I've hardly had time to be on Terraforums lately but why am I not surprised that we're having this discussion.
My incompletely informed and mostly irrelevant two cents:
I have often wondered how legitimate the old offwebsite poll could be. It seems like it would be easy enough to vote multiple times. Also, I totally was right there with you folks when that one contest got really fishy. Pretty lame actions on someone's part... Personal vendettas and all aside, it really is JUST the TF POTM.
I would be unopposed whether the poll gets conducted here on Terraforums we keep using the same poll we have been using. But there are a couple of things I think:
1.) I like how it is now that we can have specific places for all the contestants, not just 1st-3rd. I know sometimes some of us (mass) have gotten voted to the bottom for no reason and that feels lame, but on the other hand, there are times when I've gotten sixth or even tenth place and felt happy about where my plant placed considering the fantastic competition that others had posted.
2.) I think voting publicly is just asking for trouble. As much as we all say it's just a contest with no prize, people's feelings would get hurt and that matters when you have to do trades with them or ask them for advice or so on and so forth.
And to answer Whimgrinder's question a few pages back as to why we even feel compelled to enter into a contest in the first place:
It is (should be) light-hearted, good-natured fun. What sets it apart from just a monthly "display" of pitchers is that for one, we already have that. A lot of us have our own threads and as Mass said he's got the photo of the day deal. Not to mention the POTM really serves as that already. Why I enter and hope to win is because I want to have my pitcher in the "hall of fame" obviously. Why? Because the hall of fame is more than just the monthly gallery of whoever is proud of whatever plant. The hall of fame is a thread that any newbie or anyone on the web could find and browse and they would see the three truly exemplary plants of every month. THAT is cool.
I believe we all think Nepenthes are pretty awesome, even a humble, small homely one. And there are hundreds of threads that contain pictures of plants like those. But there is really only one thread where you are guaranteed truly above and beyond amazing specimens of the genus and that is the Hall of Fame.
There's also Pygo's my nepenthes 2012 and Jeremiah's Greenhouse.
But you know what I mean.