Well, the biggest three alternatives that seem to be buzzing around currently are
- Remove the reward from Propaganda voting completely (I assume the completion bonus still applies)
- Invoke a judging system instead of a community vote
- Remove Propaganda completely
Removing rewards:This seems like a fairly good solution, in my opinion. The biggest issue is of generals providing poorly done pieces for Propaganda just to satisfy the bare minimum, but I really don't mind that aspect too much myself; I would much rather prefer the pre-Round 1 phase be dedicated to Vault building, Member Roles, etc. than having to worry about Propaganda as well. If the completion bonus doesn't apply anymore then I find it hard to believe that most Generals will bother doing Propaganda at all.
Judging system:I would like to see this invoked since it removes the unreliability of community voting, but it seems very, very similar to what is proposed for Forum Brawl already.
Removing Propaganda completely:At this point I'm really not against this either, but on the other hand I will acknowledge that Propaganda does serve as a great team building exercise in some cases.
The biggest issues that I'm seeing with Propaganda currently mainly involve the voting system in itself and the criteria for each part of the submission in itself.
Many people disagree on what exactly defines a speech, and I honestly don't feel that what is outlined in the rules thread can be called a Propaganda speech when the bare minimums are followed. A speech by definition amounts to a spoken work (in this case typed since it's over the internet), aimed at moving a target audience in favor of a particular cause or gain. Well the requirements for Propaganda currently only make a block of text aimed towards one's team necessary. However, much more than just that team is voting on Propaganda in general therefore you're not directly speaking to a rather sizable portion of the audience you should be targeting. I also don't believe that any pieces of artwork except for the main banner should be presented on the main post. If you want to give a shout out to fan-made banners then that's fine, just do it in a separate post designated for that type of thing; the rules specifically state that a Propaganda post needs
a banner, meaning that all other artwork should not be part of Propaganda. I also don't find comics speech-worthy, as humorous as they may be, but that may just be my opinion.
The voting system is probably the biggest issue. Firstly when the advertisement for Propaganda voting explicitly states, "Go vote on who put forth the best effort and created the best banners, flags, and speeches. " then I would assume that things such as Element loyalty, who's on a particular team, or how someone convinced you to go vote on the Propaganda page should be irrelevant; it's all about the works created. I admittedly did not vote for anyone else's Propaganda page because of the benefit the bonus may have provided me; that also needs to be taken into account with other voters. From the rumors surrounding the whole advertising via PM issue I would say that it is incredibly likely that teams in future Wars will use PM advertising as a method to gain more votes unless it is strictly forbidden in the rules. This is naturally a big issue because 1) It could result in spam and seriously annoy people not participating in War and 2) There's no telling if bribery or other impure methods were being used to garner votes. Or let's say that during this War I was on Team Fire and PM'd someone a link to our propaganda page before telling them to go vote on the poll thread. Well Team Fire has two images set up on the thread currently, so if I don't like the first one, but do like the second then I would suspect that might change how I would vote in the Polls since I've already seen what Fire's banners look like. Yet another reason why I would like 1 image per Propaganda page, incidentally.
EDIT: One final thought. I was disappointed how the song choice played absolutely no part in how Propaganda votes were decided. Offering bonuses on as many self-made projects as possible is good, but really what's the point of even posting a song if it doesn't make a difference in the long run? I also spent a considerable amount of time trying to integrate the banner, speech, and song into one piece for greater effect as a whole. Whether or not this would have given us a better chance in the voting is unknown, but I would like to receive a warning ahead of time when changes like this are made.
