Here's some issues I've noticed. I'm not trying to pick on anyone, but in order to illustrate my points, I need to refer to specific entries.
The winning female costume had no comments in her build post. Not a single mention of praise from anyone. This seems disproportionate to the number of votes she received. Look at other, non-winning build threads and you'll often see pages of comments. Also, no one has "friended" her on this site either. So it would seem that her votes came from members that did not comment on her thread and are not "friends" with her through the site. Does that seem worthy of winning? Even if all of her votes were from actual individual people that registered with the site just to vote for her, it just means that this is a popularity contest, not based on the popularity of the costume, but the popularity of the person that entered the costume.
The female winner and the male 3rd place winner received almost the same number of votes, which I bring up because they both did Mortal Combat costumes, and appear to be boyfriend and girlfriend, as evidenced by her comments about her boyfriend helping her and with their build thread pics that show they both made their costumes at the same location:
http://www.therpf.com/attachments/f24/vals-2012-halloween-costume-contest-entry-frost-dscf0014.jpg-124597d1351902892
http://www.therpf.com/attachments/f24/unforsakens-2012-halloween-costume-contest-entry-noob-dscf0019.jpg-124584d1351902236
I know it's not against the rules for boyfriend and girlfriend or husband and wife both entering the contest. I only mention their relationship as additional proof that they seem to have both gotten the same votes from the same members: members that don't post. And both Unforsaken and Val have only posted 7 and 8 times respectively on these forums (though for some reason, I could only find 6 posts in Unforsaken's profile and only 5 posts in Val's, so maybe some were deleted). And, yes, there is nothing that says you have to post a lot in order to be eligible or even to be considered a member in good standing. But also consider that they both only have posts starting on 11-02-12,
the day the contest ended, only a few hours before the cutoff time. So all their votes had to have come in at virtually the last minute.
So they both appear to have received votes from the same members, except Unforsaken received 5 additional votes that his girlfriend did not. His build thread received only two comments from what I assume are established RPF members, so it's safe to say he may have gotten a few votes from active RPF members. But the bulk of his vote seems to be the same as his girlfriend's.
Again, I'm just bringing this up to show that the winning entries do not represent the best that the RPF has to offer. If the point of the contest is to get people to sign up for the site, it seems like these new members have no intention of ever contributing anything. But it also makes me wonder if any of their shared votes were from real people. There seems to be enough here to question that fact.
EDIT: Oops, I mistook the cut-off time of 9pm on 11-02-12 as the cut-off for voting, when it was just the cut off for entries. So I jumped to the wrong conclusion that the winners' votes all came in over a short period time. My mistake, but I think my other points are still valid.
