I contacted USCWANNABE just after the election started, when he was a runner up to Dustin. I offered to help his campaign... we talked a lot via email and he was very genuine, a real fan who had his life changed by SW and he wanted to give back to it. He wasn't well known online in our circles, but he knew a lot of fans around the world. He told me he had a lot of people contact him and say they wanted to vote for him as they didn't like Dustin... nothing new there. Until the very final day he was in very high spirits and was sure he had won. He was very grateful and humble about the support he had got and wasn't going to forget it...
What happened I don't know. He hasn't replied to my mails so no idea, there is a chance something could have 'happened' to him.
USCWANNABE posted the blog linked on my site before it went on SW.com, as a press release, and it contains some comments about his past, maybe those were used to disqualify him. The myspace page I recall was made by someone for him, not by him.
As for Dustin I have to agree he should be disqualified due to the rules... Now there are comments that he isn't paid and doesn't work for Philip's sites. I used to be friends with a current RS staff member, amazing how RS changes people, and he told me that 'some' of the staff are paid, but those who are not don't know that. Besides that when RS staff are doing things like staffing the OfficialPix stand at cons are they doing it for free? Would you go to a con to work on a stand selling stuff and do it at your own cost? Some staff live in the UK who have done it... that isn't because they are dedicated... I cannot imagine that Philip doesn't pay for flights or their time at least... Also the advertising on RS is partly affiliate scheme, and some staff have their own affiliate schemes so they directly earn from those links. Nothing terrible at all, infact perfectly fair of Philip to thank his staff for their work by giving them freebies or kick backs, and I for 1 don't see it as a negative... but it shows that the staff are paid in some means to work on RS and co.
As for the banning on RS... I got banned because I pointed out that an RS staff member was selling pirate DVD's of Clone Wars, Droids etc BEFORE the official versions were made, and the staffer had linked to the site they had set up for selling the stuff. Illegal full stop... but I got banned and the staffer stayed. Since then I have not been allowed to rejoin, none of my site staff can either and they are removed as soon as they do, banned by association... and I am told by some of my site visitors that when they joined RS forums they got banned if they mentioned TPU and in one case someone was banned for what seemed to be because his ISP is the same as mine so the IP address was similar... paranoid or what.
On the 'who gets news first' point... TPU has beaten RS by up to 6 months with some news, and other times got it right when they got it wrong... We used to send our news to them, but it would be used without credit or link, so we gave up... other times it is just taken without a credit... not very community friendly. I have seen on JD, Yak etc plenty of news scoops before RS caught up... I know that RS are not as close to official sources as they like their readers to think they are... but that's another topic.
Sorry to burst in after 40 pages... I'll go back to lurk mode now
Pete
http://www.theprivateuniverse.co.uk - Putting UK Star Wars Fans First!
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