Judge Recs #2

A continuation of the last thread. Here is the latest post:

"Due to the replacement process we have 5 judges in place for this term, although they did not all start at the same time.

We haven't decided yet how, when or if to transition to 3 judges.

Playing devils advocate, though, since I'm leaning toward 3 judges myself, everyone should understand that we are sacrificing quality for convenience.

With five judges, it takes at least two people to agree a poem is award worthy, even if one person is a tie breaker. With three judges it will require only one 10 vote for a poem to win, which will occur frequently.

In rare cases it will even suffice for a single 7 vote for a poem to win. If three 10s & two 7s go to two poems & all other votes go to different poems, then the poem with the third 7 will go on the front page."

-Larry Chamberlin The Godfather

I really think things need to get more organized and then we wouldn't sacrifice quality for convenience. I don't feel things are that organized anymore. That being said, we used to have three judges and changed it before to have more opinions. The five judges thing worked for a long time, and then we voted for shortening the judging term to get people more interested and available.

If we're coming down to people just not being interested anymore I think that's saying something. People are losing interest overall, it's becoming more and more evident.

We would still find people who might drop out or not do the job perfectly. Whether they are 3 or 5. I guess a poem going to the front page due to a judge giving it 7 is kind of disappointing. Even if one day this poem is mine or one of my friends', I'd still think it's unfair.

We need variety, we need convenience, fairness and quality, all at the same time.
I'm not saying that having 5 judges would be just perfect and would solve all problems but we don't want to go through something even worse by enforcing the 3 judges thought. I don't know. Won't struggle with this anymore, seems like people realy did lose interest. Britt's right.

Well, all we can do is listen to what has been said so far and work with it. I guess we could send out a mass PM to get more members in here contributing their thoughts?

There was also the discussion from the last conversation three months ago to maybe reduce the number of poems that are nominated, so instead of nominating three, we would only be able to nominate two.

I know it was discussed but I can't recall the outcome.

I thought maybe that would help the judges with time restrictions.

Maybe have four winners per week and then less nominated poems. Either way things can be tested and not everyone is going to be happy with whatever decision is made.

x

^ Oh yes, I had forgotten about that. Thanks!

I agree with Liz, minimizing the number of nominated poems is really helpful to the judges and kind of challenging to the nominators themselves.

OhOhOh, I have an idea.....

Since the poems on the nominations list page are now sort in a random way (regardless of the number of nominations, comments, votes, time spent there, etc...), a poem should not be nominated by more than one person.

In that way, various poems would be nominated without rotting behind the scenes.

I know what you're thinking now. Wouldn't this make the nominated poems on the list countless? And so, wouldn't the judges suffer more?

- Actually NOT, for if we reduce the number of poems to TWO, or even ONE poem (why not?), the amount of nominated poems would stay as it is now where we have 3 nominations and a poem can be nominated endless times.

I am 100% sure this would come handy. And it would be fair for all people.

Mark, yes you are right. But as I said, my suggestion with Liz's suggestion (maybe we can also make it '1' nomination per person only) would balance the problem of increasing poems.