This is not meant to go over the rules of +voting, since those can be found under +votehelp, but more to discuss the reason why +vote code is in place and how it was really meant to be used. This file is also not singling out any particular player. Every active player gets 1 XP per week just for playing. We instituted +vote code so that the people who RP’d more and RP’d well would get more XP than the people who simply logged in an idled to get their weekly pip. We hoped that people would use +vote to give some extra XP to people they were in long scenes with, or to reward someone for fabulous RP. What we’ve found, however, is that less than half of our active player base actually uses +vote, and many of those that do use it do so unethically… or at least in my opinion unethically.

For example, if you have two characters, and Character A RPs with Bob, you should +vote for Bob from Character A, not from Character B since Character B never interacted with Bob. Save Character B’s votes for people that B does RP with. I can’t tell you how many times I see this happening… people running all over the grid and getting into WONDERFUL scenes with other PCs, then using all their votes at the end of the day to vote for one or two people that only one of their alts actually actively RPs with. Is this cheating? Technically, yes, but we can’t prove it so we’re not even going to try to control this behavior. Is this unethical? Damn straight. In timestops or long, fast-moving scenes, if you don’t think anyone’s RP in a particular scene was good, then no, of course you don’t have to vote for them… but if you’re saving all your +votes for your TS partner or your RL best friend and ignoring the people who just RP’d their butts off… well… perhaps you should think about what you’re doing. And perhaps those of you who RP with people who engage in this kind of unethical behavior should think about it as well. Why waste votes on people that only vote for their RL friends, when they don’t even RP with those people?