I've moved the following quotes posts from the
SWC060 August 2022 thread, since they focus on the
Rule Set.
Olli H wrote: ↑Fri Sep 09, 2022 09:26 CEST
I guess this a big basic problem for most of us every month, or at least to me. I wonder how it would work, if the points were given only to the best half of the submissions, for example top 5/10 or top 3/6? And then the rest would be just in the category "no points this month" without any artificially made order of the last ones. Of would that cause too often a hard-to-solve "same points" situation?
A "top 5" voting mechanic maybe only work if we had more than 15 participants, which would then also introduce a bigger shift in positioning. But even then, it might come down to the two folling things:
1) due to the lack of points, some users will definitely be left out, no matter what they do (they won't even show up on "a rank")
2) the infamous "Eurovision Song Contest Favor Votes"
And then we might also have debates of "we had 7 participants, but 2 were always left out". This is not a good situation in my opinion.
alavault wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 22:08 CEST
Fairness is always a touchy topic when dealing with feedback and votes for the lowest positions.
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Some contributions might be deemed as non musical (heavy wink at potential comtemporary "music" composers) but would be compared to average songs. But the songs would still be awarded a number of points that does not fit with the perceived quality.
***
To mitigate this problem, and by seeing the same names and the same number of participants, let's introduce a non-linear grading.
Songs that are worth 0 will be worth 0 and not 4 and 10 remain 10.
Or use a similar rating system as ITU.P800 (i.e Mean Opinion Score measurements).
I am not introducing a new score system.
Making / enjoying music is always a subjective topic. What we have works, and it works well. The problem arises if we have the same participants over and over, and their quality drastically improves with each consecutive game.
alavault wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 22:08 CEST
However, there is another thing to take into account :: the theme of the month. Using a "theme correlation" coefficient would be a sufficient addition to the MOS, resulting in two ranking : one with only the MOS (best perceived song) and weighted MOS (using the theme correlation).
This would create objective feedback on the song but keep fairness for those who tried to be "in theme" while having some issues with the constraints implied.
For two months now, this already started "subjectively" in the comments, and I'm honestly not a fan of that. The focus of the SWC is to "make music", introducing bonus points or a "yes/no" for "adhering to the given theme/genre" is a can of worms.
I'll repeat my example that I
posted earlier:
The theme was indeed "Water (Picture Theme)", but this doesn't mean that you have to create something exactly for this picture. The general idea with every game where the theme and genre is simplified, is to "get inspired by it, and then create something that comes to mind".
Example: if there would have been a photo of a campfire, and the theme title would have been "burning logs", you could have written something based upon "fire", you could have written something about a get-together, you could have written something about a feeling that gives you (like: late night sitting near it, enjoying the weather, the warmth of the campfire, listening to rustling of the wind, etc).
How literal you take something, is up to you. But I find it sad that we're now starting to point fingers towards other participants, and set personal custom points for "not sticking to a given premise". The Songwriting Competition is about making music in the first place. As long as there are no highly detailed pointers given, or a disqualification criteria, we shouldn't argue about that as this takes away the fun from the game as a whole.
The SWC is made to be "lenient" on purpose. Introducing a "coefficient" would complicate things even more, and destroy the last bit of fun we're having with the game.
alavault wrote: ↑Sun Sep 11, 2022 22:08 CEST
Also, an automated process should have been at least in development given the time this forum has been up and running. Automating scrapping and forcing a certain syntax. You know the drill
Yes,
I know the drill. But do you?
How often do I need to bring up, that this whole place is a "one man project", and there are technical limitations? Creating a fully automated process is nigh impossible for me. Not to mention that this would mean using an engine that is not possible to create/use for this forum.
If I had the financial and technical resources, I might have implemented something at this point. And no, please not another debate on "just use a PM account - it's so easy" or "use the built-in custom vote engine" (which can't be added to a thread after the fact, and is limited to 10 votes max, for readability purposes). And using a third-party engine would mean: more rules (cookies, GDPR, new login to prevent voter fraud, etc).
And speaking of "syntax" - I
am enforcing that (more lenient for the SWC, absolutely strict for the MC). And that is: use the filename template, only provide one(!) file (high quality), don't exceed certain loudness values.
Why do I have a feeling, that I should have not written anything? As in: giving final thoughts, or add my own votes, etc? Every time I do that, it seems to result in the same re-heated debates on the "rules" and "how to improve things" since apparently everything is so bad.
The Mix Challenge audio community
is not like competition place ABC. The concept is different, there are no "stakes" involved, there aren't even fees to participate. I can not and will never be able fulfill all wishes, neither are certain technical things possible. I can only do so much after all.
The only change I'd see making the most sense would be: more participants. That in turn would mean more interaction, more feedback, more varied results... and as bonus: a bigger winners podium.