Re: Nature vs Garden

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

David wrote:
"But does the entry *have* to be 100% accurate just to *qualify* for the
category?"

Not according to the way we have agreed to the Guidelines. There is nothing
in there (this year, anyway) which "defines" what is appropriate in each of
the 4 major divisions. And both the Showcase and the Contest Guidelines
specifically say:

"Showcase/Contest entries shall be sorted for display into divisions of like
aquascapes, depending upon numbers of entries received. The possible
divisions are:

Aquatic Garden
Natural / Biotope Aquascape
Artificial Aquascape
Paludarium"

The phrase "shall be sorted" _could_ be interpreted to mean that we reserve
the right to re-classify an entry, and the "depending upon numbers of
entries received" tends to say much the same thing.

 In the Judging Guidelines there isn't anything which specifically tells the
judges to dock entries for items which might not be 100% appropriate for a
certain biotope (we only require that they be appropriate for use "in an
aquarium" and that the "compliment one another or produce a discordant
effect").

Can you tell that I spent years reading legal texts, all of which are
subject to interpretation? LOL

Given that, it really IS up to the judges to decide what is acceptable or
not.

"The basic idea of this first competition is to test its viability while
trying out the approach. We hope the Event will live on, and to do so we are
prepared to modify the approach. As such, I don't see where we stand to gain
anything by splitting blonde hairs as opposed to red ones..."

I can agree with this 100%.
----------

Now, one thing which we _may_ want to do, once all of the entries are in and
plugged into their "categories", is to take a look at them, (or have Erik
look at them, since we aren't supposed to see them until after they are
judged) and see if maybe some of the Aquatic Gardens might be more
appropriately placed in the Nature/Biotope or some other group.

Or if perhaps we should fine tune the "group" of Aquatic Garden into more
sub-types. Remember that we set a maximum of 12 separate categories. If we
don't have entries in all of the different size categories for each of the 4
basic groups, we have spare prizes and we could lessen the competition
within the Aquatic Garden group (by lessen the competition I mean make it
more likely that people would win). As it stands right now, each of the 3
entries in the Paludarium category is going to win a prize (because there is
a 1st, 2nd and 3rd in each category). but if we have most of the entries in
Aquatic Gardens and they are all in the same size group, there would still
only be 3 winners unless we divied them up. That's one possibility.

Another possibility is to decide on the price range for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd
place prizes based upon the number of entries in each division (that would
put the more valuable prizes where the competition is greatest and we have
the most entries).

James

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