Trying Something New: OxRock Whims (Patreon)

Hey there, Oxdarock here!

First off, I'm going to extend the Patron Pick Suggestion period by one day as I want people to be aware of this post. It will now end on July 6th at 11:30 AM EST.

Second, I want to try something different regarding how the winner is decided for the Patron Pick Polls. I know it's sudden, but the short version is I'd like for the polls to decide the top five most popular suggestions, to which I will make the final decision on the winner. I feel that doing this way will give more suggestions a shot at winning and will leave a less bitter taste for when a winner is decided. For more info on what I mean, why I decided this, and how I'll go about it, take a look at the long version below the dotted line!

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Ok, now for the long version! 

In a nutshell, I've grown dissatisfied with how the requests are chosen. After doing this for six months (technically longer if you count that I've been doing this since April 2019), a trend in what suggestions tend to win can be observed and it tends to lead to a feeling of hopelessness in suggesting anything else. It even makes the extra perks of higher tiers seem kind of pointless since the same group of people will vote on the same things every time. The feeling of hopelessness at drawing anything different has even affected myself. Sure, I may not reject ideas (so long as they follow the rules), but I do have an opinion on them (Best example of this involves the SAO conjoinment I finished recently). 

I honestly considered using a randomizer instead (i.e. Wheel-kun), but that would be gambling, which is against Patreon's ToS. So instead, it'll still be a voting poll, however the voting will instead decide the top five most popular suggestions, to which I will make the final decision on the winner (as stated above). My decision could be based on a number of reasons. I could be completely biased and choose the suggestion I like the most or looks the easiest to do, I could be semi-biased and choose based on data I have on hand, I could be completely neutral and hand it over to Wheel-kun, or some combination of 1 and 2 plus Wheel-kun. 

As I said, I feel like doing it this way will make things slightly more fair. For one, it's much easier for a suggestion to make it into the top 5 (or more if there are ties) than 1st place, so in a sense, a wider range of people actually "win." After that, it just comes down to my own whims, which can be more of a toss up than you'd think. Sure, I might be biased or lazy 90% of the time, but other times I might just want to be fair. Either way, I'd much prefer people feel salty towards me and Wheel-kun rather than despair over the preference of the masses. 

Anyway, just wanted to give people the heads up on how I'll be handling Patron Pick Polls this month. I'll be sure to make mention of it again when the voting starts. 

That's all for now!