Since 1978 the Contest's Audit Committee have
only issued eight rulings during the course of a contest ... those
rulings & the circumstances surrounding them follow:
For the 1979 Contest two entrants had Benji
the dog on their Victim
list (HF &
RR). Since animals had not been
explicitly excluded in that year's rules the selection was permitted with
the proviso that Benji's age at death
would be converted to "dog years" (human age times 7) for scoring purposes.
The committee also ruled that in future contests animals,
fictional/cartoon
characters, etc. would be disallowed - only human beings would be permitted on
lists of potential Grim Reaper
Victims.
For the 1978 Contest all contest entries were hand-delivered; since
that was a real pain for the members of the Audit Committee the 1979 Contest
permitted (encouraged) snail-mailed entries. Gradually, the hand delivery
option of entry submission was eliminated. Things went along fine until
New Year's Eve 1985 - that night a severe ice storm started at about 4:00 p.m.
and raged all night. Lots of snapped tree limbs, downed utility lines,
treacherous roads ... you know the drill. Entries that had been placed
into mail drop boxes couldn't be extracted for several days (the ice was
that thick). As entries trickled in well past the deadline the
Committee ruled that any entry that had been posted in an area that had been
effected by the storm «and» had a postmark before January 8th,
1986 would be permitted provided that the names on that entry would
be ineligible for scoring for one week for each day they were postmarked after
the original deadline, starting with the date of postmark.
The fetus of a pregnant movie
star was listed on someone's entry. Because of the whole
Roe v.
Wade fiasco this
one was tough to hash out. The upshot is the current rule that declares
an age of "Zero" for accidental loss of a fetus (miscarriage, attempted
murder of the mother, etc.) while no possibity of scoring for
intentionally-aborted fetuses (or whatever taxonomy might be applied
based upon the stage of development).
Once entry submission went electronic with the 2000 Contest we thought
that the precedent set in this ruling would not be needed again. Wrong!
For the 2002 Contest we adjusted the submission deadline to account for
the fact that January 1 starts 17 hours earlier in the central Pacific
Ocean before it begins in New York City. Unfortunately we failed to
adjust all submission times in all postings, so people got confused &
a number missed the submission deadline based upon some of the rules but
made the deadline by other parts of the rules. Those entries were accepted
without prejudice. However a few people still blew it & sent their
entries in after midnight Eastern Time ... one late in the day on New
Year's Day. The acceptance with penalty ruling was modified to make
ineligible their names for one week for every hour (or fraction thereof)
that the entry was transmitted past the transmission deadline (specified
in the year's contest rules).
The Audit Committee received an Email from a relative of someone listed
in the Targets of
Opportunity database requesting the de-listing of that relative.
After due consideration the committee concluded that there was no basis
for delisting the individual. Since the basis for database inclusion is
the actual (or potential) notability of an
individual, hence future scoring potential, the "public figure" status
that the individual had already achieved should insulate the
contest from invasion of privacy questions. Plus, de-listing because
of "hurt feelings" is a never-ending cycle ... giving everyone
veto over site content. The Audit Committee decided that the listing
in question would remain in the database.
A contest Entrant
had correctly predicted the demise of a British PM but was having
trouble meeting the "1+ obituaries in 3 different categories" criteria of
notability. His third category obituary violated
the "No Feathering One's Nest Rule" - he had posted the
Victim's obituary in
the alt.obituaries newsgroup.
Someone had posted a followup obituary from another source as a response. He
was unsure if his initial post had "poisoned the well" since his thread was
the only obituary thread for the individual. The committee ruling was easy —
the "Nest" rule only applies to postings by an entrant, not to others (even if
their posts are followups to an initially verboten posting). If the followup
post had not been made the third category obituary test would have
failed for the Entrant.
A contest Entrant
had one element of their Big Disaster come true. The question: if one element
is met does the Disaster count? The decision of the Audit
Committee was that all elements of the described disaster must be
met & in the way they were described. In the case of this disaster too
much florid verbage, though entertaining, circumscribed the Disaster in
such a way that it was unlikely to ever be met. In the future, if you
actually wish to score points on your Big Disaster prediction, be careful
that the description of the Disaster that you provide is free of terms and
conditions that will bind the core elements of the Disaster to times, places
& circumstances that would only occur in a Looney Tunes cartoon.
Submitting something like "Earthquake in L.A." would be good; submitting
"Earthquake in L.A. during annual Phil Spector Santa Monica Beach Rollerblading & Handgun
Shooting Biathalon" would be such an unlikely occurence that you'd do better
submitting no Disaster.
An entrant filed an appeal on our ruling disqualifying their listing of "Billy Graham,
evangelist" for the 2008 Contest even though that exact phrasing had
been accepted in previous years. The disallowal for the 2008 Contest came about
due to a change in status of Billy Graham the 3rd --- not part of the
ministry or an evangelist during the 1990s or early 2000s. At some
point in 2006 or early 2007 (prior to the death of his mother
Ruth) he rejoined his
father's ministry and became an evangelist again (he had been one back in
the 1970s and early 1980s but left the "family business").
When we learned of this fact in the spring of 2007 we immediately added
"William Franklin 'Billy' Graham III" to the
Targets of Opportunity database,
also as an evangelist, to give everybody the "heads up" that there was now
more than one individual that could be described by the phrase "Billy Graham,
evangelist".
The practical upshot of this change in the status of "III" was to mean that
additional discrimination would be needed; the inclusion of "Jr." in the
requested brief biographical sketch (signifying the living Elder) or the
inclusion of "III" (signifying the returned prodigal son).
And, if this situation wasn't enough of a headache for entrants and audit
committee members alike, there is a Billy Graham the 4th, proto-evangelist,
waiting in the wings.
And, one last reminder --- William Franklin "Billy" Graham Sr., evangelist
--- died in the 1950s. Listing him will earn you consideration for a
Francisco Franco Award.
 page last updated
11/17/2008 |
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