Comments on: Judging Criteria Explained

By: ineffable

ineffable — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 04:06:26 +0000

2nd place!
I’m very pleased to announce that my entry, rubric, has come 2nd in the WordPress CSS Style competition . If…

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:25:29 +0000

That’s all folks. Track and ping-backs still accepted but they’ll be deleted if they are not related to the original post.

By: Geof

Geof — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:21:59 +0000

Well, if you’d really wanted to avoid the sophomoric character attack, perhaps airing your concerns to Alex via the Web form, rather than in public, was the best modus operandi.

And as the “Offensive or off-topic comments will probably be deleted.” note above the comment box is taunting me, I’ll leave any further derailments to the above trackback, and encourage Alex to just close commenting on this entry.

By: The Indiana Jones School of Management

The Indiana Jones School of Management — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:20:04 +0000

The net.files: “I always come off as brash”
Today, I have seen just the latest example of a net.people phenomenon: “Everyone always tells me that I’m [brash|arrogant|a jerk], but I don’t think I’m like that at all.”.

I’ve been a part of online communities for a long time now…

By: eris

eris — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:13:17 +0000

“As you “get that a lot”, maybe that means something.”

it means i was just saying that to diffuse the situation so that it stayed on topic and didnt turn into a sophomoric character attack.

By: Geof

Geof — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:04:36 +0000

As you “get that a lot”, maybe that means something. It might not be just us.

As for the meaning of the other, I’ll leave you to find that in the Jargon File or something else that will have old Usenet-ese in it.

By: eris

eris — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 21:01:26 +0000

i get that a lot. i always come off a little more brash than i intend to. but please dont blow off my comments because of the way my attitude is being interpreted. i love design contests and i just want to see all of them be successful.

also, what does “HTH. HAND.” mean?

By: Geof

Geof — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:55:59 +0000

Your attitude (to me) doesn’t seem to imply “trying to help” at all. Perhaps you are, but your methods leave a lot to be desired.

HTH. HAND.

By: eris

eris — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:55:39 +0000

forgot to add: you also create the problem of having a judge also be a participant in the contest if you go the route of $$ = vote.

By: eris

eris — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:52:43 +0000

i am not trying to start a fight here. two of my personal picks made the top three, so i am not necessarily upset with the outcome. i have just been down this road before both as a participant and as a judge and i’m just trying to offer my opinion and perhaps help you jump over some future hurdles that you’re going to encounter.

“Actually, if you’re the one putting up the money, you can be.” but was it stated anywhere that contributors were also going to act as the judges? you may have actually increased the prize money 10-fold and had more community involvment in the voting proccess if that were known. instead you get conspiracy theories and rumors of “playing favorites” running through the community.

again, please understand that i am not trying to start a fight or cause an issue. i have just dealt with this before and i’m trying to help, that is all.

By: Geof

Geof — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:30:49 +0000

Actually, if you’re the one putting up the money, you can be. It’s my choice to fund the style competition. I did so knowing that the judging criteria were vague. If I’d had concerns about it, I would have cleared it with Alex before putting up the money.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:29:58 +0000

The goal was clearly stated, it was to provide the WordPress community with a bunch of nice styles that work with the default template.

By: eris

eris — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:28:25 +0000

but any time that you have money involved, you cant be vague. if it has just been a contest where the winner’s prize was simply the knowledge of having won, then vague isnt so bad. but when money is involved, people want to know that the contest is, well, valid. that all the factors will be taken into consideration and that there’s an obvious goal to meet. that way, when you do announce the winners there’s isnt any confusion over why so-and-so got 1st place or 2nd place because the rules were clear and concise and the goal was made apparent before anyone submitted their work.

otherwise, people may not bother to participate in further contests because they dont feel that they’re very fair contests and the credibility starts to hit a downward spiral. and then nobody wins, you know?

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:18:29 +0000

I was intentionally vague on “what I wanted” because I wanted people to be free to create whatever they came up with, not something to try to match some criteria.

By: eris

eris — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 20:11:18 +0000

i think that some of the confusion from the judging came from what you were looking for in a design. there wasnt anything that really clarified if you wanted styles that were good for a generic purpose or styles that had a more specific target audience. the goal of the contest was muddy. i mean, had you been more specific in what you were looking for in a design, then some designers could have submitted designs that met that criteria instead of being penalized because they couldnt read your mind. maybe someone that did a very generic template, thinking you were looking for the best styles that fit every user, would have done a more demographic-specific template and thus added more detail to their design.

and yeah, styles for the masses was the goal, okay. but any time you add $$$ to the equation, you take on a lot more responsibility as a judge.

and on that note, how does donating to the prize pool give someone more say in what designs should win? i think i would rather want someone with a decent expert knowledge of web design judging a contest than someone who happened to be generous with a few bucks they had. and i’m not saying that i dont appreciate that there were some contributors. it was a very nice gesture. but thats all it should have been, just a gesture and not a vote.

please dont take this post as an insult. i am just giving you my opinion because i think this is a good idea and i see room for improvement. and i say this as someone who has been organizing and participating in web design auctions and contests in the blogging community for almost three years now.

sure its hard to appease everyone and foresee all the kinks ahead of time, but its not impossible.