Poetry Contest & Senior Status

After analyzing the comments in the "vote only" thread, I've concluded that we need to rethink what we're doing before taking drastic steps. I posted the results of the vote at the bottom of that thread, but we need to hold off on implementing it.

Let us first focus on how we perceive the purpose of the contest.

- In my own opinion, the purpose of the contest is at least threefold:
....1. to present the best of the site to the world on the 'front page'
....2. to recognize excellence by our members, thereby encouraging creativity in authorship
....3. to develop meaningful interaction and feedback, thereby building a community

- If the same people write the best poems over & over, they probably should win.

- If an excellent poem is by a newcomer it should stand equally to one by an old favorite.

- The aim we should strive for is to assure that the reality of favoritism and peer pressure influence is kept at a minimum, while encouraging the discovery of talent from all areas of the site, including new members.
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There are two basic areas to decide:

- Who Should Get to Nominate: under what criteria, prerequisites, collateral acts (comments) &

- How Judges Should Perform: what guidance, structure or procedure.
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As most have noticed already, Janis made significant changes Based on What We Asked of him:
Poems do not drop off the page anymore.
The contest page is no longer ranked; instead it randomly sorts each time you open it.
The poems you have read are in one hue, those you have not read are in a different hue. (These differ depending on your browser settings.)
Judges' vote points can no longer be seen by anyone other than mods & the contest manager.

He is waiting on our feedback to make further changes.

Moreover, based on your feedback, including those expressed in prior votes, the mods have implemented changes:
Ties which arise will be broken by a rotation of human 'tie-breaker' judges, who must also leave a comment.
Henceforth, judges will be nominated as well as concerns about individuals a member believes may be compromised as judge will be PMed to the mods, none of which will be shared outside the Mod Forum.
Rule 12 has been repealed as being redundant.

We get your ideas & feedback and we utilize them.

Now we are past the easy issues and need to decide what, if any, drastic changes need to be made. In my experience in dealing with large memberships in a static system, the first changes that you make can bring far reaching results, but they are not immediately apparent. If you hasten to make more changes too quickly, you lose the ability to see these early results so that, if things go wrong, there is no intermediate restore position - you simply wind up reversing valuable changes as well as harmful ones.

These are changes proposed by Jane in the voting thread (one of those many posts Not containing a vote (: Note that most of these proposals deal with the nomination process:
Jane "Silvershoes", 13 January 2012, (pardon the editing):
Nomination issues:
a) Make only the Praised Comments category lead to Nominator Status. Not # Poems or Favorites.
b) Change "Senior" to "Nominator" in title.
c) Increase the required number of Praised Comments leading to Nominator Status.
........[Poll results vary from 15 to 23 depending on how you count those not voting 'yes.']
d) Limit the number of times a poem can be nominated by different persons.
e) Decrease the number of nominations a Nominator has from 3 to 2 or 1.
f) Create a smaller time slot in which poems may be nominated.
g) No rollover for a poem that does not win one week.
Judging issues:
h) Enable Judges to manipulate their nomination list to narrow it down.
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Speak first in terms of the purpose of the contest page as you see it, then speak of the suggestions.

I agree with Larry on "purpose of the Contest"

Of the suggestions,
C. NO! Praised comments to me have little to do with choosing good Poetry.
E. Give each member 1 vote per week.

What you like and I like are not likely the same
We each read and choose our favorite Poetry
Even the professional Critique is biased by choice

G. No rollover to next week.
H. No! There is enough manipulation already.

This was was Jane posted in the last thread under h)

h) Stop the rollover. If a poem does not win one week, it should not roll over into the following week .(which I have agreed on already).

I've never seen the h)you have posted here Larry discussed anywhere before and...to be honest, I'm not sure what it means?...

h) Enable Judges to manipulate their nomination list to narrow it down.

I reversed her G & H to keep nomination issues seperate from judging issues.

As "g" hers originally read: "Allow Nominators and Judges to make lists of poems that have been submitted throughout the week, or in the case of Judges, to make lists of nominated poems that they may then narrow down."

Abby clarified the intent behind it was to allow the judges (or anyone, perhaps) to block out poems they already have rejected so they can narrow it down to a short list. It would only affect that particular person's perception of the page, no one else's.

The problem with "no rollover" is that poems submitted toward the end of the week have a much smaller chance of being nominated.

One other thing to add to the laundry list of potential changes is that only nominators should be eligible for judging imo.

The problem with "no rollover" is that poems submitted toward the end of the week have a much smaller chance of being nominated.

^^
True, that is why it would be better if we would make a rule to only nominate for a short period of time each week. Like from once the winners of the previous week are up until Wednesday. If everyone is aware of that then we have a shorter list of poems to decide on each week also..and then a fresh list the week after that and so on.

If each poem has 7 days (for example, not sure how long a poem has to be nominated at the moment) in which it can be nominated, then there should be no problem that I can see. For instance, if a poem is submitted on Thursday, it can be nominated until next Thursday. If it is nominated on the Friday, (the day after it was posted) then its eligible for that week. If its nominated Saturday-Thursday its considered for the following week. In my opinion thats the best way to implement a no rollover policy. Each poem has the same time to be eligible for nomination and can only be considered once, depending when it was nominated.

It wasnt too long ago that there was often only 15 poems nominated in a given week, we dont want to go back to that by having too many limitations on the nominating process.

I think we are trying to change too many things at once. I'm sure we all agree with Larry's mission statement, and that we can achieve everything in it simply by making it tougher for people to become nominators. If we still end up with a lot of "Bobo" type poems in the mix, then we should consider taking other measures, like reducing the number of nominations and having no rollover poems.

If we make too many changes at once, we won't know which changes were actually beneficial.

I agree that we should take small steps, if possible. We just still have to decide which steps to take! Maybe we should start with just one thing that everyone (mostly) agrees on, and try it for a few months, and go from there. Perhaps start by either

-making senior status dependent on praised comments only
or
-giving people 2 nominations instead of three

The scientific method dictates that we only have one variable at a time ;)

As a former scientist, I couldn't agree more.

The "variable" I prefer to play with is the first, since it will have an immediate impact on the quality of the nominations; whereas the second choice just reduces the number of nominations.

But Sib, aren't 99% of senior members seniors because of the '3' praised comments?

I mean... who are the seniors because of the other senior factors?

That's why we are wanting to raise it from 3 praised comments to 15 or more....

LP, I bet most of the active nominators are those with the praised comments. But there are lots of people who are currently senior members because they have been members for a long time or have lots of poems.

LP, there are some senior members who have their seniority through favoritism rather than praised comments.

I say the first step we take is make seniority based on praised comments and leave praised comments at 3 for now. If nothing happens, we can implement another idea and go from there.

:)

But they are only 3 comments!

Don't people staying for longer than 1 year in hear have a maximum of 3 praised comments?

that's weird!

then I'm totally with the idea of this time factor or number of poems factor for seniority.