JPF Home Page Forums General Messages General Message Forum So Where Does Your Song Rank On Ourstage?

We're talking perception. If someone knows they are simply on there to vote for their favorite artist, they are likely concerned that they'll be found out or have concerns that their votes won't count if all they are doing is waiting for their friends to come up so they can vote. If you think that's not happening, you don't know human nature. So if asked they'd likely either not acknowledge it or not respond at all. I see that same thing happen in our own awards. We have an honor system that people won't vote for their friends categories. (People who aren't members must state WHO brought them in to vote) and we carefully monitor to do our best to prevent any vote stacking. (There's also ways to determine vote stacking, many of which Ourstage likely also employs which we of course don't announce publicly which help eliminate cheating). But we've had people insist they weren't there to vote specifically for an artist even when we're told by the artists themselves that they are good friends and it's clear that's how they voted. After many years of doing this, you learn a lot about human nature.

Ourstage DOES encourage people to have their fans vote. HONESTLY. Most fans could care less about what Ourstage wants of course. And so there's no motivation for them to participate in some process as you describe because there is nothing positive it in it for them (and even that doesn't usually work to get the masses to do even the simplest things together and in the same way).. AND they may have the perception (on top of the no motivation problem) that it may discount when they vote for their favorites artists exclusively, even though it's permitted.

I know you may find it hard to believe, but when you've been on the other side of this long enough you have a very different awareness of how this works in the real world with real people. It never works logically or in a straight forward way. And any time you think a mass number of people will do ANYTHING by the rules or by request, you'll have a sad awakening. We've had thousands of people do the exact opposite or something totally different from what we asked them to do in our awards entries each year. It's just reality.

Brian