Weekly Contest: Final Changes 2

I figure if they want to use all three on Monday, and find a better poem Tuesday or Thursdsay, its their fault and they need to exercise some self control lol.

I'm interested in knowing
HELLOn
what do those people, like me, gain?

Praising others good comments on anyone's poem is not a crime.

It is broadminded benevolence on the part of this 2nd critic to recognize a praiseworthy critique, which may or may not have been recognized by the author, and helps the original commenter feel that his 2 cents and valuable time in reading and writing the comment was appreciated by someone. Yes, the poet should not complain that he/she never got to see the critique before it was praised, as most poets visit their own poems and comments many times, to see how people felt about what they wrote. So why should it bother the poet at all, puzzles me. A typical in depth comment for me to write may take 15-30 minutes, sometimes even more. People who thinks that critics (commentors) need only be recognized by the poet (author) have their point of view (but in my opinion are exercising excessive "possesiveness" or "control" in psychological terms, not to be taken as personal/offensive, please) on their poetry, as to who should judge or praise their art when on a public website. In a real world, movies, poems, songs, literature, art and even scientific articles get criticized by critics who critique the reviewer....after all it is a free world indeed! I do sympathize with the artist or the poet that they feel left behind, but I did propose a solution to this earlier ^....request Janis to enable multiple praises, just as in multiple nominations. Further, approving "praised comments" is a mod perorgative, not an authors/poets, so though the poet may feel that the comment was not praiseworthy, the 2nd critique did, and the approving mod did as well. The artist is not the only or the best judge of the critique, fortunately.
Re:^ "..... praising a comment when they don't leave a comment themselves"
It is no different than openly supporting the ubiquitous practice of nominating poems without leaving comments, which many in the PnQ community and mods insist is OK. So Hellon, though I agree with your viewpoint here, and would like both of these practces to be stopped, it is unfortunately not going to happen without a majority/mod support.

Is there a whole new group of people out there just praising comments to gain.
^^^^

LP...I have no idea why you would thing this part of my comment referred to you or 'people like you'....no idea at all?

Since I am answered your question, however, I hope you do not mind if I use you as an example (not targeting you personally...just an example). You are already a nominator so not only can you praise comments left on your own poems you can also praise comments left on others. You have a friend who doesn't have the 10 comments needed to become a nominator so...rather than run the risk of this friend's comments going unnoticed by the author of the poems they have commented on you run along behind their back and praise said comment...before you know it...your friend has now become a nominator....how easy was that. Now this friend can nominate your poems for the weekly contest and can also praise both your comments and their friends comments....do you see where I'm coming from? Now that the mods have tightened up on the requirements for praising a comment hopefully this will reduce the amount of times this happens but...happen it does.

You can praise a comment without senior/nominator status... Unless this recently changed.

Well....I never could before I got my little blue square....I could on my own poems but not on others..the praise comment box never showed .

Anyway..that really doesn't take anything away from what I was saying....how easy it is to get 10 praised comments if you have friends who are willing to do this.

Oh...and can I just ask..out of curiousity...what happens when a mod praises a comment...can they approve it themselves?

Well....I never could before I got my little blue square....I could on my own poems but not on others..the praise comment box never showed .

^
true

Oh...and can I just ask..out of curiousity...what happens when a mod praises a comment...can they approve it themselves?
^
I doubt, i've seen Larry praising a comment on one of his poems, while I was leaving my comment, and it wasn't approved yet. But let's see what mods say about this..

Yes, any mod can accept or decline any praised comment. There are limits on what comments a mod can complain about or delete, though.

EDIT: I have accepted my own praises if they remain for longer than the day. If no one declines them, they stay there forever.

Ummm Hellon... well you have a vivid imagination. I never thought of that this way!!! ;)

But, sorry to say it's not my case that way.

I praised Melpomene, Britt, A Lonely Soul.......... and they are already seniors that do not nominate me.

so your thoughts could be totally untrue..

I think Hellon meant that some people may praise certain members comments to get them nominator status so they can nominate, possibly their poetry. I don't know if its actually happening, but I guess it could be possible.

Um yes, I understand... but I think that would be a shallow thinking of people who do that for that purpose.

With praising comments, you're just giving credit to someone's analysis.

I disagree with the reseting praised comments for everyone, and with getting rid of the other two ways to get the senior status thing. There are those who maybe aren't that great at giving comments but they still are just as active as everyone else. I would see a problem with this. We would be limiting the ability to nominate only to those who can give good comments, which I find unfair. Just my two cents. :]

I agree with Jad.

I restate my earlier position that we're going overboard with the proposed changes.
Let things settle down & see how they go.

We must focus on selecting good judges & trust them to do a good job.

Frankly, stifling who becomes nominator is counterproductive to the final issue because it fails to take into account the difference between Type 1 and Type 2 errors.

Type 1 errors in our case means poems are nominated that should not be.
A Type 2 error is where a poem that should be nominated is not.

If the purpose of the contest is to put the best poems forward, recognize excellence and build a community, then Type 1 errors should be more acceptable than Type 2 errors.

If a lousy poem is nominated, the judges will not select it. No harm done other than the nuisance of it being on the list.

If a world class poem is not nominated, it can never be selected by the judges. Thus, the best poem will not be presented and excellence will not be recognized.

Restricting who nominates *may* tend to eliminate lousy poems from being nominated, but may also tend to prevent the hidden gold nuggets from being nominated. The restriction of nominator status also tends to disrupt the communiality of the site since by its very nature it is exclusionary.

Thus, by focusing on the nominator status we seek to avoid Type 1 errors yet increase Type 2 errors, defeating all three purposes of the contest.

I am seeing that these two "errors" are indeed real problems but I can easily see where they are unavoidable. We can't expect perfection from a society, such as the one this site has created, since there is always corruption.

I don't see how taking away the other two ways gets rid of unnecessary nominations. In fact, it is probably getting rid of most nominations all together. I mean how many people are there that give really good in depth comments? Maybe a good fifty or so. Probably less actually. Many people who nominate poems that end up winning sometimes are probably not commenting machines but people who write a lot of poems or are very active. :]

And lastly, why on earth would you want to reset comments? That would just create a torrent of comments being praised just so people can vote again. Seems like a lot of unworthy comments being praised eventually. I just think we need to work with what we have and move forward instead of setting restriction after restriction to this site. Sorry for babbling but I just wanted to be more clear about my original post. :] Feel free to question me to death;]

Ummm Hellon... well you have a vivid imagination. I never thought of that this way!!! ;)

^^^

Why..thank you LP...I will take that as a compliment although...I would say everyone who posts on this site is on a par so...I don't hold myself unique.

There is a difference between imagination and reality and I was just giving an example of what could...and yes...has happened....no imagination required here.

I meant you made me realize something I didn't know.. thanks for drawing my attention.

I have been watching over the last few months the poems getting nominated and by whom

There is a pool of about 15 - 20 poets who vote almost every week, some of these members vote 3 poems per week some 1

Some but not all vote for the same group of poets every week, whether they are friends or club members, I don't know, make your own analogy

I have noticed in some cases that if somebody gets nominated one week that poet will in turn nominate the nominator from the previous week (human nature I guess)

In the last few weeks there have been in excess of 40 poems nominated, this week 46 poems. which i suspect would be exceedingly tough if you were a judge.

I don't like restrictions of any sort and think anybody should be able to nominate, forget the senior or nominator status stuff

After my last comment you may think im contradicting myself but im not. I think some of those same 15 - 20 members who nominate every week should be far more discerning about the poems they vote for

"Some but not all vote for the same group of poets every week, whether they are friends or club members, I don't, know make your one analogy"
______________________________________________

This site kind of reminds me of my school days, where everyone was divided up into cliques, and the "popular" kids all hung out together. In this case, a group of friends will comment on and nominate their friends' poems (not always, but much of the time).

It might be worth having Janis devise a way to run the entire weekly contest anonymously, to where even the judges won't know who the authors are.

Nicko,
I agree wholeheartedly with your answer here and have noticed it myself.

Though I will say this, generally I do vote for the same people as well. I don't vote all the time, but the ones I vote for are the ones that have moved me with their poetry. Some of them are my friends, some are just accquaintances. Recently, a friend of mine put up a poem and though I know it is there and wanted to nominate it because it is worth front page (in my own eyes) I didn't nominate it because I felt like people would think exactly the only reason why I nominated the poem is because it was my friend. I do need to venture out and find other interesting stuff to read and nominate. But, honestly I get so flustered at reading some of the poems with so many metaphors that I have to try to rack my brain to figure out what they are saying or poems with a lack of intensity. I guess what I am trying to say is that I go with what is most comfortable to me. Though I don't think that the same people should nominate the same people week after week, I have been guilty of it myself.

In a nutshell, I agree with you and though I haven't really nominated much in the past several months, we all need to be more selective of the material we nominate. Put it on ourselves to do so, hold our own selves accountable. If you truly think your best friend has the best poem then nominate but only after you have read every other poem up for nomination.

****Gosh have I had coffee or chocolate or something, I seem to be running my mouth (or fingers) haha

I think one is totally free to nominate the poem he/she wants, be it a fantastic poem or a below average one!

And that is because judges are wise, and they know what kind of poems they should take into consideration..

Why nominate a below average poem when is has no chance of winning ?? that's just dumb

it gives the poet nominated the wrong message thinking they have a much better poem that they actually do, whereas they may need to develop better skills as a poet.

its not a popularity contest, you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, or maybe you do?

It makes the judges job way harder... there were 46 poems last week to judge, of which a lot were your average ones...

or maybe you don't understand the purpose of the weekly contest ??

its aim is to show case the best poems per week! there's nothing in there about average..

Question..

What's is a poem that is above average?

Nicko, I think people nominate poems that they feel are above average. I think we come back to that whole subjective thing. What is great for one is not for another etc.

Kiko, your suggestion is perfect. I agree with you.

I like Kiko's idea but then how does a poem get nominated? If it's anonymous to the judges, it'd have to be anonymous to others...I don't understand how it could work out that way. Is there another way we could do that?

Once again Nicko, perfectly worded.

If any of you have an Allpoetry account, you would see that all their contests are done anonymously and do not require nominations.

Even though I have backed measures to improve the nomination process here, I would much prefer to do away with it and just let people submit one of their own poems each week for the weekly contest.

I'm sure the technology is around to do this anonymously, since other sites know how. It would then be up to the judges to sift through the entries and disqualify weaker poems before sending the better ones through.

I've never been to all poetry (this is the only poetry site I've ever been a part of), so I guess I don't really understand how they do it. Is it by submitting their own poems? I would think we'd have a lot more then, wouldn't we?

Ideally I would like to see the contest judged anonymously also. I often thought about it and it has obvious advantages. The two potential problems I see with it is the judges having to deal with too many poems each week (possibly 50-100 if every member could enter a poem.) And secondly, because most people know each-other so well here (and some people's styles), because we have the pm system and because often some members know the judges it may not always be anonymous. But I think it would be worth thinking about at least.

I actually think this would be easier on the judges, as there would be less good poems to judge each week, since the better poets would not have multiple poems nominated. I think it is quite easy to sift through the poorer writes-- those full of grammatical errors, poorly metered, forced rhymes, over-use of thesaurus, etc..

Plus, we could have a cut-off day. Submit your poem by thursday, or hold it for the next week's contest.

I don't think having less good poems to judge from is a good thing though, less bad poems yes but the anonymous system would probably only increase the number of bad poems. And I know its usually easy to identify 'bad' poems quite quickly when reading them but if there are 30-50 of these poems, it could still take an hour to sift through them. As I said Id love if it was anonymous but I can see a few potential disadvantages too. The more I think about the contest the more I come to realise that there isn't a perfect system out there.

I think everyone agrees that anonymity in the contest is preferable, but hard to manage. Kiko's idea of submitting your own poem for the contest is interesting and is possibly the only way to have it done. However, as Colm said, this may simply mean that more 'bad' poems are up for selection. Also, many of the real 'good' poets out there are not interested in/aware of the contest, or don't feel comfortable with the competitive side of poetry. We may be losing their poems from the running.

However, I still think this idea could be worth a shot. The difficulty will be for the judges on how to manage all the poems.

A few more suggestions for tools to help judges as this is the main issue with the contest:

* Shortlisting tool where judges can hide sub-par poems from their personal list (as discussed).

* Implement a new on-the-spot scoring method where judges simply score each poem from 1-5 against set criteria, without having to compare and rank it with the other poems (which is the time-consuming part). As each poem is scored, it can be hidden from the list. This method allows all nominees to see how well they scored. This would be especially effective and fair if the nominee is the nominator.

* Notify judges in their Account News when more poems have been nominated: "You have three unread poems to judge" so they have a way of easily accessing and scoring (and hiding) the new poems, keeping their list short.

* Shortlisting tool where judges can hide sub-par poems from their personal list (as discussed).

^^
very interesting.

----------

* Notify judges in their Account News when more poems have been nominated: "You have three unread poems to judge" so they have a way of easily accessing and scoring the new poems, keeping their list short.

^^

if possible, I think, this would be great :D

Great mind, Abby!