Judging/categories/contestants

[sae@arts.ubc.ca (Olga Betts)]

Wow... this is great... we are moving on!

Judging: This will need a lot of thought and orgainization. I do believe it
not *impossible* to have the judges enter. I recently attended a killifish
meeting and they hold shows and judge fish. The judges enter their own fish
but their vote is excluded when it comes to their fish. If we have several
judges and they are not all "friends" then I think that could work and that
way some good aquascapers would not be excluded.

Judging will probably have to work like figure skating with several judges
voting 1-10 on tanks and the winning tank being the one with the highest
score when its numbers are added up. Otherwise how can one judge an Amano
type scene against a Boothian scene? If a judge likes one type better than
another he/she is bound to vote for that one. Everyone get what I mean?

Celebrities?? I think not. Sounds like something getting out of hand to me.
Several countries represented would be nice. Let's hope we can swing that.

Categories: I agree that sizes would be good but perhaps shape could get in
there... cube, cylinder, tall, shallow are possiblilties. Comparing a tall
cube to a long tank is quite different and if a tall cube is only 24"
should it be able to compete with a regular 20 gallon?? If we had a
category for tall, for example, and we only got 4 entries for tall we could
discontinue that category, inform the contestant and tell them they would
be added to the "size" category or they could withdraw if they'd rather. Of
course, on the entry form we should probably say that categories depend on
sufficient entries and pick a minimum number.

I would be willing to have a category for "whimsical" or "novelty" which
would be planted tanks with pink gravel, sunken ships, divers, bubbling
clams, green skulls etc. Some of those can be quite fantastic and actually
deserve a category by themselves... as long as they are "real" planted
tanks. If they are entered with the more "serious" tanks they probably
wouldn't stand much of a chance.

 Ideas for categories: [size in inches/cm to be determined]
 1.small
 2.medium
 3.large
 4.cube
 5.cylinder
 6.tall
 7.long [long implying shorter than regular tank sizes].
 8.novelty?
Perhaps cube, cylinder and tall could all go under "tall" as they tend to
be taller than usual. That would cut it down to 6 categories or even 5 if
"short" is not a likely entry for a planted tank.

 Uh oh... I just thought of the fact that my tank is 48" long but being
only 12" wide is at a real disadvantage being judged against a same length
tank that is 18" wide. Maybe a 48" x 18" would have to go in "large" while
a 48"x12" would be medium? Perhaps this needs more thought... or maybe
simple is best this time around and the next contest could be more involved
[when we have more practice]. <g>

Contestants: I agree no ages or professions come into it. We could have in
the rules that the contestants are required to be entering tanks they have
personally aquascaped. That means that some office manager who hires a
company to maintain a wonderful tank in his reception area can not
legitimately enter that tank... but the aquascaping company can. Now, of
course, he could, and we wouldn't know but we'll have to assume most folks
wouldn't do that... besides, unless that person is very interested in the
subject he would be unlikely to know about the contest whereas the
aquascaping company would be more likely to know about it.

Nuff for now,
Olga in Vancouver



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