Update: I have been messaged by Kowale on multiple wikis asking for an explanation. For the sake of transparency, here are the links.
Hey guys, maybe you remember this post about cheating and abusing the Pasta of the Month voting system. Remember how acerbic I got??? Yeah…
<rant>
Are you fucking kidding me? We have to bring this up again? What part of, ‘Do not try to sock nominate your pasta, do not try to involve outside sources to win regardless of quality. What does winning accomplish for you if cheated to get it done? It is pyrrhic. It is hollow. It gets you nothing. It means nothing.’ is so hard to understand?
Now we have a situation of someone fraudulently winning potm by having their sock nominating their story and likely abusing the system. (Side note: The Terra Cotta Gnome was nominated by another user and there’s nothing to suggest that they’re in each others’ pockets. Although, I frankly wonder if the polls should continue after knowing that Mr. Kohl has multiple accounts sharing the same IP address that he could have inflated the votes for.)
Seriously, I remember actually buying The Remover and wondering how such a story could get PotM. Its pacing is off, there’s little to no interesting characters, and a shoe-horned romance in the final chapters that make the protagonist’s previous flame seem pointless. Now I know how it got PotM. Kenneth Kohl used a false account to nominate his story. He cheated. Simple as that. Enjoy those wasted ten dollars of mine. Fuck you. Hide behind your sock APeer and defend your stories some more (as it seems so much easier than actually trying to improve yourself).
</rant>
Onto people who are still in the community that haven’t had all their stories deleted from the wiki and been banned. I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to change the voting system for PotM. Some users aren’t mature enough to use it. We will be drafting a new system because some of you are unable to tell the difference between a well-earned victory and a pyrrhic one earned by cheating. We’ll let you know about the new system once we work the kinks out and figure out how to make it less easy to abuse.
On a final note, I hate to discredit everyone’s votes, but right now the PotM voting system is FUBAR and needs a drastic overhaul. I’m sorry if this disappoints you, and I’m sorry if you don’t like the tone I’m taking. The truth is, I thought we were better than this. I hope we can be better than this.