Doki was curious about the influence of non-editor votes ("the masses"
) on VCA results, so he did some research. Here are the results of the
unofficial Editors' Choice Awards:
Best Dance: Magic Pad (VCA 2nd)
Best Dramatic: Time Waits For No One (VCA tied for 2nd)
Best First: The Battle of Heroic Souls (VCA 2nd)
Best Fun: daydream (VCA 2nd)
Best Sentimental: Time Waits For No One (VCA 2nd)
Most Helpful: JaddziaDax (VCA tied for 2nd)
Most Original: daydream (VCA 2nd)
The other 18 categories: the same as the VCAs. Yes, all of them. The very same.
Anyway, I guess I should come back and address some of the suggestions here.
Turbo wrote:To-do list for next year:
1) Enable "Put all your videos in catalog" by default
Well, the point is to make the VCA an opt-in activity. Some editors have missed submitting to the VCA in the past, yes, but this year we made a huge effort to remind people about the deadline and to make the qualifications process as painless as possible.
Xexyzl wrote:How about making the Finalist video pack a torrent? Might help save on bandwidth…
Spk1983 wrote:I kinda liked/disliked the shortened voting period: it certainly would allow it to drag out less, but then for someone like me who is still on dialup ( >_< ), it was rather hassling to download all the semifinal/final videos in time to make a truly objective choice, having effectively 1 day to make my choices
We're working on a better way of delivering VCA entries to voters for next year.
Driftroot wrote:/me deletes lengthy rant about messed up aspect ratios and subtitled footage being allowed past the front door of the VCAs.
I too think we could do better by prohibiting unintended subtitles and watermarks (though I would let bad AR slide), but logistically it would be difficult for us to enforce quality requirements.
We could potentially create a "disputes" system where people can challenge the validity of entries with the contest coordinator. For example, if you find that a Best First Video entry were NOT actually the editor's first video, then you'd notify the coordinator through the disputes system, and if the issue is deemed valid, then the entry would be disqualified. Etc.
Now, regarding the vote counts...
My opinion is that posting the vote counts would not benefit the contest in any useful ways Most AMV contests that I'm familiar with do not make a habit of releasing their vote counts (except, sometimes, to contestants for the sake of satisfying curiosities, and only on request). Why? For two main reasons. First, it creates unnecessary drama based on
results - and like I said, we already have enough negativity focusing around the results rather than the goals/methods of this contest.
Second, it provides data that people are likely to read too much into - and I mean that in the sincerest manner. What kind of new information do you hope to glean? Like Todd said, it's like revealing the numbers for American Idol. Yes, it's somewhat like a popularity contest. Yes, some people are only going to vote for their friends or their favorite editors. You can't eliminate those factors from a Viewers' Choice type contest. (But what we CAN do is to help people watch as many of the entries as possible, so that we can approximate informed viewers' choices as best as we can.)
Vote tallies aren't going to reveal corruption or cheating. We, the admin, have better tools that help us catch cheaters to the best of our ability. And if you're worried about corruption on the admin level - well, there's not much I can say to that except this: if you're going to believe in any one part of a contest, it's gotta be the coordinator's integrity. Otherwise, there's really no point in supporting the contest at all.
I understand there's a "ooh, interesting" factor involved in seeing stats though, so I wouldn't mind leaving the posting of stats up to the coordinators' discretion from year-to-year - as long as they keep in mind the above arguments. But considering the time and effort it would take to collect and post all of the voting data, I can't quite justify making it a policy to post the tallies at the end of every contest.
Would you really want to wake up after an election to find out that the election commission would tell you who won, but not allow you to know you the total votes for each candidate?
