I completely agree with Laht on this one.
I am also joining just for the fun (and maybe a bit exposure if I am honest). Winning is nice but not something I seriously anticipate.
The whole downvoting thing is a bit irritating but I believe this is probably just a very small portion of people who want to mess with creators, so what I do is go around throwing 10 Stars at smaller comics who I think deserve some love. Probably just as stupid but whatever xD
One thing that is bugging me since the contest was announced was the judgment criteria. A huge portion of the judgement is actually done via readers engagement (40%). And while it is reasonable for a company to pick a title that is like by the audience to feature. It sure makes this contest more into a popularity contest than a search for the best comic. How are smaller or new comic creators able to compete with already established creators in the community?
Anther question I have is: How far can I go with promotion? I know this sounds stupid but I feel like if I were to promote my new comic at the end of my other one which has quite a lot of subscribers I would create an unfair advantage for myself. I've seen a lot of creators do that already and while I think it's reasonable I just want to keep this contest as fair as possible. I probably will promote my new comic with my next update because, and I am just being honest here, I want people to read it, but It still feels wrong in consideration of the creators who don't already have a reader base.
If I remember correctly, the official rules stated something regarding creating unfair advantage but I can't find that part anymore, so I might just be making things up, haha
I dunno, Am I the only one who is worried by this?