State of the Viewers Choice Awards

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Kireblue
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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by Kireblue » Tue Feb 06, 2018 7:34 pm

KeiichiFace wrote:
Kireblue wrote: I also agree with MadMegatax that we should be transparent about who the judges are and why they were selected. Making this completely public knowledge is a must IMO. And I feel that having well known, knowledgeable, and respected members of multiple communities will help give credibility to the videos selected. Its a lot easier to accept a result that you don't agree with it it comes from people you believe to be knowledgeable on the topic.
But at the same time, what you constitute as a "well known", "knowledgeable", and "respected" editor may not be what someone else considers such. Wouldn't it make more sense to get a wider spectrum of judges, from con chairs to editors to people who just watch a lot of vids? And obviously, if one judge isn't able to convince the others that a video deserves an award, then that video doesn't get an award.
I think you're exactly right! Although all the people that I had in mind at the time were editors, I was careful to describe them as "well known, knowledgeable, and respected members of multiple communities " due to a lot of them being known for other reasons. Like you said, I think that including a wide range of judges is a great idea. And so I'm going to try to find ways to expand it even further. I'm not sure if Its a good idea to have people vote on the selection of judges though. Then it might become just a popularity contest.
Kroner92 wrote:I honestly think it's a great idea to open the awards to all the vids out there. But how can it be possible? it's an hard stuff to collect every single video, or letting people propose whatever they want, that is the most difficult part of the job imho. For what I saw it everytime we let people vote and decide by themself we see problems and Complaints and people starting to to theorize strange plots.That cause of multiple things that most of time have nothing to do with differents tastes (friendship for example). I think that the best way is to find a way to people to propose videos ( i just can't came out with a smart idea btw), collect the most shared opinion and then let a jury( made by selected people from different countries) decide. In that way we can listen to every single people who want to vote, but be fair in the final judgment using ( I hope) super partes judges that should just think about the awards interest.
I think that what you're suggesting is pretty similar to the initial idea I posted. We can allow people to propose videos in dedicated forum threads, and the judges will use those posts to curate a voting pool of videos. And therms of any perceived bias, I think that if we make sure not to include too many members of a single group, community, or clique, we can avoid that.

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KeiichiFace
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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by KeiichiFace » Tue Feb 06, 2018 10:35 pm

Kireblue wrote:I think you're exactly right! Although all the people that I had in mind at the time were editors, I was careful to describe them as "well known, knowledgeable, and respected members of multiple communities " due to a lot of them being known for other reasons. Like you said, I think that including a wide range of judges is a great idea. And so I'm going to try to find ways to expand it even further. I'm not sure if Its a good idea to have people vote on the selection of judges though. Then it might become just a popularity contest.
10/10 I 100% agree! I probably misread what you said; that's what I get for reading during work. >_>

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Mr. Shmucker
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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by Mr. Shmucker » Wed Feb 07, 2018 1:09 am

Kireblue wrote: One of the ideas that we considered is to conduct the Viewers Choice Awards in a way that's similar to Crunchyroll's Anime Awards.
Does this mean that there will be a best husbando and waifu category? Or that Yuri on Ice will win every category?

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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by spoondiddly » Wed Feb 07, 2018 12:22 pm

Opening this to the general interwebs is a good idea, but does cause a few complications with management.
  • Open submission is probably the best way to go, since a form on the main page won't limit this to .org users the way forum submissions will. That said, even with a clever database there's quite a bit of management you'll need to verify info, release date, and sort duplicates due to mispells, bad info, multiple video locations, etc. At least some of those can get sorted against the org's own database, but expect this will take much more effort than in previous years.
  • There's no way to prevent submissions on another's behalf without their knowledge. There needs to be some way to contact the original editor, both in the case they win an award and in general, so they know they're nominated or can opt out.
  • YouTube users in particular can be very bad for reup'ing other's videos. Sorting out ownership will take some effort.
  • Verifying dates could be problematic if the only source available is an upload time.
One requirement should probably be the videos are publicly available in some form.

The VCAs have always doubled as a membership and donation drive (to some degree at least), but as its scope changes expect the effect will be more indirect.

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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by CrackTheSky » Wed Feb 07, 2018 1:47 pm

spoondiddly wrote:Opening this to the general interwebs is a good idea, but does cause a few complications with management.
  • Open submission is probably the best way to go, since a form on the main page won't limit this to .org users the way forum submissions will. That said, even with a clever database there's quite a bit of management you'll need to verify info, release date, and sort duplicates due to mispells, bad info, multiple video locations, etc. At least some of those can get sorted against the org's own database, but expect this will take much more effort than in previous years.
  • There's no way to prevent submissions on another's behalf without their knowledge. There needs to be some way to contact the original editor, both in the case they win an award and in general, so they know they're nominated or can opt out.
  • YouTube users in particular can be very bad for reup'ing other's videos. Sorting out ownership will take some effort.
  • Verifying dates could be problematic if the only source available is an upload time.
One requirement should probably be the videos are publicly available in some form.

The VCAs have always doubled as a membership and donation drive (to some degree at least), but as its scope changes expect the effect will be more indirect.
These are all super legitimate points and raise the question of what you (meaning you, the .org administration) hope to get out of it compared with all the extra work that would come with opening the contest to multiple communities. Like, I get that the VCAs were once a big deal, but the past few years there's been barely any activity on the VCA forums and I'd be curious to know how many people even voted over the last couple years (I don't expect this data to be released, but I suspect it's a very small number). If you really, truly believe that you can revitalize interest in the VCAs by expanding this out into the wide world of the Internet At Large, then by all means, go for it, I just think that it may be too much work for comparatively little reward.

Also -- starting a new VCA program in March seems like it'd be too late, especially given all the extra work that would come from spreading the word out to multiple communities, getting buy-in from them, having them advertise your new plan to their members, and then sorting through each and every video submission you get (however that might look) to verify that they all meet the proper standards as outlined by spoondiddly above, and then going through multiple rounds of judging to get to the winners. This is, frankly, a discussion we should have been having months ago, not a month into the new year. I think it's possible to do all this, but I think that, if we're going to be realistic about it and really want to represent the best videos of the year, it might be worth it to put in a lot more planning and scrap the VCAs this year, so that instead of some half-baked plan that ends up falling flat, we do it right the first time next year.

For what it's worth, a lot of people are coming out of the woodwork to comment on this so it's clear there's still interest. And I don't want to be seen as someone who's just being a naysayer, but I think everything that's been put forth so far is somewhat unrealistic for the proposed timeframe, and by March of the new year most people won't even care about last year's best videos (which could result in lack of interest from other communities). The VCAs should, imho, always be started within 1-2 weeks of the new year when the previous year is still fresh in everyone's mind, and they should be advertised heavily across multiple communities with a solid plan of action like a month in advance of that.

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Kireblue
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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by Kireblue » Wed Feb 07, 2018 6:48 pm

spoondiddly wrote:Opening this to the general interwebs is a good idea, but does cause a few complications with management.
  • Open submission is probably the best way to go, since a form on the main page won't limit this to .org users the way forum submissions will. That said, even with a clever database there's quite a bit of management you'll need to verify info, release date, and sort duplicates due to mispells, bad info, multiple video locations, etc. At least some of those can get sorted against the org's own database, but expect this will take much more effort than in previous years.
  • There's no way to prevent submissions on another's behalf without their knowledge. There needs to be some way to contact the original editor, both in the case they win an award and in general, so they know they're nominated or can opt out.
  • YouTube users in particular can be very bad for reup'ing other's videos. Sorting out ownership will take some effort.
  • Verifying dates could be problematic if the only source available is an upload time.
One requirement should probably be the videos are publicly available in some form.

The VCAs have always doubled as a membership and donation drive (to some degree at least), but as its scope changes expect the effect will be more indirect.
CrackTheSky wrote:These are all super legitimate points and raise the question of what you (meaning you, the .org administration) hope to get out of it compared with all the extra work that would come with opening the contest to multiple communities. Like, I get that the VCAs were once a big deal, but the past few years there's been barely any activity on the VCA forums and I'd be curious to know how many people even voted over the last couple years (I don't expect this data to be released, but I suspect it's a very small number). If you really, truly believe that you can revitalize interest in the VCAs by expanding this out into the wide world of the Internet At Large, then by all means, go for it, I just think that it may be too much work for comparatively little reward.

Also -- starting a new VCA program in March seems like it'd be too late, especially given all the extra work that would come from spreading the word out to multiple communities, getting buy-in from them, having them advertise your new plan to their members, and then sorting through each and every video submission you get (however that might look) to verify that they all meet the proper standards as outlined by spoondiddly above, and then going through multiple rounds of judging to get to the winners. This is, frankly, a discussion we should have been having months ago, not a month into the new year. I think it's possible to do all this, but I think that, if we're going to be realistic about it and really want to represent the best videos of the year, it might be worth it to put in a lot more planning and scrap the VCAs this year, so that instead of some half-baked plan that ends up falling flat, we do it right the first time next year.

For what it's worth, a lot of people are coming out of the woodwork to comment on this so it's clear there's still interest. And I don't want to be seen as someone who's just being a naysayer, but I think everything that's been put forth so far is somewhat unrealistic for the proposed timeframe, and by March of the new year most people won't even care about last year's best videos (which could result in lack of interest from other communities). The VCAs should, imho, always be started within 1-2 weeks of the new year when the previous year is still fresh in everyone's mind, and they should be advertised heavily across multiple communities with a solid plan of action like a month in advance of that.
That's why I suggested having the judges pick the first round videos. The "general public" would simply post youtube links to their favorite AMVs of 2017, and the judges would use them as a reference to nominate videos which will then be voted on in the next round. It will also be left up to the judges to verify the release date and ownership of the videos that they choose to nominate. This would be a lot easier than verifying the information of every single video that gets suggested for consideration by the "general public". And so the nomination round would actually be similar to a delegate system where the judges don't necessarily represent any particular group of users, but still use their opinions as reference to make their own vote. And so the concerns that you expressed about database management don't really apply. Sorry for not explaining the nuances of my idea in the initial post better.

In terms of timeline, starting this in late February/ early March isn't really that far off from what we've done in past years. Here is the nomination - Final voting timelines since 2012

2017 - 2/13 - 3/27
2016 - 2/14 - 3/23
2015 - 2/08 - 3/16
2015 - 1/31 - 3/01
2013 - 2/23 - 3/22
2012 - 1/19 - 2/22

And in terms of interest. Yes, voting and participation has been declining over the years. So that's why we decided that a change was needed. I don't have the exact numbers unfortunately (I really should start keeping a permanent record of that), but over 180 people voted in the final round last year. Last year was my first VCA as a admin, and so I don't know exactly how much of a decline this was. But I do believe that opening the VCAs to the wider AMV community will increase participation not only from new members, but also older members that started to feel that the VCAs were too flawed at the time. The VCAs have always been a great time for the community to come together and interact with eachother, and so my primary goal for this is to keep that experience alive and expand upon it. Both of you are correct though when you say that the VCAs are also a time where donations for the Org tend to increase. And so I can't deny that Org has a monetary incentive to keep the VCAs alive as well.

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Mol
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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by Mol » Thu Feb 08, 2018 8:23 am

nvm i think it can work , just do it . Think might be smart to grab some ppl that sit a lot in yt amv community :dino:
Still better than that MMO.
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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by seasons » Thu Feb 08, 2018 1:17 pm

Mol wrote:Think might be smart to grab some ppl that sit a lot in yt amv community :dino:
What do you mean?

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Mol
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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by Mol » Thu Feb 08, 2018 1:26 pm

Basically to help pick cool vids : d But i guess it's in consideration
(i kinda wonder how will it would work other way around, with normal voting opened to all and just some ppl filter entries, but probably not too good)
Still better than that MMO.
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Re: State of the Viewers Choice Awards

Post by savagecatgt » Fri Feb 09, 2018 4:13 am

God to cancel the amv awards would brake my heart it's one of the few things I look forward to in the hole year I always loved voting and watching the talent of this community grow to what it is today. I don't have a lot of answers but just not having a contests is probably not one of them.

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