Since there is Moe contest in Japan and an independent contest running in Korea, I wonder if there should be one for English community as well. I have few sugestions about the format and rules, but two things are of primary concern.  First is whether there are people willing to host and manage a tournament and the other is whether if we could attract 1000+ real voters like those contests in Korea and Japan. Just to let you know how things are going in Korea, since most of you can't follow things there, here are the sweet 16 round summary.

Nagato Yuki 753 over Kyon's sister 247

Shana 639 over Yuzuhara Konomi 326

Souseiseki 607 over Touka 436

Suiseiseki 599 over Matou Sakura 531

Tessa Testarotha 502 over Aruru 388

Sawatchika Eri 595 over Sakura ( Tsubasa Chronicle ) 303

Tohsaka Rin 735 over Tsuruya San 438

Suzumiya Haruhi 790 over Suiginto 376

 Notable round of 32 results

Yuzuhara Konomi 346 over Kosaka Tamaki 342

Kyon's Sister 500 over Hirai Yukari ( Shana ep.1 & 2 ) 238

Suzumiya Haruhi 497 over Eruru  456

 Matou Sakura 398 over Asahina Mikuru 387 :% I have no idea how this happened

Notable round of 64 result

Eruru 429 over Karura 186 

Suiginto 427 over Shirakawa Kotori  282

Notable round of 128 result ( top 2 advance )

1. Tsuruya San 333, 2. Shana 326, 3. Saber ( Fate/SN ) 311, 4. Fujioka Haruhi  62

1. Yuzuha ( Utawarerumono ) 305, 2. Rider ( Fate/SN ) 290, 3. Alice Carrol ( ARIA ) 211, 4. Nishino Tsukasa ( Strawberry 100% ) 99 

Yes there are some difference with Japanese SaiMoe Tournament. One problem with this tournament is that at every round, the matchup is decided randomly, thus some strong candidates ended up fighting each other in early round.

One suggestion I do have is to not allow this randomness to dominate and find a way to properly assign seeds to characters and ensure that strong characters fight each other only in the later rounds. I have some ideas, but first, are you interested? 

Hmm, I'm not that big of a fan of popularity contests. After all, it'll probably be dominated by Haruhi-Suzumiya-fans, while the really good characters get mostly ignored.

Still, if we can manage to host this in a grand way, things should promise to be interesting. After all, the korean vote showed that even the oh-so-great Mikuru can lose. 

It gets even crazier as random( ? ) matchup has deemed that Haruhi and Yuki square off in the quarter-finals. Some thought this should have been the final of the tournament. The key questions remain:

 1. How do we ensure that powerful characters meet each other late into tournament? 

2. How can we objectively assign fair seeds to the characters?

3. How can we keep a good number of interesting and lesser known characters around, at least until middle of the tournament?

 After seeing how much interest these tourneys have gathered in Korea and Japan, I don't see why it would not peak interest from sufficient number of people. However, I strongly believe, above mentioned needs to be discussed openly before a tournament is held to ensure fairness and prevent tempering by special interest groups. 

Hmm, we could try some preliminaries, as in we hold some rounds in batches of a certain number, determining which characters get more votes and which get less votes. Based on these preliminaries, the characters can be split in groups or poules, in which the strong characters reside among the weak characters. 

Still, I also think more people should post their reply if this really is going to work.  

I usually don't like these matches, as the one with the bigger fanbase usually wins.

It's sickening. Characters win not because of their merits, but because he or she has more fans. It doesn't matter if the strictest measures are taken. Sheer human numbers usually win.

Also, I am rather pleased to see that the Koreans can still muster out the KEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKEKE ZERGRUSH when necessary.

And if you want to use a fair vote, well, we could look at the Touhou Saimoe for pointers. Note the interesting result on the second year of the competition.

One concern I have about Touhou Saimoe is that it is not easy to cast a vote, especially if you are outside Japan. How the group was decided was murky as well. Random Curiosity website's vote tracker seems to keep track of which IP has voted and allowing only one vote per IP address. Although even this leaves plenty of room for cheaters, I think it may be adequate. The trouble is whether such system can allow dozens of candidates for the vote.

A poll!?

Wordpress makes it fairly easy to do this. I dunno about hosting one though. Seems like an invitation for people to flame flame flame.

Plus I bet all the meganekkos will be out after one round... 

>>> Seems like an invitation for people to flame flame flame.

 This is likely to happen when two popular characters meet head-to-head in elimination round. Properly run preliminary round should allow most of the stronger characters to advance and allow us to assign seeds to postpone the flame war to latest possible time.

 Here is my version of preliminary rounds. The system assure everyone to hang around for 3 rounds, actually so meganekkos will have good chance of survival.

 1st round Candidate Recommendation round:

Every one submits list of 8 characters they like. After about a week of gathering the list, we disgard all characters who were mentioned only once: For this to work, we would need 1000+ people submitting their list of 8 characters. We then choose top half of the characters with multiple votes.

 ex: 2000 people has submitted their list. There were 8000 characters that were mentioned. Half were mentioned only once, so out of 4000 remaining characters, top 2000 will advance to next round.

 2nd round: 1st cut

Every one submits a list of 4 characters, of which 3 must be ones who passed the 1st round. The 4th character can be anyone. This vote is called wild card vote which can be cast for one of the characters who made the cut in the 1st round or who did not make the cut. Again we disgard any characters with only one vote. We choose the upper half of remaining characters. We also let 1 ~ 2 top vote getters who didn't pass the 1st round to join in for the 3rd round. Tie breakers will be the number of vote they got at the 1st round.

ex: 2000 people submit their votes. Of 2000 remaining characters, half again gets only one vote in this round and thus eliminated. Of 1000 remaining, we choose the upper half so 500 will advance to the 3rd round. Character A and B did not make the cut in the 1st round, but was the top 2 wildcard vote getter for this round and will be added to the list of those who made the cut.

 3rd round: 2nd cut

 Every one submits a list of 2 characters, of which 1 must have passed the 2nd round, and the other vote is a wild card vote for any character. Single vote getters are eliminated. Upper half of the remaining pass to the tournament phase. At least the top wild card vote getter from characters who didn't make the cut in the 2nd round should advance to tournament phase as well. We will calculate a 'character point' at this point , which basically is sum of all votes they got in this first 3 rounds, for everyone who was mentioned in any of the 3 rounds. If the number who made the cut in 3rd round plus 1 ~ 2 top wild card entry does not add up to 2^N number ideal for a knockout tournament, we will add enough characters, starting with the ones with highest character points, to make the number 2^N. The Character points will be the sole basis for seeding, with tie breaker being the most votes in 3rd round, followed by most votes in 2nd round.

 ex: 2000 people bumits their votes. Of 500 remaining, half gets only one vote. Of remaining half, we choose the upper half, which will be about 125 characters. We add 1 wild card entry to the list to make it 126. We need 2 more for 128 = 2^7 so we add the next 2 character point getter for the tournament. If 130 characters passed the cut in this round, we would either need to eliminate 2 from the list, or add next 126 to make it 256 = 2 ^ 8.

 tournament

 Simple head to head, 1 vote, only one survive knockout round. The matchups will be determined from the seeding from the beginning. In case of tie, the character with highest character point, sum of all votes the character got from previous rounds, will be used as 1st tie breaker followed by the number of votes they got at one round before the current round. This those give higher seeds some advantage, but lower seeds could make up the difference either by winning a round or two with high vote counts. In another word, in case of tie, the character who have been involved in more high profile matchups will have an advantage.

 Advantage of this format

1. Preliminary rounds will let many interesting names to be mentioned

2. Seeding will allow high profile characters to advance the tournament without meeting another high profile character until later in the tournament phase.

3. Winning a titanic clashes will have a small merit in case a tie occurs.

4. Most of deserving characters will make it to tournament phase.

5. We would all know the potential matchups ahead of the time. 

 Disadvantage

1. Need large number of voters to work

2. Very large number of names will need to be handled during preliminary rounds. We may need a system similar to Saimoe to handle this, but we need a system that allows easier access than Saimoe to attract voters.

3. Somebody needs to do lots of work checking the results and handling the announcements. 

 OK, that is best I can do, but undoubtedly you can suggest something better. It will be interesting if someone sets up a betting scheme based on the results.

 how do you delete?

You can't delete. Maybe one day I'll add that feature...

Latest news from Korean Moe tournament.

Quarter final 1st match

 Suzumiya Haruhi 617

 Nagato Yuki        605  % NOOO!!!! YUKIIIII!!!

2nd match ( still going ) : Shana vs. Tessa Testarotha

3rd match                     : Souseiseki vs. Sawatchika Eri

4th match                     : Suiseiseki  vs. Tohsaka Rin 

How can Souseiseki even show up in a poll!?

 Well, even talking stick and some animals were allowed, and I guess enough people confused him to be a girl. This is the reason why I think it is better to name the contest 'popularity contest' and allow any character of any sex. If this doesn't seem fair, we could have some categories, have a separate tournament in each category and then pool the final 4 from all categories into the final tournament. The problem with this scheme is how we may assign seed to characters from different categories.

arghhh tsuruya got kicked out by Rin T_T

 Update on Korean Moe tournament

 Shana  572 over Tessa Testarotha 446

If what really is important is to allow two most deserving characters to survive until the last round, there is a much better system which isn't as exciting as tournament. 

a. Everyone submits a list of 4 characters they like. Anyone mentioned in more than one list advance to next round.

 ex. 2000 people submits list, with 8000 characters mentioned. 4000 were mentioned more than once so they will pass 

 b. Count the number of candidates ( = N ). Group them all in  sqrt ( N ) group of sqrt ( N ) characters, if sqrt ( N ) is greater than 4. Groups will be determined randomly. Voters cast 4 votes in each group so top 4 will pass. Allow ties to advance as well.

  ex: 4000 characters will be grouped in 63 groups of 63 or 64 candidates. Top 4 in each group will advance. With some ties, 260 characters make it to next round

c . Repeat b again until the N is less than 100.

ex. 260 characters will be grouped into 16 groups. About 68 will advance to 3rd round.

d. The number of groups will be shrunk to N ^ (1/3). Voters get 4 votes again. top 4 advance. repeat until N is less than 20

ex. 68 characters will be grouped into 4 groups. About 18 will advance to 4th round.

e. Everyone will be put into same group. Voters will cast 2 votes only, in order to determine the 2 finalists. The tie breakers will be the total cumulative votes the characters has accumulated in previous rounds, followed by number of votes in the most recent rounds.

 This method allows 2 best characters to survive no matter what randomness throws at them. The most brutal action will take place at step e, but it is neccessary to speed up the process. It is not as exciting as tournament of 64, though.