Alright, as promised, I'm happy to announce that [@Ellri] is being awarded a long-overdue [b]WIN[/b] for RPGC #2! There's a [url=http://www.roleplayerguild.com/topics/85167-special-announcement-rpgc-2-winner-declared/ooc]separate thread[/url] for congratulations-- here, I'll focus on our process. This is what we did.

First, when we'd confirmed the plagiarism, I talked to the runners-up privately. In this case we could've stopped there, but I'm sorta stubborn and I wanted to build a precedent, so after getting their thoughts I held a staff vote, where we all conclusively agreed that [@Ellri] should be awarded the win. [i]We didn't hold a community-wide runoff vote in this case[/i], but in the future, that would be the next option -- if we couldn't agree on a winner administratively (or if we felt like it was otherwise justified) then we'd hold a special head-to-head (-to-head or however many necessary) to decide. And if that was still deadlocked, we'd have to sort out ties.

Though again -- it should never come up, because we're not gonna let something like this happen again. BUT IF IT DOES, we'll follow similar steps to resolve a previous contest. That's our current working model on how to resolve something.