[Round 3] Top Sims Contest Discussion

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

Please use this thread for any general discussion or questions about the Top Sims Contest. Please do not post praise or criticism for submitted sims in this thread. Instead, post those praise or criticisms in the submitted sim's own thread.

[Marine Captain Llewelyn]

While I am gratified to have my post entitled "the Alamo" put forward for consideration, in the interest of being fair, the post does contain at least one open dialog tag, and is therefore inelligible under the rules. I wanted to bring this to the attention of the moderator and respectfully ask that it be removed from consideration, as I do not want any potential votes that could determine the winner for this round to be discarded because of the post's disqualification. I will not re-submit it, but if Boby wishes to, there was a subsequent post that I believe included all tags...

Respectfully,

[Nimue]

While I am gratified to have my post entitled "the Alamo" put forward for consideration, in the interest of being fair, the post does contain at least one open dialog tag, and is therefore inelligible under the rules. I wanted to bring this to the attention of the moderator and respectfully ask that it be removed from consideration, as I do not want any potential votes that could determine the winner for this round to be discarded because of the post's disqualification. I will not re-submit it, but if Boby wishes to, there was a subsequent post that I believe included all tags...

Respectfully,

There's ONE open tag and because you couldn't just tag it regularly as everyone....

I agree that "The Turbolift to Nowhere" is a masterpiece so I'll let this one fall from competition!

[Guest]

The 'Open Tag' rule is worth having a look at I guess.

How strict is t? Sometimes you'll read an excellent sim by a couple of people but there's a couple of open tags at the end. If they don't detract from an otherwise good sim, can it be posted as an entry or should we wait until all tags have been filled?

I ask because if it's a long sim, some people often 'snip' off the top when filling in their replies to prevent the crew from reading the same bit over and over.

[Greekle]

Wow! There are so many good ones this month, it will be hard to choose.

[Dade]

Eyup folks, when's Round 3 going to close for voting? Not that I'm eager or anything.

[Guest]

It's been quiet for a while - I know there have been many things on the Admiral's mind lately but I'd hate to see this element of the Fleet fade away.

We're all great writers, and sometimes it's nice to get something back from your peers.

[Kali Nicholotti]

So...what does a girl have to do around here to get this contest kicking again?

O.o

[Jordan aka FltAdmlWolf]

Are there two people who REALLY want to take over administration of this?

Requires setting up the bi-weekly threads, moving sims around, making sure it gets announced on the site news, etc....

[Kali Nicholotti]

I spend entirely too much time avoiding work on these forums...so, if there is no one with more experience willing, I will volunteer if someone would be so kind as to train me in what I am supposed to do.

I think this is a great part of the SB118 group...and I know there are others out there that do not want to see it die.

[Guest]

I'd be happy to assit with this. I thiink it is a great feature on the forums and should keep going.

[Guest]

I'd be happy to assit with this. I thiink it is a great feature on the forums and should keep going.

[Guest]

So happy indeed that I appear to have posted the same message twice .

[Nimue]

With so many new people this should live on.

When discussion was initiated should we change anything everyone was happy with rules, but still not just some people but whole ships ignore contest because it's unfair.

It is - but there is no way to make it completely fair - unless we'll be able to find judges outside the Fleet.

If there's a way to make it less unfair, let's make rules which will acomplish it, but abandoning it is just wrong!

Edited July 13, 2009 by Ambassador Labria

[Guest]

True no set of guidelines are going to keep everyone happy however we should be able to come up with something that is reasonable fair.

When I get a chance later today I'll go back through the forum messages and see if I can't list out the rules again and maybe start a discussion on this.

[Guest]

Well there doesn’t seem to be much in terms of discussion left on this forum ?

The only thing I could find was some discussion on missing tags in a post.

Perhaps if a post is missing a tag then if the character tagged does not want to fill it out it could be deleted with a note to that effect ?

Any thoughts?

[Solok]

Forgive my ignorance, but what is it that people find unfair about the contest? It isn't just the "no missing tags" rule, is it?

[Kali Nicholotti]

I think it has something to do with the fact that some ships have a huge presence on the forums, while others don't. Perhaps we need a better way of voting? I have seen a couple of ideas pass by, but it seems that the discussion has come to a halt...unless I am out of the loop, which is possible as well.

[+ Rykel Rior]

I think the issue was exactly that. Some ships in the fleet have a huge forum presence, others, not at all. Plus, not every ship had SIMs submitted. I cannot believe that it was because they did not have any worthy of posting. It takes extra time to find the post you want to submit, and get to the forums to do so.

As far as judging, we are the judges. Each round is put to a vote, there in lies the problem once more. If 3 ships have a good presence on the forums, it is highly likely that only those ships will be represented. Integrity becomes a problem when this is the case.

All of the SIMs submitted are there for the last 3 months...April through June (excluding July, no SIMs were posted)

1 from the Indy-A

2 from the Conny-B

3 from the Challenger-A

4 from OPS

7 from the Tiger

No representation from the Discovery-B, Eagle, or Ronin. The Resolution also had no posts, however, at the time of launch, in late May, It had been 2 months since there was any voting activity. I know I have not submitted anything for that reason.

I do have a suggestion, but am extremely open to others...Perhaps once a month, or every two weeks. Crews can submit their choices for top SIMs to their OOC group, and narrow it down to one SIM with an internal vote, then submitting that SIM to the contest. Each cycle would have one SIM from each ship. Once they are submitted the voting can begin. One person from each ship could be responsible for posting the SIM on the forums, and then posting a link to their OOC group to the voting thread with a reminder. In my eyes that is the easiest way to have the entire fleet involved, and if they do not visit the forums often, perhaps the reminder and link to vote will motivate them. With 9 ships/installations and over 100 members we should never see a vote with 13 votes, which is the exact number that participated in the last vote.

Just grasping at straws...I believe that is what you humans say.

[+ Rykel Rior]

I think the issue was exactly that. Some ships in the fleet have a huge forum presence, others, not at all. Plus, not every ship had SIMs submitted. I cannot believe that it was because they did not have any worthy of posting. It takes extra time to find the post you want to submit, and get to the forums to do so.

As far as judging, we are the judges. Each round is put to a vote, there in lies the problem once more. If 3 ships have a good presence on the forums, it is highly likely that only those ships will be represented. Integrity becomes a problem when this is the case.

All of the SIMs submitted are there for the last 3 months...April through June (excluding July, no SIMs were posted)

1 from the Indy-A

2 from the Conny-B

3 from the Challenger-A

4 from OPS

7 from the Tiger

No representation from the Discovery-B, Eagle, or Ronin. The Resolution also had no posts, however, at the time of launch, in late May, It had been 2 months since there was any voting activity. I know I have not submitted anything for that reason.

I do have a suggestion, but am extremely open to others...Perhaps once a month, or every two weeks. Crews can submit their choices for top SIMs to their OOC group, and narrow it down to one SIM with an internal vote, then submitting that SIM to the contest. Each cycle would have one SIM from each ship. Once they are submitted the voting can begin. One person from each ship could be responsible for posting the SIM on the forums, and then posting a link to their OOC group to the voting thread with a reminder. In my eyes that is the easiest way to have the entire fleet involved, and if they do not visit the forums often, perhaps the reminder and link to vote will motivate them. With 9 ships/installations and over 100 members we should never see a vote with 13 votes, which is the exact number that participated in the last vote.

Just grasping at straws...I believe that is what you humans say.

[+ Rykel Rior]

It looks like the forums like me and Rogers equally....

[Nimue]

Those are excerpts from letters sent to officials to which I never got any response - so no Kalianna, you're not out of the loop as suspected - nothing happened!

PROPOSITION ONE:

Some people even ships are avoiding “Top Sim Contest“, because it is not fair the way it is now. When question was asked around New Year I had no idea what would change in it, or how to make it any better, but with time and talking to people this idea crystallized, so let me explain!

There’s nothing wrong with submission – when contest will be more “fair” more people will be ready to submit works. I would only go with 11 monthly sections where December sims would go into January submission period.

In that case sims would be submitted during whole month, only December/January would be two months as one round, and votes would be collected and posted 15th next month – except November votes which would be pushed till 10th December to leave time for Year voting to be done till 25th December.

Now about voting (if sounds confusing – it’s because it is):

For every period those who will work on contest will choose one member of each crew to assign points to sims in contest (in rest of the text I’ll call that person ship). Person/voter will be chosen at random and from lower ranking officers.

BUT – no ship will be able to vote – assign points to their sims, and at all.

Every ship will be able to distribute a number of points which represents number of sims time 2 minus the number of sims in competition that are coming from that ship time two, and never more than 1/3 points to one single sim.

Example: Out of 10 sims in contest ship A have 2 sims in contest, shop B 2, ship C 1 and ship E 3, and shop F 2, while G, H and E don’t have sims in contest.

Ship A will be assigned 16 points to distribute to 8 sims that don’t belong to writers from that ship, same as ships B and F, ship C will have 18 points to distribute among 9 sims and ship E 14 for 7 sims, while ships G, H and E will have 20 points each to distribute among all 10 sims.

This is confusing in a start, and require more people to work on, but is much more fair and may give new life to the contest.

PROPOSITION TWO:

Nemo iudex in sinea causa. - no-one should be a judge in their own cause. It is a principle of natural justice that no person can judge a case in which he or she is a party. A person who makes a decision should be unbiased and act in good faith. He therefore cannot be one of the parties in the case, or have an interest in the outcome.

No I’m not a lawyer, don’t kill me. I’m just trying to get this dying competition back to life.

Second proposition is to try and make it completely fair by excluding sims from single ship from one of monthly competitions.

Example – now we have 16 sims to judge about. They are from Tiger, Constitution, Ops, Challenger and Indy.

In this period – for this sims can vote people from Discovery-B, Eagle, Resolution and Ronin.

Let’s say it was Discovery’s “month” not to put sims on, and next month it will be Eagle. So next month they will be the “ship to vote” and of course all other ships which will not have sims in competition next month.

Every ship can send those super sims that were not in competition month before due to obligation in next voting period – next month.

This also requires work, but...

[Solok]

Is anybody else concerned that making the process more complex and adding more restrictions/rules will decrease participation even more? Certainly, some people choose not to participate because it's just not their thing. Do we have any numbers on how many non-participants fail to participate for reasons of fairness, how many for reasons of time (i.e., they're too busy), and how many for other reasons or no reason (they just don't want to participate)?

[Kali Nicholotti]

In the attempt to make things fair, things always get more convoluted and complex. I would like to just say in good faith that those of us who lurk on these forums are always going to vote and participate fairly, even if it doesn't always look that way, but the fact is, there is no way to prove this. I am not really worried how we get this back up and going, but I think that we need to. Part of the reason that SB118 looked better than any other RPG out there to me was because of the community that I saw behind it. The community is what makes a group for many people, and if little things like this die and fade away, so will the community behind it.

In the interest of the groups and everyone involved....why don't we just get something going and see how it goes? (Why not take ships out of it and just do it on an individual writer basis?)

Lets do something.

[Nimue]

It is on individual basis! That's probably the problem. Ships have nothing from it, so why bother.

Solok - I don't understand your point. What bothers you here? Since there's a very little to none change for participants. Or you want to work on this to participate in organization of contest?

Edited July 16, 2009 by Ambassador Labria