Should there be a change in weekly judging? Continuation

Sibs:I have to disagree a little bit here.
1)Each numerical add on to # of winners, statistically adds the probability of a new gifted member winning, when competing against established winners.
2)There are numerous times when a winning poem is picked by just 1 or 2/5 judges, and when other judges and members read the winners, they often (not sometimes) disagree with one or more of the winning poem (e.g 3 or 4/5 judges in this example)...so to justify that the judging is really a consensus, is statistically flawed (1 or 2/5 is not > 3 or 4/5). So there goes the theory that judges do an excellent job...the 3 or 4/5 actually by not voting on the winners, already disagreed by a majority on that winning poem (what more proof does one need for a flawed system?).

Compare the above model to a site wide (or if you need experienced folks...just senior members voting, ie. by giving the voting button only to senior members (approved by the mods in the current system)..... less chances of such a large scale flaw like the one cited above ever occuring, practically every week!
3) The question is not about popularity or friend circle or bias anymore, but is there a statistically sounder system possible than the current one with the flaws pointed above?
4) So to accomodate both viewpoints, I will present a compromise here, taking cues from one of your remarks above.

What if you have a front page for :
a) Weekly winners (3) from judging (existing method),
and another
b) Weekly winners (3) by site wide (or) senior member voting .

By having 2 separate winning sections from the same pool of poems on the front page, there will be not only additional choices/winners in each section from the same nomination list , but also an actual consensus of what the senior site members (who could all be potential judges one day) really like compared to what just 1 or 2 appointed judges liked. Ties will be virtually improbable in b) and people who win here will be credited to have a statistical impact factor (IF) in the 20's to 100's, compared to 1-4 or even a max of 5 in the group a). (IF is a validated statistical method used to rank popularity of scientific journals..search wikepedia/google to learn more). The more the people who choose a poem, the more the citation #, the greater the impact factor... a very much validated methodology. So in method b) we are talking of poems which impacted scores of senior members, whereas, in method a) the winner was chosen by as few as 1 or 2 judges.
I hope the presentation above makes sense, and the compromise satisfies all.
PnQ Readers, please think carefully, before striking the new suggestion presented here, which has a validated scientific/statistical argument behind it.

Response to post below (just saving space so the thread does not close quickly):
Hellon, scrapping has been suggested by a few people (Narph, Yaki), but like any other art (and science), a sense of competition keeps people motivated to produce their best (keeps them on their toes), and gives a certain degree of accomplishment, just like in any sports/olympics, club contests or elsewhere. Human brain performs best when challenged, don't you agree.

What if the voting system was scrapped altogether? Members could still comment and senior member would still have the opportunity to nominate a poem if they thought it worthy. This would do away with all the bickering about downvoting upvoting etc.. and members would not have anything attached to their names with a rating stigma?

To answer you question...and to also save space...my we're being very environmentally conscience...( I'm into the environment so don't take that the wrong way :)) Some people write just for themselves....others are competitive yes..I will agree with that but I don't see how taking the voting system away would alter any of that? I know some non senior members may feel depraved if they couldn't vote but so what...if it's across the board...no one can vote and...it may just make members work a little harder to become seniors.

* EDIT

And I'd also like a rule put in place that members should be on this site for a minimum of 3 months before the are upgraded to senior members. I saw one person magically becoming a senior overnight...

Kiko highlighted the problems with the nomination system, they are similar to the voting system and the same problems would be found if every member had a vote for the contest (lack of poetic knowledge, voting for friends, corruption etc.) Thats what the judges are in place for: they should be qualified to pick out the best poems from the nominations list. I dont think we need a second contest, in my opinion would end up a popularity contest for reasons stated and that is not much good to anyone. We already have top rated poems in each section that are based on members votes, and members can nominate poems for consideration.

As for your other point, it is interesting but poetry isnt a science. All art is subjective, but some art is recognisable as higher quality than other, same with poetry. You are never going to have a majority of people happy with the winning poems all the time, its impossible, there is too much variety of opinion and knowledge for that. If you take the Mona Lisa for example, considered a masterpiece. If you asked 100 art critics what their favourite art piece is they would give a wide range of answers, definitely not a majority for any one piece, but they would at the same time recognise that the Mona Lisa is a masterpiece. Its the same with poetry, possibly even more subjective. I rarely see a poem get even four votes, or something that would be considered a clear majority. With five judges, opinions are going to differ and that allows some degree of differentiation in personal tastes. So long as they can recognise good poetry that is the main requirement. Im quite happy in general with the quality of poems on the front page in the last year or so, even if I may not have personally agreed with all weeks. The same logic that more judges 'disagree' with the poem winning than agree with it could be applied to the suggestion of everybody voting also: If 10 people voted for a poem to win then that means 1000s 'didnt' want it to win... Id rather have 2-3 votes from qualified judges with comments than 10 from potentially unqualified or biased people.

Basically, its never going to be a perfect system. There are always going to be disagreements, and discussions could go on and on, but its pretty much as good as can be expected. Generally a selection of the higher-quality poems each week win. So long as the judges do their job, it works quite well. If it aint broken dont fix it. Thats all Im going to say really. Sorry for rambling on.

I don't know about your statistics, David. 5 slots gives new members a better chance of winning than 3, but it also gives old timers a better chance of winning than 3. Unless they were spots designated for only new members, I still don't see it.

"b) Weekly winners (3) by site wide (or) senior member voting."

We kind of already have that in the 5 "Top Rated Recent poems," which are also on the front page.

I think I'm with Colm, here. To fully disclose, I'm not sure that I would trust the majority of site members to pick the best poems. They might pick the poems they liked the best, sure, but I feel that the quality would not be as high. I do, however, mostly trust them to recognize those people who consistently give good critique. With our judges, they are people who several members at a time have judged to have good taste in poetry. Otherwise they wouldn't have been nominated multiple times and by multiple people. Sure, I don't always agree with the weekly wins, but I don't see them getting any better by opening up votes to everybody. I actually kind of like the fact that our current judges have such different preferences. It means that the winning poems that we're getting are coming from a variety of places and styles. I'd prefer that to having the same few members winning every week just because 3 of the judges thought they were the best.

I'd rather win due to the opinions of a few people whose taste I respect, than win because thirty 14-year-olds happened to think my poem was "so awesome."

Many problems with the nominating system can be overcome if it were more difficult to become a senior member. My understanding is that the fastest route to becoming a senior member is to be on the favorite author list of a bunch of people.

If we did away with that and required a senior member to earn 10 or more praised comments, and we set up some real guidelines for these praised comments, we would have a much more talented pool of senior members nominating poems each week.

I would be heartily for higher standards for senior members. I believe you must currently have either:

3 praised comments
or
100 poems

The 100 poems is fine by me, but I think the praised comment requirement should be higher. I don't think being a favorite poet has a say in it. I'll double check on that, though.

-Sibyllene

The way I was granted the option to nominate poems was after I received I believe more than 3 praises.

Like two months after I joined, I noticed that when I got the silver award, I was able to vote not just rate one's poems.

And back then, I didn't know what the vote button was for. I thought it was the same as for the rating.
So at first that was a bit strange to me.

Later on, I found out its purpose.

So I don't know if the one that nominated the poem about the monkey, nominated as a mistake or because it wanted to enter it in the weekly contest. That's why a sort of constructive comment is important after we nominate the poem. I mean a little more than I just like it or love it.

Yes, I think the number of praised comments to become a senior member should be a little notch higher.. Maybe 12 or 15.

And one thing... It doesn't matter if someone nominates a poem which doesn't tend to the 'standards' of writing poetry, at least.... Everyone is free to nominate the 3 poems he/she wants... of bad, fair, good, or excellent quality, it's a personal choice, and you shouldn't interfere with that!!!
I mean the judges aren't this dumb to eliminate under average poems from their choices.

I agree, LP. I've probably said this before, but I think any poem should be free to be nominated, and we have to trust that our judges are wise enough to consider them or discount them.

Yup, it does seem like a good idea to increase the number of praises to determine who becomes a senior member.

I think that number should be closer to 50.. or maybe that's too high.. lol

Ha, then we'd have 23 senior members, some of whom aren't active, and none of whom are mods. I think. That would be entertaining.

....and the second part of the equation is that any nominated poem should be justified by the nominator by their comment/critique, which should be much more than what was stated in that "monkey poem" comment.

I don't think nominations being justified are necessary. You could have a good, valid reason for liking a crappy poem and feeling it is front page material.

^^^

I guess you could Britt...unfortunately I can't think of a single one right now...can you?

Anyway..I believe Kiko was referring to the comment left on the poem...not the poem itself.

Well you have people who like forced rhymes including fear, tear, heart, apart, love, above. So to them it would seem totally legitimate. To me personally.... Not so much.

My big question with justifying notifications is: Who does it hurt to nominate a crappy poem? Or to nominate a decent poem for crappy reasons? If people are determined to nominate friends, they will continue to do so - just with wordier justifications. Nominations simply give judges a pool to choose from. Judges still don't have to choose poems that are sub-standard.

I really think the best way we can ensure that good poems are nominated is to raise the calibre of the people who are doing the nominating.

I think that is a great idea.

Everyone has different views on each poem. Some may like one poem and others may dislike it.

I think it's a matter of personal taste and how people feel when they read the poem.

I can't imagine what the judges have to go through when reading each poem and deciding.

Instead of increasing the number of poems to Win how about decreasing the number of poems we're allowed to nominate each week. That way it will be I think at least easier for the judges.

Just a thought...

x

First, thank you all for your discussions and criticisms on the 5 nomination suggestion, and on the alternate suggestion of sitewide (perhaps senior member voting). The unfortunate glaring flaws in the current system that will remain are:

1) In the current method exhibit a) above, it only needs 1 or 2 judges to select a winner..........a methodology that will never be justified in any scientific circle, nor in a democratic election, regardless of how qualified the judges (or voters) are. It will leave plenty of room for forever criticism, and finger pointing in an analysis. Perhaps, the mods should do this analysis by looking at all the winners in the last judge's panel and identify who voted for whom most, and disclose the analysis here, for others to dissect.
So in my opinion there is definite room for improvement here, as the current contest winning is truly meritless.

Rethinking, the issue about the 1-5 scoring system voting on all the nominated poems, as previously proposed and extensively discussed, it may work this time perfectly, if we fix its only real statistical flaw, as pointed out by Larry in that thread, by using a tie-breaker individual from a mod or independent (not club affiliated) recognized senior individual (as per Hellon)...the same methodology being voted upon in a separate thread put up by Sibyllene. Also, one could eliminate the odd and unlikely winners emerging from 5 votes of 3, or 2 or combination of them, by simply disqualifying/discarding the poems with no comments such as the 3,3,3,3,3 (15 pts) or 2,2,2,2,2 (10 pts) or combinations whereof, as none of these were voted 4 or 5 to earn comments, being rated just 2 or 3 were just too substandard in all of the judge's opinions. This way, at least the winners will be more deserving, having been voted upon by all 5 judges, than just 1 or 2 judges.

I would really appreciate Larry's valuable comment/guidance on this particular modification of the originally proposed 1-5 system (my other thread) at this time.

2) Sibyllene, there is really nothing wrong with this suggestion of splitting the front page from the same group of nominated poems with:

a) Weekly winners (3) from judging

b) Weekly winners (3) by site wide (or) preferably senior member voting on its quality.

This way, more good nominated poems are on the front page, not just the ones with the most "backers" (nominations) or the most comments (1 line or not).
And, Sibyllene, it seems the current favorites on the front page does not seem to follow the proposed winner rule in b). e.g The current top poem in it this evening is an un-nominated poem "Unspoken apologies" with 11 votes, which knocked out yesterday's top poem "Exbury garden" with 13 votes, which knocked off the prior day's top poem "An eclipsed sunshine" with 14 votes......so the computer has a different logic programmed in it that is not what is proposed in method b).

3) Please do consider limiting the # of nominated poems by either having people justify the nominations or using some method, such as that proposed above by Kiko ...making the standards a little tougher to become a senior member.
There are currently 40 + poems in the nomination bank today to be judged, which will break any judge's back! (yes Sibs ^, it will really make the judge's eyes sore this week and in the coming weeks and months when they read through all of them, they are just volunteers). So this is the most urgent need to be fixed, please. Good Luck judges for this week's marathon reading and judging.

If this thread closes, Sibyllene or any of the mods, please copy and paste this summary in the next thread. Thank you all, for keeping it respectable and for all the valuable pros and cons on the proposed suggestions/modifications. It was enlightning.
(And yes Calm ^, I completely agree with you that Poetry is not science, but an art; but judging poetry and art is a science by itself :)).

Increasing the amount of praised comments required to be a senior member sounds like a good idea esp if nominations continue to be as high in number.

To respond to A Lonely Soul again, its interesting to read your points but I think you are searching for a perfect solution that isnt there. You also seem to be repeating yourself (which I may do myself now in response), its the end of the second thread at this stage and pretty much the same ground is being covered. What you seem to forget in regard to your point 1 is that if 2 judges voted for your poem, thats 40% of a vote for your poem. Your win is indeed worth something because it scored more points, distributed by knowledgeable people, than 30-40 other nominated poems. As I said you are never going to get a majority concensus with the judges over three poems. If judging was a true science then the judges would be given a formula to measure a good poem, they would analyse it and each judge would come up with the same answer. The alternative is favouritism voting and people voting who do not have sufficient knowledge of poetry: if the current system is the lesser of two evils I would take it any day. In any democratic government, there isnt a general election or referendum every time a decision has to be made, a small amount of capable people are elected to make decisions, its similar on PnQ with the judges for the contest. And they can only vote from poems the members nominate.

In regard to your point 2, sorry but, you seem to be making the same point again. As already stated, we have a favourite poem section, top rated sections and people can nominate poems. Admittedly the voting system is pretty worthless but I dont think we need a second contest in addition to these things. A contest is supposed to measure quality not popularity. Your ideas about every member having a vote I think may be more applicable if there was going to be a change in the current voting system, as opposed to a contest.

Im gone off track a little because what I really wanted to respond to is this:

'Perhaps, the mods should do this analysis by looking at all the winners in the last judge's panel and identify who voted for whom most, and disclose the analysis here, for others to dissect'

^^
I would be against this idea. Well I would be against the disclosing who voted what part anyway. It would only open the judges up to ridicule and leave them open to bashing: 'He voted for that person three times... She voted her because she is in her club... He never voted for me...' etc. As you rightly say judges are volunteers, they leave comments justifying their picks they shouldnt have to be scrutinised after doing their job. They shouldnt feel under pressure about what somebody might say because they voted this poem. The mods could keep track of statistics (they might already do this) and they could deal with any problems or discrpepancies that appear. I dont see any advantages in disclosing who judges voted for, only disadvantages.

Sorry to keep filling up space but I am only responding to others and I think we could go on forever if we kept looking for a perfect solution. By all means start a new thread but I dont know if it will achieve anything after all this discussion already. I said this earlier, others have said it too, if it aint broken dont fix it.

Calm: Thank you for your comment on my last opinion/suggestions.
Point #1 id not a restatement, please read carefully. The 1-5 point system when originally proposed by me, incorporated a significant improvement over the current system, where not all judges vote on all poems, to dilute favoritism and to break the frequent ties. It was shelved in the last thread because Larry pointed out that there is a loophole when a winner emerges from 3,3,3,3,3 or 2,2,2,2,2 without comments, astutely. I am now suggesting that there is a solution to that above and asking Larry and other people if this would take care of their concerns. So, though I appreciate your comment, I am not repeating myself. There were many merits of using the 1-5 system as pointed out in the other thread over the current system, which is very much flawed. in fact you yourself admit to it above (Admittedly the voting system is pretty worthless )...but yet go on to support a "worthless system!" when scientific/statistical analysis points to a system riddled with flaws and favoring only a few.

Re: your comment above In regard to your point 2, sorry but, you seem to be making the same point again...
^ this may seem like a repetition to you, but is addressing Sibyllene's comment on it above with my observations that the current favorite list updated daily is much too random and not representative of the proposed b) which will be a true representationof what the "seniors" or "all constituents" choices. Again, there is no "harm" to it, as it is representing a "popular" vote, not a select 1 or 2 person vote. Yes, you could always "pooh pooh" it, like many "experts" above have done so, but then one is really underestimating the art of certain gifted young and upcoming souls (the 14 year old's), by professing that they are "nobody's", a true discouragement to beautiful young and upcoming minds on a website for all who contribute to it. I would truly not support it, as I do not see anyone here being Pablo Picasso here, in your earlier analogy of Mona Lisa admirers. We are deluding ourselves by self adulation, by promoting narcissism. Sorry, I did not want to go as far, but this is what is obvious.

Lastly, yes when a request for an audit is made, to assess whether the people who say

will finish later.....

This thread has exceeded 100 posts & will now be locked.

If you have something new to contribute, feel free to continue the topic in a new thread.

Seems to me the one consensus is to raise the # of praised comments it takes to become a senior member. Perhaps the logical step is to vote yes or no to raise them & the number of praised comments it should take.