of us to post in it, then you removed it, re-added it then the jungler's couldn't post in other peoples or view other peoples. Then you eventually fixed it.

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Ugh yeah, that was a complete mess-up. Surprised Aiden didn't mention that one :P as I said, i'm obviously only in the role like three weeks so still getting used to the permissions and stuff and apologies for that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kardan

Nah, I was too busy stressing about the test (that I did fail :P)

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Sorry to hear you failed :(

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kyle

Not much was really said about it and the run up was more of a brisk walk. Creating a few graphics does not equal creating a hype. Personally, I have signatures disabled so IDK if it was being advertised in those like the normal big events (HXSS etc) are but it would be nice to have seen more images and links to the event all over the site.

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Aside from signatures, there was the teaser posted in spam before applications went open and Forum Notices were posted. What more would you suggest for advertising forum wise?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kyle

The choosing of participants was a little weird and by not BCCing names in reply to applicants everybody was aware of who had applied and it was easy enough to predict who would be entering next. After seeing the distribution of participants through both camps I think we can all come to the consensus that allowing us to choose who we had with us was a bad idea. Those who were quickest at tasks picked those that they thought would also be good with tasks or more entertaining to be stuck with, leaving the other camp with slow or boring people. Picking campmates was all about self interest and what could be gained or how to disadvantage the other team (putting cornbix with them, for example) and no regard for how this could impact on the potential audience. As a result, Plasto Plateau was populated with the most active forum members and Loser Lake were given the dregs that we didn't want. Perhaps if the organiser(s) had considered this then both camps would have been a little more active/entertaining. Who knows.

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I don't think choosing who the camps had on their team was a bad idea at all? That's how they do it on the show and I actually really liked the start of the competition.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kyle

Punishments were erratic and inconsistent. Before I go on I want to point out that I asked for @Cassiieee;s punishment to be less harsh because I felt that she would become an interesting character to watch and hadn't been allowed to reveal her true entertainment value considering who she was placed with. Ok, so... Just because you tweak a punishment to keep one user in, doesn't mean that this is a trend that should go on throughout the event. Later on in the event GoldenMerc was revealed to have been asking people for votes in a similar fashion to cassie but was given a significantly lighter punishment - taking 7 days of vip from a prize fund that as a Habbox God would not affect him if he had won. Cutting his votes in half like you did to Cassie would mean he was evicted and I would have stayed. and no, the screenshot wasn't edited, phil was there at the time. Coincidentally, this was the day that Dec has now been revealed to have voted in the event. Individuals involved in hosting the event should remain impartial in all respects and so to allow smods to vote and therefore show that they have clear favourites is a little bit iffy.

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The difference between Cassie and Ross asking for votes was that Cassie asked A LOT more people and had a thread posted in HxL, Ross only asked one. I don't think cutting his votes in half would have been as fair at that stage in the competition. When we cut Cassies in half, we weren't completely throwing her out of the competition, with Ross we would have been.

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Originally Posted by Kyle

I mentioned my thoughts on the voting system in a previous thread so feel like I should reiterate and explain my thinking. During the event, the vote was to SAVE individuals from eviction/execution/whatever you want to call it and I don't think this was a good idea. Voting to GET RID of individuals would have imho been a better way of dealing with things.

As you say, it was a popularity contest. Checks and balances can be put into place to reduce that aspect of the competition as much as possible and vote to kick would have had the benefit of meaning that those begging for votes wouldn't need to, so would instead have to rely on people actually following their activity in the jungle itself, taking votes away from preconceived notions of how a person is and onto judging them based on their more recent actions. Who's going to vote to kick Cassie, for example, when bolt/msaqua (sorry, I have nothing against you, you're just boring to watch for me and I'm not exactly gonna call myself out for being boring..) are not really contributing anything entertaining. The same 5-10 people voted for these two specifically every single week and lets be honest, it's not because they're following their activity, it's because they're "nice". Might have added a new layer of entertainment to it, too, what with individuals having to persuade the audience somebody else deserved to leave more than them.

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Okay I now see your reasoning behind this and I see where you're coming from so I will keep this in mind for the future. I didn't think of it like this and did it solely because the show did it.

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Originally Posted by Kyle

Very interested to see what users that didn't actually follow the event thought of it, and why they didn't follow it. A few people I'd specifically like some thoughts on how successful the event was from are
@Sianness; who told me that "I dont think they put the right people in",
@Yuxin; who said "what? i dont udnerstand
i dont
i dont even
i dont know what
i dont understand the jungle"... or something to that effect
@:odey:;, @TheJokerEffect; and... *takes deep breath* @NoNoNoNoDPWMH; who voted every week but didn't talk about the event.

That's all for now. Probably missed something.

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Just because they weren't talking about it on the forum doesn't mean they weren't following it :P Everyone I put in The Jungle I put in for a reason and I'm happy with who was there.

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Originally Posted by scottish

Even since the events ended, @Liva; has no VIP yet she just won something like 195 days? (isn't she also meant to get jungle VIP for so long? or is it for that 195 days?)

There's no community announcement (only posted in the thread where the final contestants were getting eliminated one by one) or anything else to state the events or, that there's even been a winner or anything?

Considering that forum will soon be removed, there should be at least a CNB regarding it.

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There will be an announcement (hopefully tomorrow). I'm going to be getting interviews from the final three first.

I've done up to Post #26

@Phil; - I figured that Jen would have kept her exemption until it applied, it just occurred to me whilst looking back that it may not have applied if we hadn't lost :P

And I'm quite happy with your response I must say, I just think it's a shame about you pretty much organising this on your own.

I mean, I know how important it is to have support, and I definitely couldn't do the Mole without Char's help, so for you to try and run this mostly on your own is pretty impressive - but sadly, that shows in the quality of the event.

And looking at Samanfa's reply, it seems that AGM at least didn't know the full extent of what was happening, and that there wasn't much contribution from anyone else. And that seems to be a theme that runs through most of Habbox lately, not just the forum, and not just this competition - and it's a shame. Things like this will only be successful if contributions are made and people put the effort in - but you can't do it alone Phil.

- - - Updated - - -

And I didn't mention the forum permissions issue near the start of the competition because it was just a small technical issue and I thought it would just be teething issues (I would have thought that the forums would have been set up before hand and just hidden away).

- - - Updated - - -

Also, I still think it's a shame that we won't get to see who voted for who, since I imagine the only people that would get upset with people are Cassie and Bolt - but they should both be old and mature enough to accept the results.

It also means I don't get a chance to thank the people that voted for me, since I don't particularly have any friends on here (I don't have anyone on Skype, FB, or anything) - so for me to get some votes at least was rather impressive for me.

But at least we get voting numbers I suppose.

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I think there were a total of three maybe four exemptions throughout the competition and I don't think that's too many. I don't tihnk leaving it a few days would have been a very good idea because then the task would still be going on now and would be for another two days.

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Yeah all of which was at the start though, I'm sure it was day after day? then after the camp died down obviously you can't really use exemptions when there's only 5 people left or it'd be a bit silly. No you can run multiple tasks then the eviction after a few days so the participants and audience can see how much each person is participating in the tasks and vote accordingly, rather than more of a popularity content.

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Was supposed to say this in my first reply. I actually had a plan laid out for the two/three days before the camps merged and I had it so if buttons team had won and her exemption was pointless, she would have kept the immunity for the first eviction that otherwise applied to her and as a twist we would have asked her to choose one person from her own team to join LL in the eviction @Kardan; tagging you because you asked this and forgot to answer soz)

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Ah okay so a little bit of planning surfaces..

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I will be releasing the polls but I will not be releasing who voted in each and who they voted for.

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That's a start at least..

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Only one of the tasks was RNG and I agree I should have put a seperate prize. That was a bad call on my behalf but I'll keep that in mind if I ever do something like that again.

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There was like 3 from that I remember. But yeah good.

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Yeah there was little preperation in terms of tasks, I'll happily admit to that but I don't want people to think the idea was just rushed. I spoke about this in my other reply so won't say much here. The thread was out three motnhs ago, there was just very little contribution.

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If there's little contribution then perhaps you should have contracted them directly to get a response and if that failed then contact AGMs or other departments to get their input rather than try to solo it all.

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While the lack of tasks contributed to that, I couldn't do anything about the lack of interaction between campmates. As I said in my last reply, HxBB has four tasks throughout the competition but at the same time, the forums were constantly active with the housemates?

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That's down to picking of the contestants too, like picking foreign people who are say 7 hours difference, is obviously going to be a massive impact on their activity. For that reason imho everyone should have been active at UK times (not specifically UK only people, but if you know they're active at peak UK times then yeah). When tasks were up it was a lot more active, so that would have an impact on the discussion but also the picking of appropriate people were obviously flawed too.

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All the mods had signatures, there were teaser in Spam about 12 hours before to get people talking and there were Forum Notices during the week and of course, the application thread in Habbox Announcements.

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I seen the application thread once in new posts I believe, then I seen none of the others, and I'd consider myself fairly active..

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Both teams received the information in this case.

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As posted above, they did not.

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I assume you mean GoldenMerc here? I had decided that previously going by who people put for "Who you do not want to be in The Jungle with" and who applied.

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Okay, I think there should have been better audience interaction and that picked from there, but fair enough.

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Ugh yeah, that was a complete mess-up. Surprised Aiden didn't mention that one as I said, i'm obviously only in the role like three weeks so still getting used to the permissions and stuff and apologies for that.

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Even so you could have reached out to people who are more experienced with perms/forums and ask them to deal with it, even the likes of mattg you said was at work when you were on, leave a message for him so he can do it (then again this is down to prep, as it lacked that then yeah)

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Originally Posted by Phil

Aside from signatures, there was the teaser posted in spam before applications went open and Forum Notices were posted. What more would you suggest for advertising forum wise?

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A teaser posted in spam says a lot really... Not even worthy of postcount and out of view of nonmembers!
Hype around the event doesn't just include advertisement though and although it is being labelled a "forum event" the other departments could well have done so much more to help out. Take habwrecked 2009 in the hotel for example, it was an event much like this where users were confined to a public space but there were additional rewards available for those not actually involved including team supporter badges (totally could've been a thing!) and furniture prizes, all for attending events tailored to the island theme. Same with habwrecked 2010, although I don't know whether the audience side of that was as successful because I was a contestant and ludus wasn't exactly known for being proactive, more of a rely-on-nonstaff kind of guy. I do know that there was a video comp though for people to compile a video of events that had happened throughout the day and submit it for a badge. These kind of things - expanding the event outside of the "watch and vote" and into the "GET INVOLVED" territory.

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Originally Posted by Phil

I don't think choosing who the camps had on their team was a bad idea at all? That's how they do it on the show and I actually really liked the start of the competition.

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Another instance of you saying "they do it in the show? it works there?" but the show isn't a forum. it's a real life situation where individuals are there right next to eachother so it would be awkward to just sit and say nothing. The fact is that lodge lake wasn't active and plasto plateau was, and that was down to the people in each team. A more even distribution of personality would have been nicer. Even @zebbadi; couldn't stay away from Plasto Plateau... cos there was nothing going on in Lodge Lake.

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Originally Posted by Phil

The difference between Cassie and Ross asking for votes was that Cassie asked A LOT more people and had a thread posted in HxL, Ross only asked one. I don't think cutting his votes in half would have been as fair at that stage in the competition. When we cut Cassies in half, we weren't completely throwing her out of the competition, with Ross we would have been.

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If one individual has been punished for doing something then that punishment should remain a consistent reminder - a deterrent, if you like - for others not to do the same thing. Cassie asked for votes on a wide scale, yes, but it's still asking for votes, and GoldenMerc did it too. Stage of competition does not come into it, don't see why it should matter that he would have lost, he shouldn't have cheated? It's just a case of rulebending to keep people in and tbh neither instance should have been tolerated.

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Originally Posted by Phil

Just because they weren't talking about it on the forum doesn't mean they weren't following it :P Everyone I put in The Jungle I put in for a reason and I'm happy with who was there.

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No use having a forum event if people aren't going to discuss it. The joy of being able to see who has visited threads means it's quite obvious that people aren't following an event and just voting for the sake of saving their pal because they don't show up in the "members who have read this" list, lol.

oh and i'd love to know your reasoning behind putting each member in the jungle. can we collectively interview kiosk keith?

Hello. :D
Oh god, it's gonna be awks when you post the vote numbers. :s


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Originally Posted by Inseriousity.

Well how much exactly did Elliott and Nick get involved? By sounds of things, Phil was practically juggling Ant, Dec and Keith singlehandedly 99% of the time (we know that they must've used it a little if someone accidently voted on Dec). Perhaps pride meant Phil didn't reach out for help or maybe he did, I won't be able to answer that, but either way if it was apparent to everyone outside of the event that someone needed to jump in and provide a bit of assistance - even if it was something simple like chatting with the contestants more - then it could've been recognised by yourself too.

I know that you have a lot of forums so these things can get missed though so I understand the mentions point but a closer eye on things in future should aid the planning process.

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I used ant a fair bit but maybe not as much as I could have. I did an eviction with Phil, and replied to lots of bud telegraphs. I wasn't around enough to get mega involved as I do work full time, but tried my best to get involved when I could.