I do not want to go into particulars. DC are great people, but some of the comments hade last year soured us on doing this. I will leave it it that. Those that made the comments know who you are. And competition ? Last year it was not "keep it as close as we can and be fair", but "lets see how we can cheat and win".
I have said too much.
Edit: Hint H's team product was less than 3 billion per month before the race. During it shot to 10 billion. after it went back to 2. Whats wrong with this picture ??
Most of the big points earners for that contest (myself included ) don't regularly fold so the points leading up to the contest is a pointless metric.
About the only thing that you might be able to argue as "cheating" that occurred would have been the fact that we had some folks from another team that decided without consultation to join us for the challenge. We did not actively recruit them or anything they just happened to see the posts about the challenge and joined up.
If you go by the fact that we were by the rules stated we were allowed to have anyone join in at any time and there was no pre sign up for our side. No we didn't tell them they couldn't join us when they offered but how doesn't this fall under lucky recruiting?
EVEN with the fact that those guys joined I was keeping a rough eye on tallies and if we removed the points from those particular individual I believe we would still have come out ahead or it would have been close.
keep it as close as we can and be fair", but "lets see how we can cheat and win".
>>> I actually have a big problem with this. Its a contest so if you change teams to try to make it even then really what is the point. I personally don't mind winning or losing and the big winner a the end of the day is the science.
Going back a few years with this contest you guys have consistently underestimated us based on PPD for the team leading up to the challenge and there has been this push from your team or some members on it to try to add people to our team or make the rules different. For the first contest you gave us less members than you initially wanted to, because we kept saying we were gonna produce more than you figured we would. we surprised you and the team the had a few of your guys on our side ended up winning (I could be wrong on the win part just going from memory)
Last year you still seemed to think that you needed to give us some kind of edge. Frankly speaking it comes across as slightly offensive when you try to give us a major handycap just so that it will be even. I could give a rats tail if i lose or win but a fair race is at least interesting. A contrived race with handicaps or mixing teams to "try to keep it even" accomplishes what exactly?
I will say that my main goal going into last years race was to beat you guys to the point that you would come back the following year and stop with the different rules for thee then for me stuff.
Outside of the 2 or 3 dudes who joined in because they wanted to we really hit it hard recruiting from the forum and got a lot of interest so I guess we pulled more points then you expected but is that really a crime or cheating? If you consider this from the other side of the aisle don't you think that the rule differences can come across as something like a charity handout?
So what I propose here is let skip the recruiting. Both sides brings everything they got without sign ups for the whole duration. Who the heck cares who wins, the science wins and we give more visibility to a project once a year and maybe some people who don't fold will start and maybe old timers that stopped will start again.