2016 Team Challenge Cup - Gen Info/Pre-chat

[CoyoteChris]

I will not see the day in my lifetime, but it is my hope that someday, we will all be just people. Not half American Indian and half something else....not half Swedish and half Scottish.....
I am by ancestory half Austro-Hungarian and half German, but I am a CITIZEN of the US, and that is all that matters...And I would feel comfortable with anyone representing the US if they are citizens of the US.
No matter what the color of their eyes or skin is. I do realize how important it is in some asian (and other) countries to have the right ancestry. That is their business. Not mine. It is up to every country to determine whom
may become a citizen of their country. Or if duel citizenship is allowed. If a skater wants to skate for the US internationally, It is my opinion that they at least apply for US citizenship, no matter their race, creed, color or religion.

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Think about Patrick Chan. Is he Canadian? Yes. Is he Chinese? Yes. He's a Chinese descendant with Canadian citizenship. He's a Chinese Canadian. Chinese figure skating fans want him to go back to China to worship his ancestors because they believe this can bring him good luck.

Sorry to be pedantic, but Patrick Chan's family is from Hong Kong, not China. (As is Michelle Kwan's).

People from China might consider them to be one and the same, but most people from Hong Kong don't. They are proud of their separate identity. So, to them, it is a major faux-pas to say they are "from China".

They don't seem to mind being described as "Chinese" because, ethnically, they are. But, being described as "from China"? That is a no-no!

---

Getting back on topic...

Honestly, I don't trust facebook either but I would have no problem with voting with my Golden skate account, but since not everybody has one I added fb to my suggestion ...

Maybe just adding that thing, where you have to type 5 random letters and numbers to prove you're human would suffice before voting? That wouldn't require emails, accounts etc etc and may be even efficient against voting programms?

I know from a logical stanpoint an email is much less revealing then fb, cookies, IP etc. But still I wouldn't vote if I had to verify with my email ....

Yes, I like the idea of having a captcha! It would be the most effective way of regulating the voting without having the need to register.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[yqs100]

Sorry to be pedantic, but Patrick Chan's family is from Hong Kong, not China. (As is Michelle Kwan's).

People from China might consider them to be one and the same, but most people from Hong Kong don't. They are proud of their separate identity. So, to them, it is a major faux-pas to say they are "from China".

They don't seem to mind being described as "Chinese" because, ethnically, they are. But, being described as "from China"? That is a no-no!

---

Getting back on topic...



Yes, I like the idea of having a captcha! It would be the most effective way of regulating the voting without having the need to register.

CaroLiza_fan

Based on your opinion, Patrick only can represent HK,,,, but from what I remember he wanted to skate for Singapore, isn't it?

China fans never WANT Patrick Chan skate for the country, but they just said it WOULD BENEFIT Patrick and China as China's training system can provide him sufficient resource and financial support...

and for HK people being called from China, I don't think its rude for HK people, at least from the HK people I know. its not that sensitive as you think "No-No". its just like some people said they are irish,, some people said they are Britain. nothing shame

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Based on your opinion, Patrick only can represent HK,,,, but from what I remember he wanted to skate for Singapore, isn't it?

China fans never WANT Patrick Chan skate for the country, but they just said it WOULD BENEFIT Patrick and China as China's training system can provide him sufficient resource and financial support...

and for HK people being called from China, I don't think its rude for HK people, at least from the HK people I know. its not that sensitive as you think "No-No". its just like some people said they are irish,, some people said they are Britain. nothing shame

Sorry, I didn't want to cause an argument. I was just pointing out an inaccuracy, and providing some background info.

Incidentally, for the Irish / British thing, it is a big deal for a lot of people from here, but not really for me. Personally, I prefer to describe myself as the more neutral "Northern Irish", but I do use both of the other terms as well.

Oh, and since this seems to be a good opportunity to say it, Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody!

CaroLiza_fan

 

[Sugarpova]

Mishaaaaaaaaaaaa
thank u ppl for voting for him we have time
Really dont care where he is or other skater is from
In this poll its really unimportant for me to be honest

I will not see the day in my lifetime, but it is my hope that someday, we will all be just people.

Im from Earth

 

[Spinning]

Sorry, I didn't want to cause an argument. I was just pointing out an inaccuracy, and providing some background info.

Incidentally, for the Irish / British thing, it is a big deal for a lot of people from here, but not really for me. Personally, I prefer to describe myself as the more neutral "Northern Irish", but I do use both of the other terms as well.

Oh, and since this seems to be a good opportunity to say it, Happy St. Patrick's Day everybody!

CaroLiza_fan

I agree with you on this. For some people it is a big deal. Many of my friends are very bitter about the subject. Many of my HK friends were born with British passport and they hold to it like a lifeline.

Happy St. Patrick's Day to you too. Like a famous saying, on St. Patrick's Day everyone is Irish!

 

[ice coverage]

Yeah, registering an account with a confirmation email would have been the bare minimum here, I think.

I took a look at the website's source code just now. Turns out you can pop-out each category and vote exclusively on those three skaters. ...

Thx for the widget news, sabinfire . Very helpful.

And I too would not object to giving my e-mail address for TCC voting.

... I don't trust how Facebook never mind these other websites would use the knowledge that you voted.

I know, I'm not very trusting, am I?! ...

Seems to me that you are very trusting of Facebook in general -- based on your frequent mentions of your FB newsfeed and your communications via FB, for example.

Of course, completely your prerogative to use (or not use) FB however you see fit.

...Yes, I like the idea of having a captcha! It would be the most effective way of regulating the voting without having the need to register. ...

Agree that the TCC voting could have benefitted from captcha.

... I would have no problem with voting with my Golden skate account...

Totally respect that different things make different people uncomfortable ... but interesting that giving an e-mail address for TCC voting would be a deal-breaker for some people.

Meanwhile, all of us were required to give our e-mail addresses to become members of GS.

And I assume that I was a typical case of having little or no prior knowledge of gsk8 or the mods, so it was taking a leap of faith that they would be the upstanding individuals who I subsequently came to know them to be (who would never dream of doing anything fishy with our e-mail addresses).

Hypothetically:

If I did not yet have a GS membership, and one were necessary to take part in TCC voting -- then signing up for the new-to-me website GS (and giving GS my e-mail address) would be as much of a "thing" as giving my e-mail address directly to the TCC site. YMMV.

Plus if I didn't want to give the TCC site my e-mail address, I wouldn't want to give it my GS password either. YMMV.​

---

Go, Boyang :yay:.

And go, Rika :gclap: -- esp. in honor of St. Patrick's Day .

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Seems to me that you are very trusting of Facebook in general -- based on your frequent mentions of your FB newsfeed and your communications via FB, for example.

Of course, completely your prerogative to use (or not use) FB however you see fit.

I do tend to be very trusting of what people say on their social media profiles.

It is the people and the software that run these websites that I don't trust at all. I hate the way they collect information on you through cookies. It really brings it home when you see adverts that relate to other websites you have visited.

And it is VERY annoying when you go into Facebook and see an advert for eBay showing things you searched for a few days earlier when in a private window. And you think "but that was done in a private window so that other people that use this computer wouldn't see it! So, why is it coming up on Facebook?!"

If something requires you to sign in with a Facebook account, I wouldn't do it. And if I had Twitter (which I don't because I don't see the point in it), I would be the same with it.

Although I don't like the things that go on behind the scenes, I still like the websites themselves. So, it's something you have to live with.

CaroLiza_fan

 

[ice coverage]

I do tend to be very trusting of what people say on their social media profiles.

It is the people and the software that run these websites that I don't trust at all. I hate the way they collect information on you through cookies. It really brings it home when you see adverts that relate to other websites you have visited.

And it is VERY annoying when you go into Facebook and see an advert for eBay showing things you searched for a few days earlier when in a private window. And you think "but that was done in a private window so that other people that use this computer wouldn't see it! So, why is it coming up on Facebook?!" ...

To be clear, I was not talking at all about trusting or not trusting the veracity of what Friend Y or Page X says on Facebook.

I am talking about all the personal data that Facebook collects about YOU -- about who you are Friends with on FB, what FB pages/posts you Like, etc., etc.
By using a Facebook account (e.g., for stuff completely unrelated to any voting), you are trusting the corporate entity of Facebook not to abuse anything from the enormous amount that it knows about YOU (and not only via cookies).

But as I said, I do understand that different things make different people uncomfortable.

When I am using Facebook, most of the time I very deliberately am not logged in.
I log in only when it is required for something I want to see or do.

OTOH (lol), I would not have minded giving an e-mail address for the TCC voting.

 

[erasona]

Off topic from the current string of conversation, but I wanted to ask about the voting. Is it purely fan driven? Also, are the winners assured to come? If they decline, will the next in line receive an invitation?

REALLY hoping to see Medvedeva, but she is lagging in the polls!! Perhaps that will change after worlds

 

[CaroLiza_fan]

Off topic from the current string of conversation...

Sorry about that. :

...but I wanted to ask about the voting. Is it purely fan driven? Also, are the winners assured to come? If they decline, will the next in line receive an invitation?

That is a very good question. I don't actually know, but I would be VERY interested to hear the answers.

And I bet the other half of that off-topic excursion knows the answers!

REALLY hoping to see Medvedeva, but she is lagging in the polls!! Perhaps that will change after worlds

Still amazed that she wasn't high enough in the World Standings to be an automatic choice. Given what she has done so far this season, it would be a real travesty if she didn't make the team!

CaroLiza_fan

 

[andyjo24]

Off topic from the current string of conversation, but I wanted to ask about the voting. Is it purely fan driven? Also, are the winners assured to come? If they decline, will the next in line receive an invitation?

REALLY hoping to see Medvedeva, but she is lagging in the polls!! Perhaps that will change after worlds

Unless the Koreans get angry after Worlds due to her breaking the world record.

 

[sabinfire]

It is the people and the software that run these websites that I don't trust at all. I hate the way they collect information on you through cookies. It really brings it home when you see adverts that relate to other websites you have visited.

And it is VERY annoying when you go into Facebook and see an advert for eBay showing things you searched for a few days earlier when in a private window. And you think "but that was done in a private window so that other people that use this computer wouldn't see it! So, why is it coming up on Facebook?!"

Unless your connection is routed through an encrypted VPN tunnel that disguises your true identity and you surf with a secure browser (i.e. Tor, heavily-modded Firefox/Chrome), you will be constantly leaking personal information everywhere you go.

The concern over giving your email address to a semi-trusted website is misplaced. If you have at least one email address that you use for misc purposes and don't feed it any personal information you don't want everyone to know, there's no risk. The worst that can happen is you might receive some spam or phishing emails. I think that is unavoidable, no matter how careful you are.

More people already know your email address right now than you think.

Even if you trust your friend 100% and exchange a single email with them, that friend could have their account compromised or hacked at some point, and the first thing that happens is their contacts are scanned and every email address is recorded. You might even get malicious emails sent to you straight from your friends account. Even some of the largest companies in the world are hacked or implement poor security.

Do you trust everyone 100% that's ever known your email address that they would never have their accounts compromised, that they would never send you a malicious email, never include you as recipient with even one additional contact or forward an email from you to another, and they would never open up their emails across unsecured public wifi hotspots (coffee shops, hotel rooms, etc)? If I were that paranoid about someone discovering my email address, I would never tell anyone. Trust no one. I guess I wouldn't be getting any emails.

 

[NanaPat]

I have done some voting where the cookies were set up to allow you to vote once a day. With a prolonged voting period, that seems like a good way of sustaining fan interest. If you can only vote once, there's not much point of going back just to see how your favorites are doing.

I endorse the use of captcha to avoid totally-automated votes and slow down those who have figured out how to repeat-vote.

 

[noskates]

Call me silly, but I cannot understand why a group of fans wouldn't want Patrick Chan representing their country!

 

[Batsuchan]

So Liza still seems to be recovering from her foot injury...what happens if she has to withdraw? Does the next-highest ranked Russian lady get invited in her place? Or would they pick the top 2 skaters from the fan vote? (Perhaps that would yield the same result; I'm just not sure what the rules are...)

 

[StitchMonkey]

I think it would be next highest on standings. Which is currently Elena, and likely was on the first as well. Anna is ahead of Evgenia, if Elena wins the vote I could see it going to Anna actually. It would be kinda unfair to her to see Liza WD, Elena or Evgenia get to go and she not even get to be in the voting.


They could also go for the top two ladies being voted for. Which would get Angelina and Elena in which would actually likely make a lot of people happy.

In short, who knows, and whatever they want to do.

 

[CoyoteChris]

Unless your connection is routed through an encrypted VPN tunnel that disguises your true identity and you surf with a secure browser (i.e. Tor, heavily-modded Firefox/Chrome), you will be constantly leaking personal information everywhere you go.

The concern over giving your email address to a semi-trusted website is misplaced. If you have at least one email address that you use for misc purposes and don't feed it any personal information you don't want everyone to know, there's no risk. The worst that can happen is you might receive some spam or phishing emails. I think that is unavoidable, no matter how careful you are.

More people already know your email address right now than you think.

Even if you trust your friend 100% and exchange a single email with them, that friend could have their account compromised or hacked at some point, and the first thing that happens is their contacts are scanned and every email address is recorded. You might even get malicious emails sent to you straight from your friends account. Even some of the largest companies in the world are hacked or implement poor security.

Do you trust everyone 100% that's ever known your email address that they would never have their accounts compromised, that they would never send you a malicious email, never include you as recipient with even one additional contact or forward an email from you to another, and they would never open up their emails across unsecured public wifi hotspots (coffee shops, hotel rooms, etc)? If I were that paranoid about someone discovering my email address, I would never tell anyone. Trust no one. I guess I wouldn't be getting any emails.

Very true. Legal and not so legal Data Mining is big business. Someone sends a forward email with your email added on and its mined for spam purposes. Look up fly swatters on google and your facebook page will be full of ads for fly swatters. Hackers break into servers from "Target" to the US Govt and compromise SS numbers and credit card info. Riding the tiger of technology means that once in awhile we get scratched by the beast. The sad thing is that even if you could live without handing out your personal information by not having a checking acct, giving your info to your doc, no cell phone or computer, etc, someone could still hack into your employer's computer and steal your SS number and file a tax return in your name.

 

[CoyoteChris]

Looking at the numbers of votes again, it is interesting that in the frame of reference of a Spokane person, I would hardly know the voting had begun. Just one small line in the newspaper. If it werent for this forum, I still wouldnt know. I have to wonder if during the US broadcast of the Worlds, there wont be a marketing push for the TCC with an urge to vote "now." If I am correct, we shall see a dramatic rise in the numbers for Ashley, for instance. If the commentators start showing numbers from the Poling, we should see a further increase in folks' urge to be heard. The Korean vote now suprises me not. We shall see what happens if I am correct and the big push for US voting occurs during the Worlds broadcasts.

 

[LRK]

Looking at the numbers of votes again, it is interesting that in the frame of reference of a Spokane person, I would hardly know the voting had begun. Just one small line in the newspaper. If it werent for this forum, I still wouldnt know. I have to wonder if during the US broadcast of the Worlds, there wont be a marketing push for the TCC with an urge to vote "now." If I am correct, we shall see a dramatic rise in the numbers for Ashley, for instance. If the commentators start showing numbers from the Poling, we should see a further increase in folks' urge to be heard. The Korean vote now suprises me not. We shall see what happens if I am correct and the big push for US voting occurs during the Worlds broadcasts.

Maybe they are thinking that if they start making announcements &c now, that that by the time Worlds' rolls round it will have become a bit "old hat", and they want to tie it into the Worlds' excitement?