Text 13835, 125 rader
Skriven 2007-04-23 13:16:47 av Amy Guskin (198.babylon5)
     Kommentar till en text av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated
Ärende: Re: OT: Finesse contest finalists - thanks to all!
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>> On Mon, 23 Apr 2007 08:53:08 -0400, Matthew Vincent wrote
(in article <1177332788.147159.133250@y80g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>):
> 
> Congratulations on this achievement. It's commendable. <<

Thanks, Matthew.  I'm actually pretty pleased by it, despite not being chosen 
as a finalist.

>> "Dear Finesse, I'm a gambling addict who feels insecure about my
> physical appearance, and I'm having a hard time coping with the fact
> that I didn't make the finalists of your contest. I only have a small,
> narrow clique of supporters, and some of them aren't very intelligent
> and so we didn't utilise the best strategies during this contest. <<

HA!  Yeah, I think that I was more flabbergasted by anything by the idea that 
someone _wouldn't_ have thought of voting "1"s for other contestants!  In 
other places I hang out online, people told me that they didn't feel _right_ 
voting down other contestants, which I can understand -- but it was so clear 
from the messages on this board that they simply _hadn't even thought of it_. 
 They're so bad at math, they probably play the lottery, too...  :-D

>> These nicknames were for the benefit of your supporters, rather than
> for the ears of your competitors. They weren't made spitefully or with
> the intention of the people concerned reading them. If one of your
> competitors has gone to extraordinary means to search down your posts
> then she's responsible for anything she reads that wasn't intended for
> her ears. (Hmmmmm, I can't help but wonder which particular nickname
> we might have used to refer to this woman -- lol). <<

Exactly.  I mean, sure, Usenet is public, but it's also highly unlikely that 
anyone would just happen to stumble into the moderated Babylon 5 newsgroup 
for the purpose of finding out news about Finesse's Lifestyle Model Contest.  
:-p  It's not like I had a "Finesse Girls Blog" where I posted cruel comments 
about the entrants, intending it to be found.

And, actually, I think I know which entry this woman was.  One of her 
supporters on the message board, upon seeing her picture (which wasn't 
visible to me because I think you need a premium membership to see photos 
there) told her that she resembled Julianne Moore.  And she was apparently a 
very high-ranking entry for a long time, even holding the top spot for a good 
while, until the fall arrived and Finesse started advertising on satellite 
radio (thus getting many more entries).  If she is who I think she is, she's 
someone I never gave a nickname to, and in fact voted her _high_ scores from 
time to time early on in the contest, because I actually thought she looked 
sweet, and that she had a good entry and thus deserved a fair vote from me.

Ironic, huh?  :-p

>> Nods. That's what you'd expect and it's why they ran the competition
> in the first place. If they'd wanted to prevent people voting "1" for
> other candidates, then it would've been a simple matter to restrict
> everyone to one vote per 24 hours (rather than one vote per candidate
> per 24 hours). <<

Precisely.  Many of the disappointed sweepstake people talked about how much 
they hated voting contests, and that the manufacturers in fact _should_ only 
allow a one-vote-per-day system, to stop this kind of 'cheating.'  So either 
they didn't read the rules, didn't understand them, or simply refused to 
accept them.

>>So, no-one has any legitimate claim to hound you as an
> individual, just because you implemented a particularly methodical and
> effective form of a strategy that most of the other successful
> candidates were also using. If the highest scores were 4s at the end
> of the competition, then the mean and median would probably have been
> down around maybe 2, and there could easily have been 5-10 votes of
> "1" per every vote of "10" on average. <<

Yeah, it's just stupid.  If you could only vote "10"s for people, they'd have 
to rank on a different basis.  In fact, it would have to be based purely on 
number of votes, because EVERYBODY'S ranking would be a "10" in that 
scenario!

>> This "ugly soul" comment is particularly out of line. I wouldn't tell
> anyone that they have an ugly soul -- not even the criminals that I
> worked with at a prison last year. It's not the place of one mortal
> human being to pass a judgement on the soul of another. Rather, any
> criticisms of another person should be restricted to their external
> behaviour and the effects it has on others. So, I won't comment on the
> souls of any of these people, but rather I'll simply say that their
> behaviour is catty, obnoxious, inappropriate and ridiculously out of
> proportion to the situation they're responding to. <<

Thanks, Matthew.

>> I'm very sorry to hear that and I hope that everything goes smoothly
> with your father's recovery from his operation. I will be sure to send
> healing energy. <<

Thanks.  We definitely dodged a bullet this time!  As for healing energies, I 
only send them to my father surreptitiously -- this is the man who, when I 
told my mother after her gall bladder surgery that keeping a positive 
atttitude would be good for her recovery, thought that THAT was too 'new 
agey'!  :-p

>> There are all sorts of reasons that could explain why you didn't end
> up being counted in the top 20. It could be anything from nepotism, to
> qualitative interpretations, to the type of standards used -- for
> example, statistical techniques that gave less weight to 1s and 10s as
> we were discussing earlier. You may, for example, have been 25th out
> of nearly a thousand in terms of what it was determined that your
> unbiased score was, but 6th in terms of the approximation of your
> score that was provided. It's entirely plausible that Finesse may have
> used an approximation without correcting for 1s and 10s, etc., until
> such time as voting was closed and the statistical analysis was
> performed. <<

It also occurs to me that we answered a few pointed questions on a form upon 
entering the contest.  I wonder if the fact that I'm not a mommy knocked me 
out of the running.  Generally, companies with products like that, who are 
looking to appeal to women my age (and at least some of the finalists are 
women in their 40s), are looking at the 'mommy angle.'  Finesse is a very 
un-sexy sort of shampoo company, and I think they're more likely targeting 
'mommies' in my age group rather than career women, or single women, or women 
whose children are in the care of nannies, etc.  Beauty products targeted to 
women like me are sold in Sephora (fancy-schmancy cosmetics boutique).  I'm 
an odd demographic, being a married woman in my 40s with no children.

>> Congratulations again on achieving 6th place in the original results.<<

Thanks again, Matthew, for all of your supportive words.

Amy
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