Z-I-v Summer Contest 2020

The posts of people complaining that "my time was in the past" or "wrong audience judging my tastes" or "I didn't do good because of grouping" are getting pretty old and just bring negative sentiment into the conversations. I think it's a fair assumption that most folks that didn't make it to the top of the ranked list feel they should be higher.

When there's 40+ entrants (or 20+ when split by groups), the majority of people are not going to make it in the top 5. Given the voting design, that likely means the lower 75% of entrants will get much fewer points (especially if there's a couple popular entries, for whatever reason). That doesn't mean the others are poor quality; it just means if the entire set of entries were packaged as a DDR release, they may not be a machine favorite.

For those in the lower 75% with relatively few votes (myself included), feedback is likely the most rewarding thing here - if there's a lack of feedback being present, it's like several people said already - it's time consuming to write detailed feedback to 20+ entries on a weekly basis. Many people offered to provide feedback when requested, don't be afraid to ask (instead of complaining that you didn't make top 5ish). Or, post the entry on the Simfile Discussion part of the forums and ask for feedback there?

Here's another suggestion for voting that would resolve some of these issues (maybe not for this tournament, but for follow-ups). It seems the major problem is that the majority of entries get no points in voting, and it's hard to tell if it's because they're not good quality or just wasn't a favorite. Instead, what if voting was in the form of a 10-point scale for every single entry, and entries are ranked based on average rating? Everyone gives their entry a 10, no bias there. If someone scores more harshly or leniently in general, it wouldn't affect the overall ranking (just the value of the average score an entry gets).

I'm all for this. As nice as the expansion to 15 points is (as opposed to the old, cut-and-dry 5-4-3-2-1), sometimes files that I do legitimately enjoy either slip through the cracks, or end up getting relegated to an honorable mention because there end up being files that I feel deserve the points more, and I don't want to just give 15 +1s.

I want to join! How do I join? I'm in it to win it

Deadline to join was two weeks ago.


Thirded. This would more accurately reflect the whole group’s sentiment on files. A scale of 1-5 might make sense, as it continues the maximum point allocation per song of 5 points and allows a more narrow scope for a clearer interpretation of ratings (3 out of 5 means “mediocre” and 4 out of 5 means “good”, but 7 and 8 out of 10 say pretty much the same thing for me).

I will acknowledge that with the classic camp and the intensive camp, this may lead to a fair number of songs averaging towards the middle if they don’t cater to both groups.

Actually a voting suggestion that I like quite a lot. Only problem is a lot of people don't know how to use a ten point scale correctly and think 7 or 8 out of ten is "average" when in reality it's 5.


Don't join a cocking contest, then. You can't pretend that it's going to swerve people from studies and their jobs because they have to spend 3-4 hours a week on something instead of 1-2.

---

you're late

---

Quick clarification - I'd be onboard with Shorty's suggestion for the next contest. Switching it up in the middle of this would probably just end up being more messy...

people have different time managements tbh so like someone may think they could make it but they end up not, or someone suddenly has free time in the middle of the contest
also the # of people joining was unprecedented so

---

I agree that people's interpretation of how to score on a 10-point or 5-point scale would vary. My guess would be that it's only a noticeable problem in some extreme cases (such as someone only giving entries a 1 or 10 with nothing in between).

An extension to that suggestion would be to normalize each voter's scores in some way, so that entries are ranked based on how "above the average" they are. This may be a bit over the top though.

Alternatively, the tournament rules can make it clear how these scores would be used. For example, ranking of entries could be based on the number of people that rated it above a 7 (with 8s, 9s, and 10s being tie breakers). Scorers would then understand that giving an entry a score or 7 or higher gives it a "voting point", and gives everyone else a notion of quality on their work.

Expressing my immense support for this voting system. Also agree that it would be best to test this in the next contest, and not switch in the middle of this current contest.

---

Aww shucks better late than never

So you score every single file individually? Huh. That's not a bad idea, especially for larger contests. Perhaps for the next one? Although I'm worried with a 10 point system that an individual voter could have the power to either trash a chart in the rankings or hyper-boost one, depending on where the average falls. I'd say we should stick to a 5 point system still.

---

Sorry, but in this case that's not true. Signups closed after Week 3. So it really is never.

I concur that jenro should be able to get in, and I'd like in as well. There seems to be no practical reason to not allow signups up until VIP Round: newer players will be at an inherent disadvantage to make the top 25% for VIP Round, and by joining they'll expand the pool of people that can make it to VIP status (since it's a percent of the total), so it seems like a win-win organizationally.

As to why I'm late, I didn't have access to my desktop until recently, and in rebalancing my tasks in the process, I can finally say I'm able to bring in the workload of the contest in.

Just to complicate things further, a 7-point LIKERT scale is often used in market research (Extremely/Mostly/Slightly Favorable or Unfavorable, and Neutral). That could be a good middle ground if people want more than 5 options (although I think 5 is equally great, I just want to throw this out there).

To continue complicating things further, a lot of researchers like to drop the middle number (in this case, 4) to avoid people hugging the middle. That way, they are forced to choose the "favorable" or "unfavorable" side. As such, it'd be a scale of 1-6. Alternatively, we can do 1-8.

ALTERNATIVE OPTION, which I think is worse but still could be considered: an ordinal system where we just rank the simfiles from worst to best without consideration of points or anything. The flaw is that if you think one simfile is far and away the best, you don't have that included in the ranking or outcome, but the advantage is that you don't have to worry about point totals & mishaps.

except to get in VIP standings, you have to be top 10 in the main rounds, unless that doesn't change anything

---

Nope. They changed it to be the top 25%, which is (currently) 16 people.

no i mean to get VIP points at all, you have to be top 10 i mean

---

Ah, I misread the post then. My bad :x