I thought it would be a nice idea to try one of these and see how well the dynamics go.
My plan is for a 32-member tournament, taking place over the 31 days in July. In order to prevent recruit floods tipping the scales, I suggest restrictions on who gets to cast votes, such as requiring one of the following as of the start of the contest:
* 25 or more forum posts (without an active ban)
* 3000 or more lines in #soniccenter since the last stat reset
* 1 or more untied records on a chart
And if any suspicious accounts show up in the days between the contest is officially announced and July 1, whose only actions are to make 25 content-free posts, they can be conveniently banned and no one has to know why.
Of course, to have a contest between 32 members, you have to know which 32 they are. We can attempt to figure that out here, and when they're decided, it would help if biographies were to be made for the competitors.
I'm going to see if I can develop a scheme whereby TSC usernames can be linked to IRC nicks, and if so, then my bot may be able to keep track of all the votes automatically and in a tamper-proof way. Otherwise, we'll figure something out.