Re: [AGA Contest] various replies, incl judging...

["Phil Edwards" <biotypical@hotmail.com>]

All following statements are not meant as personal attacks and are given in 
the spirit of healthy and respectful debate.

Roger said:

Phil, I *really* can't support this; the final standing needs to be 
determined from the judge's rankings not from the raw scores.  I haven't 
seen other judges' scores but I will guess that the inconsistency in scoring 
is far too large for that to work.   A judge can be very careful about 
awarding
internally consistent scores but there is nothing he or she can do to be 
sure their scoring scale is consistent with someone else's scoring scale.  
One judge might award scores to a mid-level entry that are as high as the 
scores another judge gives to the best entry.

    I agree that the "place" aquascapes need to be determined by the judges 
rankings.  However, I feel that such rankings should be based on the raw 
score of each tank, from each judge.  Yes, there will be a lot of 
interjudicial inconsistancy, but as long as each judge is internally 
consistant there should be an overall consistancy among the results.  
Furthermore, the very nature of the scoring method creates bias and allows 
for a mediocre aquascape to rank higher than an "inspired" design.  Each 
aquarium will have something different going in its favor.  Sometimes the 
weight of the category within the judging criteria creates an imbalance in 
the actual "value" of the design.  My discus tank was a perfect example.  
The plants were growing well and all that, but the design wasn't anything 
original and certainly wasn't as good as some of the others that were given 
an Honorable Mention yet it scored 3rd anyway.  While this is primarily an 
aquascaping contest there are other factors which affect the score of each 
particular aquascape.  By giving weight to these other areas the possibility 
of a lesser aquascape ranking higher than a superior design is built in and 
we'll have to live with it or change it.

    In my very opinionated opinion I feel that any judge that does not 
utilize the entire reach of total scores is not doing his/her job.  If a 
judge doesn't score even the worst aquascape at anything less than 80 
something is wrong.  While the qualities of design are increasing it's 
highly unlikely that every one of them will be of "B" or better.  
Furthermore, any judge who doesn't make a serious effort to keep personal 
taste from influencing his/her decisions is doing everyone a major 
dis-service and shouldn't be allowed to judge.

"There are a few different ways around ties.  The ultimate tie breaker lies 
with the contest administrator."

    I'm sorry, I knew what I was saying but it comes out less than what I 
actually meant.  I was actually speaking of ties within scores one judge has 
given.  For example, five judges score twenty tanks individually (not trying 
to rank them 1-5) there is a pretty good chance that there will be ties 
within the scores given by each judge.

Judge A  100, 96, 96, 84, 37 etc..
Judge B   99,  96, 94, 87, 40 etc...
Judge C  100, 94, 97, 88, 38 etc...

    We can see that aquascapes 2 and 3 were given an identical score by 
judge A, but the differences in scores between aquascapes 2 and 3 for judges 
B and C negate the internal tie score of judge A.

"I'm not sure that increasing quality in the aquascapes makes ties more 
likely.  Increasing quality doesn't necessarily imply increasing 
similarity."

    That's exactly the point though, last year we saw a huge variety of 
aquascapes that were all very good.  We're likely to see an increased array 
of styles and designs even though we'll likely get a decreased array of 
scores because of the increasing quality of designs.  By using raw scores, 
ranged potentially from 5 or 6 to 100 we're allowing for a more precise 
measurement of rank.  I can see the Large category in particular coming down 
to tenths of a point between 1st and 2nd place.  By adding a ranking 
mechanism into the equation we're adding a greater element of subjectivity 
which could potentially be avoided.



Eric,

Rather than having Best of Show be determined from a selection of many 
choices why not take the design that's got the most points?  By scoring each 
design the judges are in effect casting their ballot for best of category, 
and possibly for best of show.  Granted, the possibility of tie scores is 
there and in an instance such as that discussion between the judges is a 
good thing.  However, since we would have already given our opinion of each 
design in the scoring process even a difference in score of as little as 0.1 
points should be a sufficient indicator of Best of Show.  By allowing for 
debate between different aquascapes we're allowing a subjective element to 
bias against a design which may have had the highest score of all and should 
by all rights be considered Best of Show on that alone.  Has something like 
this been done/attempted in the past?


With all respect,
Phil

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