Contest Spectacular feedback post!

[indigo_league]

Hey there trainers!

Like with the last Contest Spectacular, we wanted to give folks a chance to provide event feedback!

Given the response to both events (including peoples' thoughts on the feedback post last time), we're planning on having the Contest being a twice-a-year occurrence similar to Fourth Wall, one in the winter and one in the summer. As we mentioned in the original announcement, voting worked a little bit differently than last time so we want to hear everyone's thoughts on what worked, what didn't, and if anything should be changed for next time!

For this Contest, we went with ranked-choice voting, where each voter could pick their top three choices in each category rather than just cast one vote. While some of the categories only had 1-2 participants this time around, the new method DID solve the problem we encountered last time with the cascading ties! Here's how it worked: in order to calculate the votes, we assigned point values to each rank (three points for a First Pick, two points for a Second Pick, and one point for a Third Pick). Then all points were tallied up and whoever got the most points (rather than the most individual votes) won the category. Like last time, those who placed in the top three overall were not eligible to win their category even if they received the most points in it.

The final spreadsheet of point values for all the contestants of this particular Contest can be viewed here for those curious!

So, was it fair? Unfair? Okay but in need of fine-tuning?

Please let us know (along with any other thoughts about the Contest) in the comments below!

Comments

[meteorman]

Pops in here -- I really loved this contest! I greatly enjoyed the first one and have wanted contests in the game since I joined so I might be biased, but I think this one improved on the last one mechanics-wise. The new voting process was a lot better and made choosing less difficult (though honestly it's always going to be hard to rank such good entries), and I especially liked how we couldn't see the votes tallying up in real time like we could when it was a dreamwidth poll. That made it more of a mystery and removed any temptation to keep checking the poll to see how you're doing, as well as removing the temptation to vote a certain way because of the votes that were already there or even change a vote halfway through. Being able to see the votes after the fact the way you've laid them out up there is also pretty cool!

We also talked on plurk about my plans to request that I not be included in best in show voting for the next Contest since I've got it twice now, but like I said there I don't think there needs to be an official rule on this. We have such a varied group of writers and characters that I don't think it's likely the same people will dominate every time particularly because the focus OOC on Contests is pretty clearly reading the cool entries and yelling about them and less about winning. I never see people saying 'I hope I win', I mostly just see them talking about the cool stuff other people did and how much they like it. If this gets to be a problem going forward I'm fully in favor of amending it with maybe a cooldown period (like the one I'm self-imposing) but at the moment I don't think it's gonna be a big issue.