Determining Judging Guidelines - a suggested plan of action

["James Purchase" <jpurch@interlog.com>]

When setting up the judging/review criteria for any event, regardless of
venue or subject matter under discussion, it is easier to start with the
"general" and move to the "specific". In our particular case, we are
formulating judging guidelines for an on-line Aquascaping contest which will
be open for submissions of any type of freshwater aquascape.

That is a pretty broad range, and the judging guidelines we decide upon must
be selected and worded so as to fairly and accurately allow for the
evaluation of a wide range of styles and approaches to the subject.

To quote from Amano (AquaJournal, Vol. 33, pg. 12), "Aquascaping combines
art with aquatic horticulture to produce a form of artistic expression in
which one's "canvas" is a planted tank...". This definition or description
is of course slanted specifically towards his personal vision and preference
for plant tanks. If we are going to accept non-planted aquascapes in our
event, then any built-in bias, at least at the "general" level, must be
eliminated.

One thing which Amano stresses, and both Roger Miller and I discussed
earlier here (among other people), is that there IS a form of "ART" at work
here - aquascaping an aquarium is a form of artistic expression, whether or
not the hobbyist is conscious of that fact or not. To fail to understand
that is to end up with "plants underwater", as George so aptly coined the
phrase.

You _may_ consider yourself an "aquatic gardener" but every "gardener" I've
ever known planned his or her garden with a concious effort and considerable
thought.

I'm not bringing "ART" back into this discussion to intimidate anyone - I'm
just reminding everyone that it IS there.

Olga made a good point in an earlier post about how we can actually use or
apply "general" criteria to more specific situations. I suggest that it
might be simply a matter of listing the various components of the over-all
"general" criteria, _under_ the topic headings, like a table of contents of
a book. We can also pose "questions" that the judges can ask themselves
concerning how well the aquascape under review meets the judge's idea of
what this criteria is (we don't have any "ideal" here, nor should we - a lot
of this is going to be very subjective on the part of the individual
judges).

What I see as the simplest and perhaps best way would look something like
this, at least initially, and it takes the form of an outline:

Criteria #1.
 - sub-point a.
 - sub-point b.
 - sub-point c.
 - one or more "questions" designed for the judges to help them evaluate how
the aquascape
fulfills these various sub-points.

Criteria #2.
 - sub-point a.
 - sub-point b.
 - sub-point c.
 - one or more "questions" designed for the judges to help them evaluate how
the aquascape
fulfills these various sub-points.

Criteria #3.
 - sub-point a.
 - sub-point b.
 - sub-point c.
 - one or more "questions" designed for the judges to help them evaluate how
the aquascape
fulfills these various sub-points.

Criteria #4.
 - sub-point a.
 - sub-point b.
 - sub-point c.
 - one or more "questions" designed for the judges to help them evaluate how
the aquascape
fulfills these various sub-points.

Criteria #5.
 - sub-point a.
 - sub-point b.
 - sub-point c.
 - one or more "questions" designed for the judges to help them evaluate how
the aquascape
fulfills these various sub-points.

During our discussions, it may be necessary to elevate a particular
sub-point to "full criteria" status or subjugate a criteria under another.
This is a mechanical consideration and is to be expected.

Once this has been worked out and agreed to, we can then move to
consideration of "weighting" the various points and ranking them in order of
importance. From there we can move to assigning "point values" or "ranges"
for each of them and thus allow for the production of an actual "score" for
the aquascape under consideration.

James Purchase
Toronto



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