A fairer competition selection system

For competitions and events which include an element of opinion I propose using the following system. That is for events like selecting best photo, fashion event, interior design etc.

The purpose of this system is to promote fairness. As many of us know selection based on electronic votes is unlikely to produce a result that is fair because friends are encouraged to vote for their friends. It then becomes a popurality or number of friends entrants have as the crucial deciding factor rather than the quality of entries.


So the new selection system could be as follows:
* Participants can vote but can vote only on another entry. They are not allowed to vote for their own entry. Weighting for participant votes could be higher than normal votes. The reasoning is each entrant would have put thought and effort into their entry and hence their opinion should therefore be more valuable. It would also encourage people to enter competitions.
* Non entrants can vote but their vote could be weighted lower e.g. half the value of an entrant.
* Designated professionals could also vote. Their vote could be weighted higher than normal. By professionals I'm thinking someone who may for example be a qualified photographer in real life for a vitual photo competition.

Also each vote should be made of the following parts to be considered a valid vote:
1) Disclosure section:
This section is to disclose who may be a friend or known to the person voting. The idea being if such disclosure is made public votes are likely to be fairer because observers can check each vote. If a person voting fails to make a full and honest disclosure their vote should be invalid.
2) Who they voted for
3) Their vote weight
4) Constructive Feedback:
This section could be to give feedback to any of the entries and also it would help entrants improve for future events e.g. especially good aspect of a particular entry but may not have been selected for some reason e.g. entry 101 excellent composition but since the HUD interface was not removed from the photograph I decided not to select this as the best.

If any part of the vote sections is posted incorrectly be it deliberate or by accident it should be considered invalid. Note votes would not be electronic but by posting votes in a thread and hence someone would need to total them up. Also since all votes are in a thread and public they can be scrutinised for any anomalies by all participants and observers.

 

The point is votes should be on the merits of any individual entry and no other criteria. Therefore it is not a popularity contest.

I never get offended with contructive feedback. On the contrary I thank you for your comments as it helps to refine my own thoughts. Without feedback I would not know what you would have been thinkign so in fact your comments are very precious and valuable.

There is nothing in the rules to suggest you cannot vote for someone despite knowing them. The only purpose of making this information known is to gauge each vote and see any patterns. However I do accept your point someone may not want to disclose such information. In the bottom line it comes down to what takes priority disclosure of such info for a fairer contest or the privacy of an individual. I would rankl a fair contest higher. Although some may see it as a big drawback perhaps it can be positive and increase forum maturity.

Why? all it does is show who you are voting. What is the big deal in that?

Perhaps you are right. It's a class system based on voting merit. It's a compromise between a judging panel and everyone votes. A panel of experts should have higher value as long as they know their subject over a layman. For example if judging rocket science which I know nothing about my vote should be less than that of an expert.

Agreed. See we do agree on something Also note this section can be used to make a case of your chosen vote i.e. why you voted for such and such.

 

Hi,

Quite easy. Only pictures are allowed, and they are not allowed to contain any data beside the picture.

The pictures have to be posted to a special gallery where they receive a special enumeration, and then get auto-copied to the voting thread, after a look up.

Example: A contest for best photo, avatar beauty, apartment layout. There's a certain gallery noted where you upload your picts. These are checked by mods if they don't contain links to the uploader, and then approved. Your pict now will create an entry in the contest thread, with a random user name. Ppl will check, and vote.

Quite easy, right?

Have a good time!

 

And I will tell my friends which picture is mine so they can vote for that one.

Want to make it fair? there's only one way: Form a group of people with no relation to any of the participants and make the vote privately. /done

 

Hi,

Got me. Hit, sunk, done. :/

Not sure how to understand this:

Care to explain?

Have a good time!

 

Yes, it is. If you have an open voting, people with many friends in game and in FB (and maybe other communities) will for sure have an advantage. There is a reason why most competitions in RL have judges and not do a simple telephone voting.

 

I think we need some unbiased judges to be honest. It seems to work good for the miss calypso contest. Be cool to have like celebrity judges. Like maybe David could get a rep from Alienware and the marketing company. Or maybe like one of the dev's from the Arkadia studios. People that dont really have close ties to players. Have them each give a 1-10 score maybe on 3 different catagories and who gets the most points from them wins.

 

I kinda like the "panel of judges" myself.
Like above and/or perhaps the AA team?

Otherwise it "could" just be a who knows who/more and who is more liked rather than strictly merit.


And most know how unpopular I am!




Tippin'

 

That's exactly why I decided the last competition I was in would be the last I was ever in.

 

That's the problem it's very difficult to have unbiased judges if not impossible. It's human nature to be biased. There are two kinds of bias deliberate and non-deliberate. We can do something about the former but the non-deliberate is more difficult. Since, it's part of our subconscious. For example say we have a course in school and it's students are too many to fit into one class so the school splits them into 2 classes. If they are numbered class 1 and class 2, research shows students in class 1 will think they are better than 2 and students in class 2 will think they are in some way inferior. Which is why many schools these days may not use numbers for classes in order to avoid such bias.

In statistics we have sample sizes. Now the larger the sample size the more representative the answer i.e. more accurate. Which is why in voting having more people voting may result in a more accurate result.

Your not the only one. I entered a beauty contest once I knew I would not win but that wasn't the purpose. Purpose was to see how it works etc. My experience was the voting was flawed. At least in my opinion. Having talked to other entrants in other competitions there is a sizeable amount who would be dissatisfied with the results. This is where constructive feedback can be so much more than just empty words. If used properly not only does it help to arrive at a good decision but helps people entering to understand how and why decisions were arrived at and hence your more likely to have happier participants. Although someone may not agree with decisions at least they would know how others arrived at the decision. This is no small matter but I think very important and something that can help form a community...

These things are very subjective. Have 10 people and you may have 10 different opinions. We are a product of our experiences over our lives, which shapes our opinions and decisions. It's therefore a mistake to think we are not biased. Again goes back to previous point more numbers are needed to arrive at a representative answer.

Don't have the time to answer some of the other posts. I'll try when I have morte time...

 

of course i judge will have some sort of biased opinion according to personal taste i understand what your saying but thats why you have more then 1 judge. 3 or 5 or 10 even. If i was a participant i know thats how i'd like to have it done. Especially if you can get some people who are not really ingame players to be the judge. Or you take people who are not quite the social butterflies. Also keep the judges secret until the day of the contest.

I never have been a big fan of democracy(i think all forms of current governments are flawed) because people will always vote as to whats good for them and not for the whole. And when one class outnumbers the other it can be very messed up. Just think of a family of 5 or more and giving your under 10yr old children a vote as to what to have for dinner. It be cake and ice cream quite a lot.

 

Copy of post on another forum:

from this thread:
http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?230485-For-people-who-take-part-in-fashion-events-!!

 

Damn, I was kinda hoping for come of the "constructive critisism" in the apt contest.
Thought it'd be kinda fun reading what people would say.

I guess people don't have the time/inclination to type a little blurb commenting on the participents' entries.
:/





Tippin'

 

Well not that it matters much to me, those contests are nice to watch and as I am not in them I am just a spectator.

But here is my opinion anyways, not that it matters.

I think participants should select judges from a panel of judges. If any participant does not like a judge or think they sway results to a friend they can eliminate them from the judging. This way it is the participants own issue if they never eliminated a judge. Judge elimination rounds should be held starting with all the judges and each participant concerned selecting a judge to be eliminated. This keeps going until your number of final judges are reached. If a favoritism judge still exists it is only because the participants (all of them) allowed that judge to stay and do the judging.

Judging should be on a point system not just wow that looks nice you win hands down. There should be one point keeper that tallies judge results and publicly posts the results and a panel of some number of judges. example: armor competition, does the atire state fashion into the battle field, does the avatar do proper presentation of the armor, does the weapon match the armor etc. same goes for evening wear etc. Each thing has a point system 1-10, 1-5 etc. that the judges weigh after each entry the judges send in for scores for final tallying. all results along with points are publicly displayed afterwards so final results are not mucked with to favor anyone. This allows the judges to see their points to make sure of this, names can be anonymous because they should know what they gave as points.

For the upcoming hoverpod, points would be weighted on does the color contour with the vehicle, does texture match colors used, does the overall hoverpod fit into the category entered (if there are multiple categories)

But anyways you should get my point here, hoping for more fair voting and less bickering because these contests do bring some nice elements into the game and force designing which use materials and promote growth in the economy.

 

Some great ideas there. The "judge elimination" would be like eliminating jurors in a trial... it would take a bit of time, but they could easily do that in the preparation up to the event. I also agree that where you have multiple presentations (like in the beauty/fashion contests) you want to go with points for each session, and I agree, points should be displayed publicly after each session.

 

Good idea in theory, KMax but might be more difficult to implement.

It might be hard to bet a selection of judges to panel that coincides with the promoter's schedule.
I suppose the selction process would include, well...Another poll as well?

Albeit good intentions, choosing a jury kind of takes the fun out of things.

Ah, if only more people had more integrity...(That sounded kinda "High and Mighty" of me, didn't it?)

Still, we all know how some people in EU are and how low some people will stoop.
I am NOT saying anything is going on wrong with this current constest. But being who I am, and knowing how EU/EU players are, I have a smal inclination there's at least a little "dirty play" going on.
In fact, we all'd be stupid to believe there isn't.

Plus, there's what, 7 days left?
Watch at the end...I bet some polls "blow up" with sudden "bursts" of voters that suddenly realized they "forgot to vote" for the last 2 weeks!


....Yea, I'm a pessimist...Can't really blame me tho.
:/





Tippin'

 

OK because there are the Olympics these days that gave me an idea. Why not use a 'expert' panel of lets say 5 people. They all cast their scores and the top and bottom score is removed from the list, as they do with gymnastics and diving I believe, and the other 3 scores are added together. This way the biggest problem with biased judges is eliminated.

The 5 scores can be published as well to see what points all the judges gave. This way it is a open and transparent scoring system and I'm sure 5 people can be found that would like to be the judge (might not need to be the same people all the time).

So lets say David, Cyrus, 2 members of the community that change every time and maybe someone from the sponsor or advertising agency or a random employee of Arkadia Studios or maybe Davids wife or Cyrus' wife or whatever.

I agree that with competitions that need votes it is mostly who you know, not what you can actually do, but Georges idea sounds like a lot of work for the one that organized the competition to check everything and count the votes. So a panel of judges sounds easier and pretty fair to me.

 

This is all very sad, I know the organisers put in a tremendous amount of work to make this event happen

 

Some very good suggestions RAZER.

Your right my idea is a lot of work and I'm sure has it's other downsides too. However, I think it's a system that could be quite intresting especially the feedback. I like the idea of participants getting better with each entry and feedback is something that would allow them to do just that.

With these type of competitions which are very subjective with any other system we don't really know what each voter was thinking. With this method that becomes a bit clearer and as such invaluable. It's something that would then be a pleasure to read and would make the person voting think before they vote.