Re: AGA CONTEST - Digest V1 #161

[krandall@world.std.com]

At 08:19 PM 8/11/99 -0700, James wrote:

>Thank you Karen for jumping in on the Scoring. As I have said before, I have
>never been involved in a Contest of this sort before. You have and your
>experience is appreciated.

Glad to help!

>For ranking, the first thing which came to mind was to do it the way a
>teacher adds up a student's individual test scores to arrive at an aggregate
>score and I then divided that by the number of Judges who had participated
>to arrive at an average. It wasn't "favouritism" on my part at all, nor any
>attempt to "skew" the results. At the time I did it, I didn't have the
>benefit of your experience in juried competitions.

In no way did I think you had purposely skewed the results.  And obviously
you weren't the only one not to notice it... No one else commented on it
either.  I just want to make sure we straighten it out now.

>After reading your post, where you ultimately ignore the actual "point
>values" and rely instead on the relative ranking of the different entries, I
>can see that this would tend to eliminate any such problems. Regardless of
>the yardstick a particular Judge uses, if we rely on the relative order in
>which they rank the entries, we should be able to come up with a consistent
>final answer of who wins.

Yes.

>But it wasn't _me_ who insisted on a "point system", that just seemed to be
>the concencus of the group. 

I didn't think you did.

>You are the one with the experience of Judging
>and being involved in Contests. Most of the folks who were volunteer judges
>made it very clear to me in their responses that they have never done
>anything like this before and they were unsure of themselves in assigning
>points to the images. I can't knock them for that, as I am in the same boat,
>and am on just as shaky ground as they are here.

I understand that, and that's why we tried this out.

>If you have a better, cleaner, simpler system, please step forward and
>explain it. Or was your last post that system?

I thought so. (I hope so... I spent a lot of time on it ;-)

------------------------------

Dave VanderWall wrote:

> I agree that we should
>instruct the judges not to tie two of their own scores, but we may have a
>tie when results are tabulated overall.  A tie-breaker round sounds good to
>me.  I'm not sure I like the idea of a single tie-breaker judge as it may
>lend itself to a conflict between two judges.  ("So-and-so agreed with me so
>I'm right!")  I'm no judge, though, so take what I say with a grain of salt
>on this topic.

The single tie breaker judge ONLY comes into play if the other judges are
not able to reach a decision when the tie is presented to the whole group
to be broken.

------------------------------

>Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 16:58:36 -0500
>From: "James Purchase" <jpurch@interlog.com>

>But please don't get exasperated at us for trying to think of things in
>advance. Karen, you publicly stated quite some time ago that you wanted this
>pretty much completely worked out before it goes before the AGA-MC. Are you
>now suggesting that we not sweat the details and if someone from the MC has
>a question during their consideration, that an acceptable answer from me
>would be - "Ummmmm, welllll, we didn't think of that.....we'll worry about
>it if and when it happens..."

In some cases, yes.  I guarantee you, that with the number of unknowns we
have going into a brand new program like this, there _will_ be surprises
that come up, no matter how hard you try.  The tighter you tie yourself
down, the hard it's going to be to resolve.

>I don't know about the AGA-MC, but if any of _my_ staff ever came to me with
>a proposal and they hadn't sweated the details, their proposal would be sent
>back to be re-worked. Remember as well that in most shows, the Judges and
>the organizers are on site and available to one another face to face. In
>this, we might be half way around the world from one another and only
>available by e-mail.

It would probably depend on the project though, what level of detail you'd
want people to waste time no.  (in the real world, time is money) As my CPA
husband has reminded me when I've tried to balance the checking account to
the PENNY,  it's not material.<g>

If you're working on a multi million dollar develpoment project, you'd
better sweat the details.  If you're planning an office birthday party for
a co-worker, you can probably put a _little_ less effort into it and still
make every one involved happy. (I've spent some time in the business world
too... I haven't always been "just a mom".<g>

>But then again, I could be wrong - it _has_ been known to happen.

Nah, couldn't happen!  Could it? ;-)

  ------------------
James wrote:

>Now, if there is _anyone_ here who feels that they can take the "Contest"
>portion and work out the details themselves and then present it back to the
>group as a simple scenario - I'm open to the offer, no offense intended or
>taken. I am just starting to feel really uncomfortable dealing with this
>"Contest" discussion. I do not want it to degenerate any further.

I don't think it has degenerated, do you?  I think we learned some things.
I've suggested fixes for some major problems, so has Erik.

Even if I wanted to take over, I'm leaving on vacation tomorrow for 10
days.  Judging for how much you guys got done when I was away for 4 days,
you should have this wrapped up with a bow before I get back.

>The only other alternative that I can see is to ditch the Contest portion of
>the event altogether, at least for this year. The Showcase has no need for
>"rules" or even many "guidelines" - we display what people send us, end of
>story. If its simple you want.....

That works too.  depends what people want to do.

 ------------------------------

Ken Guin wrote:

>I suggest that we get on with the proposal to the AGA MC, which I think
>James has been working on.  I really do think we have enough for them to
>decide one way or another (Karen, are we there yet?). 

Looks pretty close to me.


>Basically we are asking people to submit photos of their aquascapes. We are
>going to have a set of judges to make decisions on which aquascapes they
>think are the best. Afterwards, most (if not all) will be available via the
>web and/or CD-ROM. Prizes maybe given and entry fees may be charged (up to
>the AGA). 

You _do_ need to spend a little time on _that_ issue.  The AGA is going to
want to know what you will need for a budget, and that will include costs
for awards, possibly judges, mailings, CD's etc.

>Ya know, that's just about it.

'Think you're right!

Karen
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