Latest result from Korean Moe Tournament

Semi-Final match #1

Sawachika Eri 630 over Suzumiya Haruhi 619

match #2 in progress

Shana vs. Suiseiseki

 One very nice feature in Korean Moe Tournament voting page is that it shows you the picture of the character when you put your mouth pointer over their name. This makes it much easier to remember the characters and lessen the possibility of casting the vote for the wrong character. I wish, if we get to hosting the contest, we could do the same in our voting board in order to help people refresh their memories. It can help people make decisions on lesser known characters as well. 

 For those who can read Korean, here is the login page for the Korean Moe Tournament.

Korean Moe Tournament update

Semifinal #2

Suiseiseki 598 over Shana 411

Final match

Sawachika Eri ( School Rumble ) vs. Suiseiseki ( Rosen Maiden )

Is this a moe tournament or a tsundere one!?

That is the observation of many. The tsundere nature of the final 4 made people think that had a non-tsundere character like Yuki or Mikuru made it to final 4, they might have been the one to win it all. Nevertheless, both SaiMoe and Korean Moe tourney shows that the popularity of 'tsundere' is at all time high in East Asia. Eri and Suiseiseki are both doing well in Japanese Saimoe tournament, and is serious contender for the championship there as well.

 Initially, I thought a tournament format for final 64 would make things exciting when I first started this thread. The results from Korean and Japanese Moe tournament has convinced me that it is better to put off the one-to-one matchup until the last moment, due to quirkiness of matchup combination, similar to rock-paper-scissors thing. More and more, I believe 10+ characters per group, each voters choose 4 characters, and top 4 advance format is the best way to reduce the number of the characters in the contest to the final 16( or smaller ). This is the best way to ensure diversity of characters, letting worthy characters make it to the final phase, and allowing lesser known but interesting characters to garner enough attraction to keep them competitive. 

 Allowing each voters multiple choices per group opens up possibilities of interesting diplomacies along various anime fan factions. Imagine the possibility of SOS-Dan becoming allies with School Rumble faction to oppose the combined mights of Rosen Mainden, Shana, and Fate/SN. Imagine the outcry as Rosen Maiden faction betray Shana faction in the quarterfinal as they stuff their ballots for To Heart 2 characters instead of Shana so they will have better odds in the semi-finals.

Final Update from Korean Moe Tournament

Suiseiseki 579 over Sawachika Eri 449

 Since hundreds of Koreans also vote in the Japanese SaiMoe Tournament, this bodes rather well for Suiseiseki victory in SaiMoe. The number of votes indicates that the final was rather anti-climatic, and judging from the trend of total number of votes in SaiMoe, similar thing may happen there as well. The most exciting matchs in Korean Moe Tournament was the Suiseiseki ( 707 ) over Tohsaka Rin ( 656 ) in quarterfinal, as that was the match with most number of voters and most votes for the losing side, Suzumiya Haruhi ( 617 ) over Nagato Yuki ( 605 ) also in quarterfinal, and Sawachika Eri ( 630 ) over Suzumiya Haruhi ( 619 ) in the semifinals for the name Haruhi always seems to stir things up even in Korea.  

 There are some people who thought that the length of the whole tournament was too long, and after quarterfinals, people got burnt out and stopped caring. This need to hastening the end is why I believe the semifinal should be the pick 2 from 8 to 20 characters format  I have proposed in page 1. 

 After seeing puzzling number of invalid votes in Japanese SaiMoe, I have to wonder if Suiseiseki's fan base might be very well connected to the tournament organizers. Below statements are based on the few angry people I communicated with, thus is not entirely reliable.

Suiseiseki won with much controversy in Korean Moe Tournament, as she survived a tie with Shana in round of 32 for both Shana and her got 420 votes, while another winner in round of 32, Housen Elis beat Asakura Nemu with by score of 299 to 263. The rule was, in case of tie, if there are winners with less number of votes compared to the votes in the tie, both participants in the tie will advance while the winner with least number of votes will not, in order to make room. Housen Elis is not what you consider strong character, but if you consider the names who lost in round of 64 and round of 32, you have to be puzzled why Suiseiseki drew one favorable match after another, yet struggled to win any of her match. Here are her results and notable losers in each round.

Round of 64 Suiseiseki 393, Asakura Ryoko 281

People were surprised by lack of voter turn out and the margin of defeat for Ryoko, who has received a huge boost in popularity from a poster pose in bunny suit.

 Notable Losers

Takamachi Nanoha ( sweet 16 in Japanese Saimoe )

Shinku  ( sweet 16 in Japanese Saimoe )

Chidori Kaname ( Finalist in 2006 AoMM March Madness tournament )

Round of 32: Suiseiseki 420 Shana 420

The infamous tie where if I could have voted, Suiseiseki would not have advanced. 

 Notable Losers

Housen Elis ( she won her match but with least number of the votes in the round )

Eruru ( Still alive in Japanese SaiMoe )

Asahina Mikuru ( Human Incarnation of Moe )

Fate Testarossa ( ( Still Alive in Japanese SaiMoe )

Round of 16: Suiseiseki 599  Matou  Sakura 531

 Observers said Suiseiseki pulled ahead during the final 3 hours of voting. hmmmm.

 Notable Loser: Tsuruya San ( Her popularity was even greater than here in Korea, yet she had to draw the opponent that had score most number of votes against Suiseiseki: Tohosaka Rin )

Round  of 8: Suiseiseki 707 Tohosaka Rin 656

  Rin's vote was the 3rd highest of this round. Again, Suiseiseki pulled ahead during last 3 hours of voting. Fate/SN supporters got rather angry and denounced the legitimacy of the tournament after this result.

Notable Loser: Nagato Yuki ( Lost to Suzumiya Haruhi by 12 votes ) Many originally predicted this to be the final matchup

Semi-Final: Suiseiseki 598 Shana 411

 How come Shana got even less votes compared to their battle at round of 32 when this was one of the most hyped battle of the tournament? Haruhi vs. Eri was the clash between 2 greatest fan group in Korea, but that should have helped voter turnout for this match, which Suiseiseki won with less votes than she had during 2 previous rounds. Eri's win against Haruhi was not a controversy, for the large voter turn out was expected and the fact that all School Rumble bounded book has licensed translations out in Korea, thus having 'richer' history compared to Haruhi. Eri was the opponent SOS-dan supporters feared the most and they had to meet her at Semi-final instead of the final.

Final: Suiseiseki 579  Sawachika eri 449

Notice the drop in the number of votes again. School Rumble fans were crying foul about the huge margin. Anti-School Rumble sentiment cannot be the reason as Suiseiseki  got less votes than most of the winners in round of 16!

 Conclusion: Not only is the lack of transparency disturbing for Japanes SaiMoe, most noticeably inability of outsiders to confirm which votes are legit and which are illegit, there seems to be a dark force trying to make Suiseiseki conquer the world. 

Disclaimer: Still, the most logical and easiest explanation is that Suiseiseki is the most popular anime character in the world, right now. 

More like the fanbase are a group of crazy people.

Quite a few good points are raised here, and if the blogosphere can unite to promote this event, i think it would be successful and I'd certainly be a part of it.

As for the CMS, I'll try to ask some of my more IT-oriented friends and see what comes up. Don't hope for much though. 

The whole idea sounds pretty exciting, and if help is needed on the technical side, I'm certainly willing to lend a hand.

I'm not really familiar with Wordpress so I can't compare, but the experience I have with Drupal suggests it as a very adequate CMS for the task.

Also, I guess the project, if it doesn't rely on a strong external infrastructure (as Saimoe does with 2ch), would require dedicated hosting, and a solution might be Dedibox (http://www.dedibox.fr), a comfortably sized dedicated Linux box with a 100 Mbps connection and no bandwidth limit for 30 EUR (around US$37) per month. The servers are located in Paris and have to be rented from France, which might not be so convenient, but I'm not aware of comparatively cheap options elsewhere.

Hmm... if someone IT-savvy can help set up the coding and software needed, I'm probably sure that we can handle the rest.

One little question, how will we validate the votes? I'm in favour of SaiMoe's system of voting codes and we can open it up to the public to vote. There might not be as much people voting if we force them to register. 

Easier it is to vote, more voters we will attract, but it will be easier to cheat as well. No matter what system we choose, some will cheat, so what really is important is how to maximize the fidelity of the vote: what percentage of voting is the true pure vote. Several system comes to mind.

1. No check: most open to abuse, but will get the greatest number of voters.

2. IP check: I saw this done by Omni's  Random  Curiosity site and some others. Ease of voting is same as No check unless multiple voters share the same computer or router, which does happen frequently, though. It still is easy to cheat here, but will require little more effort by the cheater.

3. Login for voting purpose only: We can leave every thing in the site open for general public except for the voting, which you have to first register. We will give out only one login per email address. If we allow auto-register function, the ease of voting is same as No check. A great advantage to this is that we can have a public page which will show which user has voted for which characters at what time. This will allow voters to confirm that their votes were counted correctly, and allow them to change their votes if they change their mind within the allocated time. People do have multiple email address, but they won't be able to cast hundreds of fake votes.

4. Code system: More rigid than other system, so the whole process must be made faster than SaiMoe system. A system that frequently checks, AND MARKS the invalid votes in the voting thread is solely needed in order to make the vote counting more transparent. 

5. Cookie/voting software system: The problem here is the legality of such software which will monitor the computer to make sure only one vote has been cast from the computer, and is backed up by login system. Korean Moe tournament used very weak version of this, which could be easily tricked. Some people with multiple email address just went to a PC Room and moved from computer to computer to cast their votes. This is a stronger version of IP Check supplemented by login system. 

 I believe ideal system would be a Code system that requires less number of steps and less time delays compared to SaiMoe, provided that Invalid votes are identified and Marked for public viewing within 5 minutes of their appearance in the voting thread. This should be supplemented with IP bans for specific IP that generates more than 2 invalid votes within 10 minutes. Whether such system is possible is beyond my knowledge. Most transparent seems to be Login system, as outsiders can verify who cast their votes, for whom was the vote, or when it was cast. Backing it up with IP check will make it harder for any cheaters to cast multiple votes, and we could enhance it by setting a temporary block of IP addresses close to certain IP address, if more than 3 votes are generated within 15 minutes from locale very close to each other.

 The system that can offer some protection to the cheaters while most open for general public would be simple IP control: Temporary block any further voting for 10 minutes from IP addresses close to ones where a vote has been cast, while allowing one specific IP address ( or computer ) to vote only once per group. I'm sure there are other methods, but I think I prefer the IP check method the most. 

Considering that a major part of the fun about such a contest comes from supporting posts and material, it doesn't seem too out of place to require one-time registration for the length of the contest (opening an account for both voting and posting). Then, registration + some form of IP checking is pretty much as good as it gets: I don't really see how a code system can bring better security, especially if voter anonimity isn't an issue; and dedicated voting software, in addition to providing very dubious security, is just plain evil (as in: not all voters use Windows, say).

Temporarily banning short IP ranges is certainly possible, and probably quite easy to do, but it's not necessarily a good idea (few people have access to multiple similar IPs readily, and would try to cheat that way; and those who do just need to write a little script casting votes on various such machines on their behalf at appropriate times -- on the other hand, it is not impossible that such a protection scheme could block legitimate votes from different people using the same ISP).

Just my 2 cents.

In end, the best way to counter fake votesmaybe to increase the number of voters who follow the rule. Surely the number of the would-be  cheaters cannot be in hundreds. If we get thousands of legit voters, those cheaters would probably won't be able to make any difference, and may possibly cancel out each other. People now knows that there are those people who will try to cheat. A popular character will likely attract both supporters and haters. Hopefully, they negate each other in the end.

You could probably cheat like Os by going to an Ouran livejournal club thing or whatever and getting all those people to vote. Hence how Ouran won so many of my polls back in the day...

I'm also in favour of something simple, though I am getting worried that things will be getting a bit out of hand when the Haruhi-enthusiasts start going crazy. I think that some kind of IP-check must be done in order to limit at least the laziest cheaters. 

>> You could probably cheat like Os by going to an Ouran livejournal club thing or whatever and getting all those people to vote. Hence how Ouran won so many of my polls back in the day...

 I actually consider this as legitimate campaigning and perfectly permissible, perhaps as  something that should be encouraged. Now if one hires someone to write a program that will cast hundreds of vote for certain character, that should be disallowed. I guess we could advertise that, if a character advance to next round with questionable votes, he/she will be assigned the worst seed, thus be  placed in toughest brackets. If more than one character fan group is suspected of cheating, those characters will always be grouped together, in order to protect other characters from the cheaters. We could present the time, quantity, and IP proximity of the votes as evidence for suspicious voting. We should set up a forum or bulletin site where people can publicly announce, if they desires so, whom they voted for, and when and where the vote was cast, in order to help us keep track of general voting tendency and whether that anamalous voting surge is many people in local fan group voting together, or someone running a suspicious software.