Re: Judging

[krandall@world.std.com]

At 05:14 AM 7/15/99 -0500, James wrote:

>Claus Christensen (Tropica)
>Barry James (British - author of several aquarium plant books)
>Christel Kasselmann (Germany - author of Aquarienpflanzen) - however, does
>she speak English???

As you said about Amano, I'm not sure that a non-English speaking judge is
a major problem, there are a number of translation possibilities.  But
German presents no problem at all.  AGA has a person, Mike Ekhardt, on the
editorial staff who does all the German-English translations for TAG, and
I'm fairly sure he could be pressed into service for this project too.

-----------

>I question using an AGA member as a judge, not because I don't think that
>there aren't any experts in the organization, but more due to the fact that
>we probably won't let Judges submit enteries, and I don't want to exclude
>any AGA members automatically.

I'm not pressuring you one way or the other on that front, but you could
let the person decide that issue for themselves.  If they are more
interested in competing, they could always decline to judge.  That's why we
need a good sized list of possible judges.  Some are bound to say "no", for
whatever reason.

>Again, remember that at this point in time our main aim _right now_ is to
>draw up a list of potential people to approach, not to actually nail anyone
>down as certain. Additionally, we want to discuss whether we provide general
>guidelines to the judges. I definately do NOT want us to get as anal as the
>_Dutch_ apparently do.

I think, in fairness to the judges, we must at least establish guidelines.
Is is acceptable to use non-aquatic plants plugged in as "decorations"?  If
not, you'd better pick people who recognize these plants.  Even if they
_do_ recognize these plants, if you haven't given any guidelines, how are
they to know whether to judge a tank more on artistic merit RIGHT NOW in
spite of the fact that the plants are going to be dead in 3 weeks, or on
the fact that this is not a viable, long term aquarium?  Likewise, does a
tank with a bubbling treasure chest qualify?  What about one with plastic
plants?

These general guidelines should be available to both the judges and the
participants ahead of time.  Again, I'm not saying what the guidelines
should be, just that they should be stated.

>I don't think Judges should be charged with producing a First, Second and/or
>Third place type of scale. I liked the idea of using such concepts as
>"superior", "excellent", etc. For our first stab at this, I think that this
>way we would be more encouraging to people.

It certainly would give more people a "pat on the back".  However, it makes
it difficult to ask manufacturers for donate prizes, (if that is decided
upon) if there is no limit on how many prizes might be needed.  The other
problem is that if you have 20 tanks that are judged as "excellent" or
whatever, you may be hard put to get that many photos published.  How do
you decide which ones to use?  

I will stick my neck out here with an actual opinion on this one.<g>  I
think that we should accept the reality that judging is based on photos,
and is also very subjective, and let the judges choose the ones they like
the best.  We could certainly wait to decide exactly how many places are
awarded until we see how many entries there are.  

Another approach that is used for championships at some horse shows could
be useful in this application.  The panel of judges first award "top 10"
places.  This is based on the number of horses in the class.  No more than
10 awards are given, but if there are less than 20 horses in the class,
only enough places to include 1/2 of the horses are awarded.  (for
instance, if there are 8 horses in the class, only 4 awards would be given)
 These awards are given in numerical order, not place order.  Then out of
that top 10, the champion and reserve are chosen.  So you have two entries
that have "firm" places, and the rest are unranked.

Karen
  ------------------
  To unsubscribe from this list, e-mail majordomo@aquatic-gardeners.org
  with "unsubscribe aga-contest" in the body of the message.
  To subscribe to the digest version, add "subscribe aga-contest-digest"
  in the same message.
  Old messages are available at http://lists.thekrib.com/aga-contest