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Hopefully this is a productive question - is there a reason why top 25 makes only the armor color custom? I feel like it'd be a bit weird to get a really cool color scheme for your armor and then none of the other items match it anymore

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Apologies for the late response. Wanted to gather my thoughts and observe the situation for a few more days. Here’s my thoughts on the poll and your posts.

The reason why I wanted a hidden vote in a FPTP model is to avoid excessive tensions. Constantly seeing the poll results has led to escalation of rivalries. Soliciting for votes is perfectly fine (though tiring), but we recently had a campaigner denouncing their counterparty as the bad guys and getting non-AQ players to vote. We had neutral parties getting dragged into this verbal sparring matches. Players had been blamed for the action of others, caught in the crossfire, just by mere association. Even when there are attempts at peace-making, quibbling over semantics ensues. It’s getting a bit too much to handle. We don’t have many players in the first place, and we should all try to get along.

As for why hidden votes would result in more token donations, uncertainty has always been a source of value. I.E., Options Valuations in Finance. If the result is hidden until the entire donation is over – and 2 favoured sets have 50-50 odds of winning, or perhaps even odds of 40-60, more whales will be donating “just in case”. We had way more tokens in circulation last year. This year, players have been abstaining, and many likely won’t donate much, or at all, if their preferred set does not win. It’s good for the budget conscious buyer, useful for the campaigner, but suboptimal for the game.

Anyway, much of my thoughts are based on a FPTP system. I am aware that Lore keeper had suggested a ranked system to Rhubarb for the contest’s next iteration. Still, I hope it is implemented in a way that have people donating more, not less.

(I.E., Idea Submission -> Donation Period -> Ranked Poll with Visible Results -> Set Distribution)

Still, that's just an idea for next year

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Why wouldn't people just wait for the poll to end before donating? Why donate during a period of heavy uncertainty, if you're donating for the explicit purpose of receiving parts of the set?

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What I am proposing, is to have the completion of the donation contest before the poll even begins (or before the results are shown). This forces players to donate in a period of heavy uncertainty - or not at all.

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Is it really desirable though? One of the few benefits of a system like this is people can donate what they want to the set/ideas that win.
Removing even that, just seems like the system is just overall worse for everyone.