2021 Official Rules & Prizes

[Cam]

2021 Site Battle Madness
Official Rules & Prizes​

---

Tournament Overview:​

How does this work?
I will randomly generate a bracket to use for the remainder of the contest. After the bracket is generated, the tournament will start! All battles will be exactly seven days long. In the case of a tie, a panel of unidentified staff members (who will have absolutely no connection to either of the forums or websites) will vote to determine the winner. The more battles you win, the better your prizes will become!

What are the prizes?
Prizes are awarded accordingly to your placement, and how far your website goes into this tournament.

First Place

• $100 via PayPal/Venmo/Zelle/Cash App
• 300 FP$
• SBM Profile Medal

Second Place

• $50 via PayPal/Venmo/Zelle/Cash App
• 250 FP$
• SBM Profile Medal

Final Four (3rd/4th Place Division Winners)

• $25 via PayPal/Venmo/Zelle/Cash App
• 200 FP$
• SBM Profile Medal

Elite Eight (5th - 8th Place)

• 150 FP$
• SBM Profile Medal

Sweet Sixteen (9th Place - 16th Place)

• 100 FP$
• SBM Profile Medal

Everyone Else

• 50 FP$
• SBM Profile Participation Medal

What are the rules in this tournament?

• Members do not need to give a reason why they voted a particular way, nor do they need to publicly declare who they voted for. Both of these are optional, at voter's discretion.
• You MAY ask members of your community to vote for you; in fact, this is encouraged. 03/14/21 Update: While you can ask your members to vote, you cannot offer incentives to other individuals in order to obtain their votes, whether it's USD, a forum currency, a premium user group, etc.
• You may NOT create multiple accounts or pay another individual to create account(s). If you or your members create duplicate accounts to vote in SBM, they will face a disqualification from the tournament and further moderation action.
• All members MUST have ten (10) posts before voting in a poll. If your website continuously refers members here who do not follow our Board-Wide Guidelines, your forum will risk disqualification from the tournament.
• Disclaimer: Potential rule violations will be discussed within our staff team, and we'll look to take the best course of action going forward, in order to maintain fairness to all participants of this competition. We reserve the right to disqualify any contestant or deem any vote illegitimate when we feel we have cause.

---

Thanks for your participation!​

 

[Cam]

After discussing this with various members within our community, we've decided to make a few changes to competition rules. Given that we are making these changes in the middle of the competition, these changes will not go into effect until the Elite Eight round, which is expected to begin on 03/19/21.

• Members do not need to give a reason why they voted a particular way, nor do they need to publicly declare who they voted for. Both of these are optional, at voter's discretion.
• You MAY ask members of your community to vote for you; in fact, this is encouraged. 03/14/21 Update: While you can ask your members to vote, you cannot offer incentives to other individuals in order to obtain their votes, whether it's USD, a forum currency, a premium user group, etc.
• You may NOT create multiple accounts or pay another individual to create account(s). If you or your members create duplicate accounts to vote in SBM, they will face a disqualification from the tournament and further moderation action.
• All members MUST have ten (10) posts before voting in a poll. If your website continuously refers members here who do not follow our Board-Wide Guidelines, your forum will risk disqualification from the tournament.
• Disclaimer: Potential rule violations will be discussed within our staff team, and we'll look to take the best course of action going forward, in order to maintain fairness to all participants of this competition. We reserve the right to disqualify any contestant or deem any vote illegitimate when we feel we have cause.

You are permitted to do what you can in regards to communicating with members of your community and getting them to come to FP and vote. You can email them, you can PM them, you can create an announcement topic about it. All of that is perfectly acceptable. You can even spam your friends and family on Facebook or another social media platform about this competition. However, you cannot offer incentives to anyone in order to obtain votes, whether it's something small like a fancy usergroup on your forum, or something large like a financial reward. This obviously is referring to cash, but it isn't limited to just that. This also includes forum currency, whether we're talking about FP$, ForumCoin, etc. For best practice, just avoid offering anything to other individuals that could potentially be considered an incentive. We've also attached a disclaimer to these rules, just for clarification on how we will handle issues when they arise. This seems like the best solution for all of us in order to maintain integrity, transparency, and honesty with how these competitions operate.

When we figure out who are final eight contestants will be, I will make sure to tag these individuals in this topic to make sure that they are aware of these changes.

As always, thank you for your continued support of FP. It is a blessing to have so many awesome websites and fantastic individuals participating in this competition.

Regards,
Cam

 

[Cam]

@Ash, @Xyphien, @Claraviolet, @Malcolm, @ChrisGrigg, @Pennywise, @Alexander, @Dan The Man

The Elite Eight round has started, so the rule changes stated above are now live.

 

[Cam]

As a note, we will not allow users to spam our community in order to reach the 10 post requirement. Posts have to be on-topic and relevant to the discussion that is taking place in that thread. We aren't going to be harsh in regards to spelling/grammar/short posting, but the posts being made have to be relevant. For example, we just had a user randomly post "vote" in a bunch of random discussion topics in Intellectual Talk. That will not be permitted under any circumstances.

Take a note to this rule:

• All members MUST have ten (10) posts before voting in a poll. If your website continuously refers members here who do not follow our Board-Wide Guidelines, your forum will risk disqualification from the tournament.

Webmasters who refer users who spam our community risk being disqualified from this competition.