Post
by godix » Wed Mar 25, 2009 12:35 pm
Alrighty, I took my break from this. Here's a few semi-random thoughts I have about the contest. Feel free to discuss or ignore as you see fit.
First of all I'll just say upfront I don't know if I will do this next year. I hope Koop is able to run it actually. While I did it this year in my mind it's still Koop's contest and I believe he can do a better job with it than I can. Regardless of that, I do like the contest. I do believe it serves a role. I do want to see it continue. It's a whole year till the question of who continues this needs to be resolved, I will definately follow up on this later in the year to make sure this gets planned and done right. If need be I'd be willing to run it again in the future although, as I said, I think Koop is more suited to it.
I know there were a few problems this year. The main one being unfortunately things got started rather late. Due to that some parts of the contest were shorter than they should have been. Next year I definately want more pre-planning done and more time for nominations, voting, and judging. Voting was only a couple days this year and I was still getting PMs of people voting for judges as recently as yesterday (although the late votes wouldn't have changed who the judges were so no real problem there). I think voting should be at least a week, and perhaps nominations need more time although a few days actually seemed to serve well for that. I also think judges should be given more than 5 days to view and rate the videos. In theory nomination and voting could be finished before the VCAs are even started and judging could start the moment the semi-finalist are listed (if there are semi-finalist next year, jasper seems to have some doubt about that).
Another issue is PMs. All I can say is I still think 'reply to all' is a moronic default behavior but I did eventually learn the difference between CC and BCC...
In the future there are two things I would like to see JCA do. The first is to somehow limit the videos some. 191 videos is just too much. I know from judging last year, running it this year, and discussions with some judges that having that many videos can get overwhelming. Lets face it, there are always quite a few obvious jokes in the semi-finals of the VCA than could be discarded offhand, a certain user for most helpful pops to mind for example. How to limit videos to a more reasonable amount, that I don't have any ideas on. If there isn't a semi-final round next year that will solve the issue.
The other thing I would like to see is more cross site involvement. The JCA is an org centric event and uses videos from an org centric contest. However many members of Akross, .de, or the fench community are already represented on the org. You just have to look at how many Akross vids were in the VCA/JCA or how many awards Nostro took to see that. One possible idea is to split up the judges so that each community has one representative. I'm not saying nationalism is the key here, which is what got suggested last year, but rather internet communities. I dunno, maybe that wouldn't work since the contests are so org centric. If I do this next year it's something I'm willing to explore and consider though.
For those who like factoids:
Judges had the option of adding a video to the contest that they felt was deserving and wasn't in the VCA semi-finals. Two judges did so. Neither added video won.
There were 191 videos in the contest. I didn't add up total play time but it was over 9 hours.
There were 50 votes cast and counted over two days. Several more were sent to me after voting ended. Last year, IIRC, had a week voting and 112 votes cast. So considering the shortened voting period this year participation was rather good.
There were three tied categories, including one that had a four way tie. I served as tie breaker for those categories.
The most clear win was one category which had five judges with the same first choice, the sixth judge picked that for their second choice.
I have no intention of identifying which judge voted for what videos, what they thought of any video other than the comments I already posted in the winners thread, who said what comment, or even what categories were close or had run away winners. I don't want the drama. Don't bother asking.
