Re: Criteria & Selection Mechanics, continued...

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

Sorry about that.... I hit the "send" before I finished my post....

The exact makeup of individual submissions was briefly discussed by a number
of people, and while everyone was in agreement that the number of images
requested should be more than one, no real concencus was reached at the time
about the number of images which would be desirable. It was clear to me that
NO concencus was possible at the time, because not everyone was in agreement
on _how_ the judging would be carried out.

The topic moved to something else.... like Judging Guidelines and Criteria.
We seem to have settled on a set of Criteria and I have asked about
"fleshing them out" with short descriptive paragraphs to clarify things both
for contestants and the Judges. Several posters have agreed that this would
be a good idea, but so far nobody has actually provided those "little
sentences". I've already tried and got trounced for it, so I won't try
again - if one of *you* don't give me words that the group can agree on, the
Criteria will stand alone.

Karen had suggested that we test our Criteria by holding a little "mock
contest".

Now, that brings us to the here and now, and to David's remarks about how
difficult this is going to be unless we are very clear as to what we would
like submitted. I have been spending some free time (_what_ free time???)
doing up another web-site - this one for a "mock Judging" of "mock entries".
I had a preliminary version ready last week and both Erik and Karen were
given the URL and asked to comment. Based upon their feed-back, I have
re-worked the site and I think that it is pretty much ready for "prime
time".

I _hope_ that it will show _exactly_ the point that David makes in his
post - that we have to give careful consideration to what we request as
images if we are going to be able to be fair in our assessment of the
aquascapes submitted. The images on this "mock" web-site are a selection of
photographs of aquascapes from members of the group - permission has been
obtained from the photographers for their use in this manner. But you are
going to see a _remarkably_ divergent group of  "submissions", ranging from
single photographs to sets of images taken over long periods of time which
clearly show the evolution of an aquascape.

With any luck, the next step in our journey will help us see how effective
our newly minted set of Criteria are, and what we might need in the way of a
boost to get a concencus on "Submission Elements". Two birds with one
stone - well, that's the theory anyway.

I am waiting for one person to contact me privately regarding the latest
version of the "mock" web-site before announcing the URL and inviting folks
to try their hand at being Judges for a day.

Hope this addresses your concerns David.

James Purchase
Toronto



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