August OTM Voting (2022)

Go leave some very, very nice messages on the winners' pages this month! 📚🌭. And time to gear your votes up for the second half of the year!

OTM rules

Voting will close on August 10th 2022, 11:59pm Pacific Time.

1. You can vote for a maximum of ten characters, and ten ships.
2. Half of your characters, and half of your ships, must have a comment attached.
   1. This means that if you voted for 8 characters and 4 ships, then 4 characters and 2 ships must have comments. If you vote for an odd number of either character or ship, you must round up. So if you vote for 9 characters, you must attach a comment to 5 of your votes.
   2. This comment can be any length. It can be silly, or serious. The only requirement is that it is not the same as a comment you made about the character/ship in the previous vote.

COTM rules

1. Users cannot vote for an OC that belongs to them.
2. An OC who has already won cannot win again.
3. A character with the same destiny as a previous winner cannot win.
   1. Characters with “generic” destinies, such as Charmings with no set role, do not count as having the same destiny as any previous winners who are of that “generic” destiny.
4. A character cannot win if the driver won COTM the previous month.
5. You can only win the OTMs of a given month if you have partaken in the voting for that month.
6. To win, an OC must have a personality section on their page.
7. To win, a user must have voted in COTM.
8. If more than 10 characters have been voted for admins will only count the first 10. If some of the first 10 votes are for admins, admins will forgo counting them to bring the number equal to 10.

SOTM rules

1. Users cannot vote for a ship that involves their own OCs.
2. OC/Canon ships are viable.
3. All pages involved in the ship must be present on the Wiki to be voted for.
4. All OCs in the ship must be listed when voting, unless the ship has a squad page that can be linked in place of listing.
5. Remember that “ships” include non-romantic relationships, such as platonic friendships and familial relations.
6. A ship cannot win if a user involved in the ship won SOTM in the previous month.
   1. This exception applies to “big squad” ships, which we define as groups with 7 or more members. A user involved in this group, even if it won in the previous month, may still win this month.
7. To win, all OCs involved in the ship must have a personality section on their page.
8. To win, a user must have voted in SOTM.
9. If more than 10 ships have been voted for admins will only count the first 10. If some of the first 10 votes are for admins, admins will forgo counting them to bring the number equal to 10.

How to vote

Voting basics

1. Voting is done in the comments of this blog post.
2. List the OCs and ships you wish to vote for.
   1. This can be done in the same comment.
   2. If you want to add more votes, you can leave a reply under your comment.
3. In extenuating circumstances, votes can be delivered through Discord if a user is unable to get onto the Wiki to vote.

Vote formatting

UCP has changed how comments function, so our old rules no longer apply. However, we can’t count a vote if we don’t know which OC(s) it is for, so it’s up to you to make your vote legible. The pointers for doing so remain similar to our old rules:

• Linking is helpful, if you are able to.
• Referring to the character by the name of their page helps us identify them easier.
• You may wish to name the user the OC belongs to if it is a common OC name/might be confused.
• Placing the OC name near the front of the comment or highlighting (ie, bolding, underlining) the name if it is in the middle of the comment will make it easier to read.
• Remember that multiple ships share the same name, so you must list all OCs involved or link to a squad page, if voting for a squad.
• Consider listing the members of a ship in alphabetical order.

Things to remember

1. This is the start of a new season, so to speak. Try to pick smth new - we want a diverse interesting list of winners that new users would benefit from seeing.
2. Don’t feel pressured to vote for what everyone else has voted for, if people are voting similarly.
3. It is wise to vote for OCs with active users.
4. Admins will not tell you when a vote is invalid. We expect users to keep up with the rules and to make sure they are voting in a way that ensures their votes will be counted.
5. You do not leave to leave long, serious comments as part of the commenting rule.

How the admins pick a winner

We use a “weighted vote” system to determine the winner. This takes into account the votes received this month, as well as “historic” vote totals. Seldom have we picked a winner that was not top of the list, though there have been cases in which we had to jump to second, third, or even fourth place. Such reasons might include:

1. The win conflicts with one of the previously stated OTM rules.
2. The win would give another win to an admin or mod, particularly if they are back to back or occuring frequently at the time the vote is counted.
   1. Similarly, if the win would mean both winners of both awards are admins and/or mods.
3. The win would feature an OCs or ships that explores mature, inappropriate, or unhealthy themes, particularly where said themes have not been warned or framed correctly, due to how young some of our site traffic can be.
4. The win would be another win for a generic role in very close succession to someone else of that generic role winning recently.
5. A user involved in the hypothetical win is not comfortable with winning.