Re: Categories

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

My choice of the word "Miscellaneous" for a Category may have been
inappropriate - I remember Erik mentioning early on a "Fantasy" or fun
category, some also mentioned beginners and youth categories. I don't think
that we want to, or need to, set up a whole raft of specialized categories -
maybe if this goes over really well and we are swamped with all kinds of
aquascapes they will guide us in setting new categories for future years.
But for THIS year, the basic structure should be as simple and as flexible
as possible.

It was my initial impression that aquascapes would be judged on their own
merits, regardless of the category they were in and the other aquascapes in
the same category (my thinking was that the "Category" was more for ease of
display on the web-site). From what Karen has written concerning contests
however, it would appear that the OTHER entrants in a particular category
could have an influence on the scoring for an aquascape. As she has more
experience with judging and contests, I can only say OOPS...

If you don't like the term "Miscellaneous", what would you suggest as an
alternative, keeping in mind that I don't want to see _more_ categories
created? Could we just drop it altogether, and use the "Artificial
Aquascape" category for those tanks which do not obviously fall into one of
the others? This would have the benefit of reducing the total number of
categories to an even dozen, making it a slightly less expensive event (less
expensive is not the same thing as cheaper...).

I think that if we are going to the trouble of setting up "Categories" now,
and will have a web-site prepared before we "go public", it should be a
simple matter to write short descritive sentences letting the potential
entrant know the types of aquascapes we expect in each "category", and allow
them to choose where they wish to have their entry placed (sorry Erik, looks
like another check box on the entry form...). But I think that we have to
reserve the right to change a category if an obvious mistake has been made.
(Should anyone wonder where we get the right to change something like that,
well.... it's OUR contest....).

James Purchase
Toronto

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