Mickey wrote:

*applauds* Way to be subtle, Carroll. Where will you and your negative comments go next? Quit being such a downer, it's not helping anything.

Thank you

I don't know, somewhere in the dark crevasses of the underworld.

Am I not allowed to give an honest opinion? Alright; I can understand that, yep, totally, uh hu.

Now the bit you've all been waiting for, the prizes! Well, as of yet, we don't have a final deal with any sponsors but we hope to have an agreement soon, hopefully with extensive prizes around about what we got for the FoS 1 & 2 (100$ in all). There will be 3 separate prizes,
1) Best Overall, which will receive the highest prize.
2) Funniest entry, the one that makes judges laugh most, this will receive the 2nd highest prize.
3) Most creative entry, an entry that uses creativity in several fields to deliver a great film, this will receive a prize equal to the Funniest entry.

Maybe you should have adhered to the standards that were set out in the announcement thread? Whether you enjoyed the films is not the issue here.

Onion, in the original post, wrote:

Now the bit you've all been waiting for, the prizes! Well, as of yet, we don't have a final deal with any sponsors but we hope to have an agreement soon, hopefully with extensive prizes around about what we got for the FoS 1 & 2 (100$ in all). There will be 3 separate prizes,
1) Best Overall, which will receive the highest prize.
2) Funniest entry, the one that makes judges laugh most, this will receive the 2nd highest prize.
3) Most creative entry, an entry that uses creativity in several fields to deliver a great film, this will receive a prize equal to the Funniest entry.

The contest description said there would be three categories. While I can sympathize with Onion's struggle to secure the proposed prizes (though he probably could have updated his post to reflect that- perhaps his internet problems made that impossible), there isn't really any excuse for removing two categories after a contest has concluded. It's unclear whether Onion or the judges are responsible- if this was Onion's decision, by all means he should explain the reasoning behind it. Regardless, posting snarky comments toward people who are justifiably upset that the judges violated the agreed upon system reflects poorly on you.

When you judge a contest, you have an obligation to uphold the rules as they were presented to the entrants. People put time and effort into creating submissions for this contest. Whether you think they were poor or not isn't remotely relevant to whether you follow the basic system that was set out at the contest's inception. As someone involved in running the contest, you accepted the responsibility of delivering the incentives that those people were told to expect, even if that just meant honoring a film for 'funniest' and 'most creative' without offering a prize.

We have enough trouble getting people to enter contests as things stand- do we really want to see what happens when potential entrants start worrying that the contest runner won't uphold his end of the deal?

CarrollFilms wrote:

You make this seem like it's the end of the world. Because we didn't judge 2 non-existent categories? Just let it go.

I'm making light of the fact that you skipped part of the judging process, and then acted flippant toward people who inquired into the changes. The Contests and Festivals forum is set up to keep people who aren't going to deliver on their promises from running contests. That's why this is an issue- because you don't seem to see a problem with randomly changing an major part of the judging system after the entries had already been submitted.