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[Silas]

Hello all!

We would like to bring your attention to a very specific section of the rules that the spirit of which we have felt has become increasing flouted in recent months. That is the section that effectively constitutes the "Confidential Confirmations Process"(CCP). This is a very key part of our contest as it greatly aids us in the veto process but also creates a level playing field for all the songs. As the rules stood, you were able to trade potentials as long as there were multiple options and at no point did you reveal what you would be entering. While we encouraged that this take place in National Threads, the absolute majority of this takes part via PM and through other off-site mediums. This has long been tolerated on trust grounds, however it has become our concern that the spirit of the rules has got lost along the way.

This removes the level playing field and gives nations an unfair advantage. We have also become uncomfortable with the scale of these PM and off-site feedback gathering exercises which further distorts the playing field. In order to attempt to level the playing field once more we will be changing the rules to mean that going forwards your national threads will be where you can solicit feedback on your entires. That means No PMs, no Skype messages, no Plug.dj whoring your "potentials". We would like to stress that no veto points are assigned for any discussion that takes place within the Buzzjack Song Contest forum within the current framework or the forthcoming 4th framework.

Violation of the new rules in relation to the CCP will result in a suspension from BJSC, as it does in the existing rules. We are highlighting this in particular because this PSA serves as your one and only warning. We will be posting a revised set of rules shortly, please take the time to read through them.

We understand that you may be feeling that this is a harsh "power hungry moderator" move, but there is no malice behind this in fact our intention could not be further from this. While this remains a contest we will work to ensure that the competition is as fair as it can possibly be. What has been happening with increasing frequency cannot be described as fair. We feel that this is the best solution to get around this culture that has developed and also to return the forum to being more open about potentials, leading to increased discussion and more discoveries for people.

On a personal note, this is a rule change I have been very keen to make for many years as it came about as an unintended side effect of the original veto process. The amount of lost discussion, community building, music discovery and transparency has never sat very well with me. So I hope that as a silver lining to what went down this afternoon, this will be a positive change.

With love,
The BJSC Mods.