RE: Draft Proposal

["David VanderWall" <dvanderwall@uswest.net>]

Comments on the draft proposal:

On Photo Guidelines and Tips (appendix iii):
We should prohibit any and all images from containing any copyright
information or other text or graphics overlaid on the image.  We will
provide the copyright information on the web site and will provide it to any
publications where the image will be displayed.  This goes along with the
numbering of images so as not to influence the judges.  If my image has
"Copyright 1999 D. VanderWall" emblazoned on the bottom, then the image may
be useless, as the judges will see it.  We do not want to spend the time
cropping images, blurring things out, etc.

On Entrance Fees (appendix v):
I didn't know we were providing volume discounts.  Maybe not a bad idea.
I'm wondering whether we should limit AGA members to 5 tanks without paying
the fee.  This is especially true if we are going to limit the number of
overall entries into the contest (are we putting a limit on the number of
entries into the showcase as well?).  This is just hypothetical, so don't
take my head off here, but if there are 800 members in the AGA, and each one
decides to enter 5 tanks, we will quickly reach the "unmanageable" level.
Allow them to enter more tanks and we will reach that level even faster, all
without bringing in any funds based on fees.  If we say AGA members get 5
and then they must pay beyond that, well, it opens the contest up to more
people AND the AGA member's fee has basically "paid for itself."

On Judging Criteria and Guidelines; Scoring Guidelines (appendix vii):
James writes in the draft proposal:
Judges are requested to not, when at all possible, award identical total
point scores to more than one entry per category (i.e.. for individual
judges, there should be no tied scores within categories.)

Dave writes:
Remove the "when at all possible."  They should rank all of the entries with
no ties, in my opinion.  Someone reading over my shoulder (don't worry, he's
cool :-) made the observation that this will be impossible to do when
awarding whole point intervals to 101 entries or more in a single category.
Two or more of them would have to be tied.  So the judges will have to award
points in increments of 0.25 or 0.5?  Did we think of this before?  Gosh, I
guess they may have to tie some of the entries.  Am I missing something here
or if we have, say, 134 entries in the "Planted tanks 100 gallons and above"
category (by no means an impossible number), will the judges HAVE to tie
some of them?  I guess I have to retract the comment for now.  Maybe we do
need the "when at all possible" in there.

James writes in the draft proposal (same appendix):
At their discretion, the judges may award, based upon the final ranking of
entries within a category, awards as follows: First Place, Second Place,
Third Place, Honourable Mention. Judges have the discretion of awarding any
workable combination of these awards as they see fit. More than one
Honourable Mention award may be granted, at the discretion of the judges.
[i.e. the judges may decide to only award one or more Honourable Mention
awards without awarding 1st, 2nd or 3rd place awards, should they feel that
the entries within a category not merit such an award.]

Dave writes:
I disagree with this.  If there are three entries in a category (my vote for
the lowest number, based on the assumption that 1st, 2nd and 3rd will be
awarded), I think they should take 1st, 2nd and 3rd place.  This may serve
to promote interest in a category as someone (I think it was Karen) stated,
"Hey, I can do better than that."  Having a category and not awarding any
ribbons (or whatever) in that category would be a real slap in the face.  We
will not promote interest in this hobby by being so snobbish about it.  My
two cents.

Other than that I think it looks good ... unless I missed something. :-)
I'll read through it again sometime soon and see if other things spring to
mind.


Regards,

Dave VanderWall
Minneapolis, MN


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