You realize those replies were after your second post where you needed to drill in some more why I should not of won. And I'm sorry you felt I was trying to say I should of won by referring other "maps". You made a point that my submission was comparable to doing huts and trees on Summoner's rift. Why is mine any different than someone who only did a map and nothing else.

Dude:

Was your first reply-- as if to say "oh you must not have recognized it, that's the only reason you could have that opinion".

Obviously I then explained that wasn't the case in more detail.

To put it concisely: for such a contest, the piece should be iconic and striking.

Doing an isolated segment of The Crystal Scar is comparable to doing an isolated segment of Summoner's Rift.

That's one of the compositional points: it doesn't pop out and say "wow that's Dominion".

I'm not trying to sway Riot into not giving you an honorable mention, I'm simply pointing out their potential thought process and perhaps areas of artistic improvement (composition design).

I would honestly save your breath. It is obvious who is here for the sport of debate. I'm sorry but in response to Super Explosion you cannot call out anyone's arrogance with the way in which you went "top chef time" all over someones entry. I can't tell from the flamboyant way you chose to word your analysis whether you are or think of yourself as an artist or a chef, most people here do not think of themselves as either and even if you are you should not so bluntly pick apart someone's hard work and talk to them as though their entries were ever expected to be the work of artists or chefs. That is simply arrogant.

That is my 2 cents and I am personally done with responding as everything from here on out is just fueling a debate with literally no point to it whatsoever.

I don't know why you keep going with this. My first comment was never meant to be negative at all and I'm Sorry you took it that way. But here you go again with reiterating what you've already stated. It's so unnecessary. You've made your point in the first post you made.

Alright, so I took a minute to sit down and stare at the sky.

My tone has been rude and vicious, yup. I shouldn't have been so offensive. But I don't take back the meaning behind what I'm saying at all, or the anger. I'm still unsatisfied. But I've decided I have better things to do than badger these competitions. Like make fan creations for other games. I still plan to honor those who I feel deserve something from this particular competition and update the gallery, but I guess if other future people really agree that things are unfair, we'll all stop trying so hard any way without me making a big fuss and upsetting people even more.

Xin, thank you for hearing myself and everyone else out. I kind of expected to be banned by now really, but I am pleasantly surprised. I can in no way deny that you're listening carefully, and I can see now why you can't release the judgements on the entries, unfortunately. I then have no further suggestions but this one:
I believe that for the next competition, if you have space for it, the users would really love a gallery of all un-DQ'd submissions. I have received a lot of warm responses for my thread. I truly hope your future endeavors end better.

And if I have one wish for the future; please release Reindeer Kog'Maw from the vault at some point. My brother really wants it and that's the whole reason we entered. Though I doubt making it known will help me get my wish, being on the naughty list at this point.

Clearly I was talking to:

This is not a debate:

I was simply giving my take on the judging decision process.

To which I received a request for 'enlightenment'.

Well since you asked for suggestions…

(1) Please provide greater clarity of the rules and greater agreement between the judges and Riot employees of those rules in future contests: I won’t belabor this point because it’s already been discussed ad nauseam in this thread.

(2) Please provide greater feedback in the announcement threads before the contest deadline: People have already brought this up so I won’t harp on this. I do want to add though that there is already a great deal of Riot participation in the new Digi-Art contest thread, so this may be a non-issue already, with the lack of feedback for the Gingerbread contest being a fluke because everyone was away for the holidays. ^.^

(3) Please do not mix EU entries with NA entries during the voting phase if the contests themselves are separate: No good can come of this. While it sounds cool to give people the opportunity to see the entries submitted in our sister servers, in practice it’s just a recipe for disaster. Even if the entries were better labeled as “NA” or “EU”, mixing the entries up during the voting phase when the contests themselves are separate is just begging to (1) create additional questions for people, (2) create more confusion, and (3) create potential discord between NA and EU players like it has here. Rather, just include the winners from all the servers in the final post announcing the winners. That way everyone is happy, and everyone can still see the best of the best on what our sister servers have been up to.

(4) Please let us vote for more than one entry in future contests: In the Noxus Nom contest, we could vote for as many entries as we wanted to. I’m not sure what value is added by restricting our number of votes to just one, especially for a contest that’s going to pick five winners anyways. Please let us vote for as many entries as there are going to be winners in the future. If anything, this encourages more honest voting because now people can vote for their friends’ entries as well as any other entries they feel deserve to win.

(5) Please limit voting rights to LoL players: Over 15,000 votes were cast in this contest where voting was open to anyone whereas it looks like in the Noxus Nom contest where voting was open for several days longer than this one but open only to LoL players, a little over 1,000 votes were cast . This seems… a bit dodgy to me. First, letting anyone cast a vote opens up the contest to potential abuses like IP randomized votes. Second, in an age of Facebook and Twitter, no value is added to the contest or the LoL community by having someone with 100 followers on twitter just twit a voting link to their entry to garner 100 instant votes for their submission from people who have never played LoL, never will play LoL, and have no stake in the LoL community. By limiting voting rights to actual LoL players, you limit the possibility for abuse and let the people who actually have a stake in the community be the determining voice in the contests.

(6) Please proofread the announcements and rules before publication: I know this one sounds silly, but hear me out please. One of the largest points of confusion going in to the Gingerbread contest was the deadline date stemming from a typographical error in the rules page. The Digi-Art contest announcement and rules pages contained three typographical errors, one of them being the start date for the contest. >.< Two of those errors including the date have since been corrected, though the third typo still remains. A simple proofread should be sufficient to catch these errors, and while most of these errors are harmless, some of them can lead to a great deal of confusion.

(7) Lastly, I don’t envy your position Bazner… at… all… but you’ve been nothing but courteous throughout this thread, and I think you’re doing a solid job with the tools available. So please keep up the good work.

This is quite sensible!

I'd also add: to make sure that any Rioters posting about the contest elsewhere are circumspect in verifying the details they post.

To clarify as well: restricting votes to one per person is often done to get a higher resolution of preference, I believe-- basically what everyone considers to be the absolute best. (It usually prompts people to put more thought into their vote.)

Edit: It might be even nicer if they had the capacity to put such things on a tab in the game client.

That's hardly fair. I certainly feel that mine was one of the better...but numerous others also feel the same about theirs. Why wouldn't my entry or another one get an "honorable mention"? Sort of bending some rules here...

Community preference (popular support) can be a pretty good reason to make stuff happen. (Since it indicates a lot of people want it.)

Similar to the Hippalus manually doing skin trades for people if the thread gets enough upvotes.

So if there was large community support for giving honorable mention to something like Winter Dominion for its excellent craftsmanship or Yordle Cart for extreme cuteness, that would probably be just fine. (Even if the judges did not view it to be completely matching the contest, for whatever reason. Barring, perhaps, more pressing disqualification cause.)