[AGA-Contest] Now my own comments

["Roger Miller" <roger@spinn.net>]

Folks,

Every year the AGA contest is followed by a round of discussion that features
a lot of complaints and second guessing.  That is unavoidable, but this year
things seemed to be even more rancorous then in the preceding years. The
judges' comments and lack of other information about the results often seem to
play key roles in the complaints.

It's difficult for the judges to make comments on every entry, the comments
they make are probably never adequate to explain their placement, the comments
are often off-base and frequently wrong.  Generally, it is impossible to avoid
mistakes in comments when the comments are based entirely on photographs.

Unfortunately, for all entrants except the top three in each category the
contest provides no result or information other than judge's comments.  The
AGA contest would be a better contest if we de-emphasized the judge's comments
and provided the contestants with more information about the placement of
their entries.

I suggest that judge's comments should be solicited only after the
contest placements are known and that only the top few finishers in each
category should receive comments.  At a minimum AGA should tell all of the
contestants where their entry finished in the rankings.  It would be even
better if AGA provided a summary of the scores by category.

There are several ways to handle the judge's comments and different ways to
provide the contestants with more information.  I think the way it's done now
needs to be changed and the right time to discuss the questions is now while
interest is relatively high.


Roger Miller
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