News > For contest participants’ information

Dear contest participants! The Administration of the project notifies you of the found facts of gross misconduct against the contest regulations by unscrupulous participants, who, with their deliberate and illicit actions, violate the rights of the bona fide contest members. As we see it, the highly cultured envoronment consisting of such people as our participants must preclude any misconduct or fraud. Still, facts emerge that inevitably engage our attention and necessitate it for us to bring them to the public eye.

On January 22^nd 2014, a female participant was registered on the VATIKAM website in the “Visual Arts” category. Within the next three days she kept gathering votes rapidly. Notifying such unusual growth of votes, we have found out that all participants voting for the work were fake, having registered within a single day from the aforementioned participant’s address. The participant was immediately disqualified and barred from the contest.

On February 9^th 2014, we have identified another fact of illegal upvoting by the contest participant registered in categories “Fashion” and “Photography”, who, as it turned out, has systematically and in small quantities registered non-existant participants from her address to vote for herself. The latest case included illicit registration of 11 fake users go instantly obtain 11 extra votes for the works.  Immediately after the debunking she was disqualified and barred from the contest.

For obvious reasons, the names of the aforementioned participants are not disclosed; we hope that the attentive members of our contest will notice their absence on the pages of our portal.

Due to the negative events we have discovered, we give a warning to any unscrupulous participants: please make no attempts to fraud us or our honest, bona fide and scrupulous participants. In any case, sooner or later we will expose any misconduct and take adequate measures.   

We strongly recommend respect towards each other; encourage mutual support and cooperation; advise to comment on the works you like and to vote for the works you deem worthy, to observe the contest regulations and to respect the rights of all participants.

With best regards,

Administration of the project VATIKAM