Thank you to all my supporters for getting me this far! I could never have made it to the finals with out all your votes and help campaigning. Before I address why I would make a great senator I'd like to ask you guys to help me once again. Unfortunately once I saw the dates for the final elections I realized that it was over spring break. My family planned our trip to Hawaii over spring break so I realized that I would have little or no access to a computer for a few days of final voting. *I will be gone March 1^st through 5^th .* So I ask that during those days if any of you have spare time, please spread the word and tell your friends about me. Thank you all once again for being such great supporters. :D
Okay, now on to why I should be senator. I want to become senator so I can voice not only my own ideas, but the ideas of fellow citizens. I love Whyville and I want it to be the best it can be. My ideas stated in my platform were: a Beauty Contest Machine, Better City Records, Designs of the Day, Face Factory Improvements, an idea to make the Friend Finder better, Guest shouldn't be able to make petitions, Fix the House Builder, Good Reasons for Long Shirts, Change how the Newbie Center bell works, Fix Old Games, an idea on an alternate way to get Pearls, an idea for the poll booth, Improvement for Pick Your Nose, a Rainforest, a Religion/Cultural Center, SafeAccount, Send All for Ymail, Fitting Room at Trading Post, a Used Car Lot, Whipcar Rentals, Ratings for Ymail Helpers, and a notification to tell you that you have mail. Instead of going through them all like I did in my platform, I will just re-explain a few of my favorite ideas, starting with SafeAccount. The rest of my ideas I'll just add to the bottom and they will be exactly like my platform.
I always seem to get mail about or hear of someone getting hacked, hacking happens. Sure Whyville tells citizens not to give out their password ever and to create a hard to guess password, but still citizens get hacked. They get hacked by having an easy password or trusting someone they shouldn't. Whatever the reason for it, many citizens including my supporters get hacked, which is why I created a program called SafeAccount. SafeAccount would work by setting up preferences for your account to manage clam or face part transfers. To protect your rares there would be an "inner pocket" to your satchel where you can put your favorite parts. These parts in the "inner pocked" could only be taken out and put with the rest of the parts with either and extra password similar to how your bank account works or with verification of you parental email depending on how safe you want to be. While your favorite parts or satchel items are in the "inner pocket" they can't be traded at the trading post, or sent to any other player, you can still wear and used them but no one else such as a hacker could steal them. To protect your clams, you can set up preferences for money transfers with SafeAccount. Such as, if you had 5,000 clams in your account and never bought many rare parts or anything expensive you could set your maximum daily clam transfer to 500 or whatever you like so that no hacker can simply steal all 5,000 clams. If you do decide to spend more then 500 you allow yourself by either typing in a password or confirming it by your parental address (this would work just like the "inner pocket" idea. The last part of SafeAccount is an alert/lock button. If you are on your account and notice that someone hacked you and at that moment is stealing all your stuff you could press the alert/lock button and once pressed SafeAccount will send an email to your parental email, lock all mail usage, trading post, clam grams and satchel transfers until they confirm that things are safe again with the parental address. You could also just press the alert/lock button every time you log out if you want to be extra safe. This is just the basic outline of my SafeAccount program. SafeAccount is optional for citizens to use and Whyville would be able to modify it to work with Whyville better.
Another one of my favorite ideas is a used car lot. The used car lot could be for citizens who can't afford new scions or for citizens willing to pay extra for the old scions or holiday scions they wanted to purchase. The non rare scions that are still available for purchase today would be half price, and the rare scions that aren't available for sale today such as the old style and holiday scions would be more then the purchase price. The used car lot would be located behind club scion. Since scions are such a large amount of clams, all scions put up for sale in the used car lot would have to be verified by the owner through their parental email to make sure it's not just a hacker selling them. Selling scions could also be useful in situations where you were a co-buyer for someone and they didn't pay it off so you got stuck with a scion that might not be your style instead of your clams back. This idea would also help people who want scions but can't afford them. If the cheapest new scion is 13,008 clams that means they could get a used one for 6,504 clams! Wow that is pretty dandy! I personally collect scions and would love to buy used scions of the old style that the owner doesn't want. If a scion doesn't sell for the default price in a week that the used car lot man "Jerry" picks based on the car and whether or not it's seasonal or the old model, citizens will be able to mail the seller with cheaper offers which the seller can refuse or accept.
Many citizens hate the pearls idea, but there is really no way to get rid of them because Whyville needs the money to pay real life bills. Because of this, I created an alternate way to get pearls. I think citizens should receive a small amount of pearls, small enough that giving them out won't hurt Whyville, such as 500 or 1000 on their "Why-Birthday!" Your "Why-Birthday" would happen once a year on the day you registered. For example, if someone registered on January 26^th , 2009, they would get pearls for their "Why-Birthday" on January 26^th years 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and so on!
My idea for Designs of the Day is also a favorite of mine. You know in real life when the newspaper comes and you get all the ads of new products and such? I think it would be cool if on the right margin of Akbar's Face Mall we displayed the item that sold the most the previous day (unless it's sold out then, the next most sold item will be displayed). Besides the best selling item, there should be 3 other spots for paid ads. Designers could bid to put their favorite new part in one of the ad spots the same way they can bid for their store to be listed. The advertising boxes would display the part, part name, designer name, store name (if in a store), and current price. This would be a good way to advertise a new part you just made.
My last favorite idea that I will bring up in this article, although I do love them all, is a rainforest! Wouldn't that be so cool to have a rainforest room, where you are big like the sun roof, woods, and climate center? There would be animals you can click on and learn about. Whyville could even make games that raise our salary and teach us more about animals such as the Bengal Tiger. :D Bengal tigers are my favorite! We could even have a Mangrove Tree House chat room, once again where people will be big, or a Swamp. The rainforest could have multiple parts like the beach (all chat rooms showing us big). Also for each animal we learn about and beat the portion of the salary game for, we could earn an animal sticker to put on our city records. I think a rainforest would be the coolest chat room ever.
VOTE MELSEY6!
Now that I've expanded on my favorites of my numerous ideas I'd like to tell you about myself so you know who you are electing as senator. I'm Melissa or Mel. I joined Whyville August 16^th , 2006. I live in Minnesota. I'm 16 but will be turning 17 in March. I'm an honors student and take school very seriously; most of my classes are College in School (CIS) or Advanced Placement (AP). I play touch football every morning to get exercise for my vicious Samurai sword fighting class known as Kendo, which I go to every Saturday. I used to be into acting and was in many school plays/musicals. I also love cars and driving fast, hence my collection of scions on Whyville lol. I'm generally a nice person. I'll give advice to people who ask for it and once a month I go with my church group to a local battered women's shelter and take care of the children while the mom's are in training. I also, as a ymail helper, help newer citizens by answering questions by mail and occasionally in the newbie center although mostly through mail. In my spare time I enjoy hanging out with friends, watching Xena, Psych, NCIS, CSI, Charmed and Boston Legal, as they are my favorite T.V. shows. While on Whyville, I like hanging out at the Woods and Beaches. I also am a designer at Akbar's who does mostly hair remakes for people as well as originals.
Throughout the first part of the elections, I spent most of my life on Whyville campaigning and hanging out in the poll booth to make sure each voter had considered voting for me. Danny aka Ciaobella, who is pretty cool, really actually lived in the poll booth. Some guy even asked me how I was always there every time he came to check his candidate's votes and I just told him I lived there. I was very happy to have Ciaobella to keep me company as we sat in the poll booth for hours campaigning. Thanks Danny for sticking there with me, I enjoyed having mini debates with you every time an undecided voter came into the poll booth.
Anyways, now that you know more about me and that I lived in the poll booth for a few days; let's go back to why you should vote for me. You should vote for me because I have great ideas, as previously explained. Another reason you should vote for me is because I care about Whyville and want it to be the best it can be. I'm very open to other people's opinions and ideas so I'd be great for making sure every citizen is heard at senate meetings. If you have any questions feel free to mail me. So please vote for Melsey6!
VOTE MELSEY6!
Finally I will add my original platform that you can look over again to review my ideas or read it for the first time if you didn't get a chance during the primaries.
- *Beauty Contest Machine: *Ok so we got Soma Studios, great for bcs? Not really. The beauty contest machine I want should have room for 15 contestants and a host or two co hosts. The host(s) would have to put up a clam amount in each prize box. There would be a box for 1^st , 2^nd , and 3^rd . Note: all three spots don't have to contain clams; they could only fill first and second if they choose to. The host(s) would put in the clam amounts and press the agree button. Once they have pressed agree the clams are locked into the bc machine and if for any reason, the host(s) ditch the bc, the clams will be divided among the remaining contestants who will sit in contestant chairs so the machine knows who to send the clams to. Filling the prize boxes will prevent fake beauty contests with no real prizes. The hosts will be able to eliminate contestants by saying "exit (person's name)." The hosts will also be able to ask the contestants questions and such. To pick the winners they could say "First (person's name)" and "Second (person's name)" and "Third (person's name)." The beauty contest will automatically end after the winners are announced. If no winners are announced the bc can also end by the hosts leaving or saying "end beauty contest" if the bc is ended without winners or all the winners picked the remaining prizes are divided evenly between contestants. This bc machine will help prevent frustration from fake bcs and force the host(s) to actually give out the prizes they said they would.
- *City Records Wallpaper/Background:* Why not? If whyville gets to decorate its background and homepage with new designs and colors why shouldn't we get to at least pick a color for our city records? Also we should have a number on the corner of our city records that says how many times it has been viewed.
- *Designs of the Day:* You know in real life when the newspaper comes and you get all the ads of new products and such? I think it would be cool if on the right margin of Akbar's Face Mall we displayed what item sold the most the day before (unless it sold out then we go to the next most sold item) plus three or so other items that designers can bid for spots in. The display boxes would have the part picture, part name, designer name, store name (if any), and current price. This would be a good way to advertise a really cool new part you just made.
- *Face Factory:* Glitches should be fixed such as the eye dropper and fill don't always work for me, sometimes they do but they eye dropper seems to work less then the fill. Also I think it would be helpful if we could choose between the current color display and something else like a color wheel or rainbow. Another change I want is that we should be able to save when we are fixing the smaller designs and possibly get to preview it on our smaller face.
- *Friend Finder:* It should blink anywhere, no matter if you are looking at a friend's city records, checking your mail or whatever, this way you can always find your friends even when they aren?t in chat unless they are offline.* *
- *Guests:* I don't think guests should get to make petitions. Most guest petitions are joke made by real whyvillians. Some are actual guests but they don't know enough about whyville to make a good petition so most end up being for a million clams a day. I think that if an actual guest cared enough about whyville that they wanted to make a positive change to it that they should care enough to actually join so it wouldn't matter whether or not guest can make petitions to an actual guest. Not allowing guests to make petitions would stop whyvillians from using guest accounts to bump off other petitions with jokes and silly petitions.
- *House Builder: *That should be fixed, houses load funny so they look deformed and rooms have interesting depth perception like a picture on the wall covers up the couch.
- *Long Shirts:* My question is that if whyville is so against long shirts, why do they have multiple characters on the welcome page that are wearing long shirts? Also, I would like to know why we need to have shirts without straight sides, sure it helps prevent extensions but if they are so worried about full bodies, doesn't that defeat the purpose by making whyvillians appear to have hips and therefore extending the amount of body parts showing? I think this rule is more of a hassle then a positive outcome. Sure it helps prevent things like bellies showing and whatnot but can't we have long shirts without bellies showing? I don't want a full body or my belly showing I just think the long shirt rule is a little silly when there are already so many long shirts and extensions out there that anyone that would wear long shirts if the were allowed is probably already wearing one. Throwing this rule out the window wouldn't make more people wear long shirts it would just give those who do wear long shirts more choices.
- *Newbie** Center Bell:* Should only be able to be rung every one minute per room, and when y-mail helpers click the friend finder notification it should take them directly to the room the bell was rung in so they don't have to search all the rooms.
- *Old Games:* They should be fixed such as the Sunspot Activity.
- *Party List:* Ever get invited to a party or banquet over a month in advance? How will you remember when it is? We should be sent an automatic reminder y-mail message 3 days before to remind us like we get when face parts are expiring.
- *Pearls:* Citizens who don't want to spend real money to get a whypet or renew face parts should have a chance at getting some pearls free. My idea is that you should get an amount, like 1000 or so pearls on your "why-birthday". Your "why-birthday" is the day you registered. For example, if someone registered on January 26^th 2009, they would get pearls for their "why-birthday" on January 26^th 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and so on.
- *Petitions: *I think whyville has already had repetitive petitions that even if they make it to the polls whyville would never approve such as a million clams a day. Whyville should make a list of things that they have already decided they would never approve and post it on the page telling you what a petition should have and not have (the petition rules). This way we get rid of all the million clams a day petitions and have more room for real petitions that have a chance at getting approved.
- *Pick Your Nose: *We should be able to see things in all four sizes when we hit done and be able to adjust parts because some parts shift over to the side as they get smaller depending on how they were made.
- *Rainforest: *We should have a rainforest where we learn about animals and can raise our salary by playing games that teach us about the animals.
- *Religion and Cultural Center: *We should get to learn about cultures from those whyvillians across the globe and they can learn about culture over in Canada or America where I am located. I'm sure we could easily find a Multicultural Organization to sponsor it.
- *SafeAccout:* SafeAccount is a program I thought of that can help people not get hurt by hacking and scamming. On the preferences page they can check the box that says "SafeAccount" and it would send and email to their parental address asking to confirm its activation. Note: this will only work for users with their actual parental email; if they signed up with a fake one then they are out of luck. Once the program is activated it will do the following: There is an alert button that they can press on the preferences page if they know someone is hacking them and see stuff disappearing from their account and what not. Once pressed SafeAccount will send an email to your parental email, lock all mail usage, trading post, clam grams and satchel transfers until they confirm that things are safe again with the parental address. Also all password changes will have to be confirmed by an email sent to your parental address before any mail usage, trading post, clam grams and satchel transfers. This prevents hackers from simply going on the account, changing the password and stealing everything while the user can get in and press alert. Also the only way to deactivate SafeAccount is to uncheck the SafeAccount box and then confirm that they want to turn the program off in a parental email. If people are extra concerned about hacking then they could also press the other link on the parental email which puts them into super safe mode where SafeAccount sends their parental email a password that is computer generated and hard to guess that the person would have to type in the popup box before Whyville allows them to send any clam grams, sit at the trading post, and transfer satchel items which they would have to do every time they want to do something. This could get annoying but this part of the program is only for people who want to be extra safe. This is just the basic outline of my SafeAccount program; if I become senator we will see how Whyville modifies my idea.
- *Send All: *Ever make a petition or design a cool new part or have some news you must share with everyone in your address book? Well with the send all button you will be able to do that much quicker, but just so that it couldn't be used for spam we would only get to use it once a week per account.
- *The Trading Post:* Oh yes! I am a fan of the old idea for a popup try-on window so you could try your parts before you trade to prevent scams like the tiny rock hand that some people use that looks like it could be a normal sized one leaving the buyer with a rock hand that might fit a bear or something small like that.
- *Used Car Lot: *I think scions should be resold if the owner no longer wants it, they should be able to be sold for half of the purchase price. The used car lot could be located behind club scion. Since scions are such a large amount of clams we would need a way to verify that it is the actual owner selling the scion and not some hacker; so for all scion sales you would have to get it approved by your parental email address and if you did not sign up with your real address then tough luck, you are stuck with a scion that you no longer want. Selling scions could also be useful in situations where you were a co-buyer for someone and they didn't pay it so you got stuck with a scion that might not be your style instead of your clams back. This idea would also help people who want scions but can't afford them. If the cheapest new scion is 13,008 that means they could get a used one for 6,504! Wow that is pretty dandy!
- *Whipcars:* We need a whipcar rental station at club scion so they can be rented for an amount such as 100 clams for an hour, then for that hour you could say "summon whipcar" and it would come and you could give your friends a ride. This prevents unwanted whipcars from entering the chat room and taking up space with the actually whipcar plus the huge word bubble it makes.
- *Ymail Helpers:* There should be a rating box where those that received your help in the newbie center can rate you between 1 and 5 stars; this will also be available on the reply of a ymail sent to a ymail helper from the help/ymail helper page. The average star rating should show on the ymail helper page next to the helper so you know which would be the best to send mail to. The star rating could also possibly be displayed in their city records but that doesn't necessarily have to happen. Anyways the star ratings with help with knowing which helpers are decent and which aren't.
- *You've Got Mail!:* The envelope should either blink if you got new mail or display a number of new messages received since you last clicked the mailbox, this way you will know when you should check your mail when you are in chat as well as know when checking your mail would be a waste of time.
*Note to all who skipped the first paragraph: *I will be gone March 1^st through 5^th , due to bad timing for a family vacation. I will have little if any access to a computer. This means I will not be able to respond to comments in the BBS right away. So if you are a supporter or my ideas have just now earned your vote, feel free to wear signs and tell everyone to vote for me! Every person spreading the word about me helps because I myself will not be able to for a few days of final voting. Thanks again to everyone who helped me make it this far. Special thanks to DebbiRyan, Piglove17, Annieray, ItsLexy/MelFan, SmileM, xruntx, kate3kate, MzPink111, Juanita5, Nessa1989, hotpin112, efronluv9, illeah, and anyone else who helped with my campaign that I forgot to mention!
VOTE MELSEY6!
VOTE MELSEY6!
VOTE MELSEY6!
