[LAST MINUTE SCRAMBLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

It's the 2022 Vanilla Contest.
deice
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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby deice » Wed Jun 15, 2022 2:26 pm

Enjl wrote:
Wed Jun 15, 2022 2:22 pm
Hope this explains the situation.
yea, thanks for clarifying. unfortunate situation but the reason for disqualification is quite sensible.

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby ditditdit » Sun Jun 19, 2022 11:59 am

why is there no hub?

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby deice » Sun Jun 19, 2022 12:34 pm

ditditdit wrote:
Sun Jun 19, 2022 11:59 am
why is there no hub?
because the results aren't out yet?

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Alagirez » Tue Jun 21, 2022 8:13 am

Missed this yet again. Oh well there's always next time. At least I can play the submissions now.

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby ditditdit » Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:26 am

deice wrote:
Sun Jun 19, 2022 12:34 pm
ditditdit wrote:
Sun Jun 19, 2022 11:59 am
why is there no hub?
because the results aren't out yet?
maybe... my level got in though!

i just LOVED the 2021 hub.

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby KurttheKing » Wed Jun 22, 2022 8:57 pm

ditditdit wrote:
Wed Jun 22, 2022 9:26 am
maybe... my level got in though!

i just LOVED the 2021 hub.
We'll see! Maybe mine got in too! :D 8-)

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby deice » Thu Sep 15, 2022 7:06 pm

hey so i do hate to be That Guy but would any of the organizers be willing to disclose what the exact hold-ups are with the contest? if the judges have personal matters to attend to or something along those lines, that's perfectly fine - i'm not here to rush or ask for estimates, but i would like the radio silence to be broken.

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby wyldstrykr » Thu Sep 15, 2022 9:58 pm

probably coordinating with the chocolate staff, in addition to real life and other projects (level,episodes and such)

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Emral » Thu Sep 15, 2022 11:17 pm

exam season. results will be in october.

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby KurttheKing » Sun Oct 30, 2022 11:03 am

It's the second to last day of October. Where are those results?

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Valentine » Sun Oct 30, 2022 3:07 pm

I've been trying to get them out as fast as possible on my end, unfortunately the fault for the delays has mostly been on my end. Unfortunately also, is that things which are significantly higher priority than judging a vanilla contest have been taking over my life recently and have been leaving me with no energy to actually judge many levels, especially due to the average difficulty. I'd rather my scores be fair than skewed negatively because I just don't have the energy to spend on the more difficult levels. In addition to that I screwed up scheduling the contest since the start and ended up with me having a messy and packed schedule and heavily burning out on mario followed by a month of exams, which led to me starting my judging far later than would've been desired.

Unsure how long it'll take, hopefully not that much longer, but if I give an estimate I know that will only cause problems for me in the future, since I know how I do things.

Sorry for taking so long on this, it has really been excessive and the wait is a tad ridiculous, but it has not been abandoned, if that helps give any clarity.

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby deice » Sun Oct 30, 2022 3:18 pm

Valentine wrote:
Sun Oct 30, 2022 3:07 pm
things which are significantly higher priority than judging a vanilla contest have been taking over my life recently
don't stress it, taking away time from actually important matters to do something like this would definitely suck the fun out of it quite quickly. and if the people involved aren't having fun, the community event kinda loses its purpose.

take your time and take care ^^

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby KurttheKing » Sun Oct 30, 2022 11:45 pm

Valentine wrote:
Sun Oct 30, 2022 3:07 pm
I've been trying to get them out as fast as possible on my end, unfortunately the fault for the delays has mostly been on my end. Unfortunately also, is that things which are significantly higher priority than judging a vanilla contest have been taking over my life recently and have been leaving me with no energy to actually judge many levels, especially due to the average difficulty. I'd rather my scores be fair than skewed negatively because I just don't have the energy to spend on the more difficult levels. In addition to that I screwed up scheduling the contest since the start and ended up with me having a messy and packed schedule and heavily burning out on mario followed by a month of exams, which led to me starting my judging far later than would've been desired.

Unsure how long it'll take, hopefully not that much longer, but if I give an estimate I know that will only cause problems for me in the future, since I know how I do things.

Sorry for taking so long on this, it has really been excessive and the wait is a tad ridiculous, but it has not been abandoned, if that helps give any clarity.

It's all good! I was just wondering

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Aurora » Fri Nov 25, 2022 8:28 am

Where can I see the placement of levels?

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Cloth Pocket » Fri Nov 25, 2022 8:50 am

Aurora wrote:
Fri Nov 25, 2022 8:28 am
Where can I see the placement of levels?
Judging is still ongoing, so the placements haven't been released yet.

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Alagirez » Wed Dec 14, 2022 10:11 am

I'm not one of the participants in this contest, but I just want to remind that it's almost 2023 and I wonder if there's an update on the reviewers.

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Sux » Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:20 pm

Okay, it's over 7 months since the deadline, the waiting period has already become unreasonably long, this is ridiculous. The results of a 2022 contest won't even come out in the corresponding year.
It's not like I'm doing absurd claims and demanding an amount of hard work from judges, in the previous contests the results was released around 3 to 5 weeks and with an episode along (ToB series). I just want to see some progress being made, instead of getting generic answers like: "I'm working in it" that there is nothing concrete to confirm or standart excuses about "personal stuffs" to justify everything.
However, instead of just complaining I will give constructive criticism for the improvement of the next contests.
First all, choose judges who are really committed with the contest, as said in Enjl's level judging topic about disciplined work ethic. A suggestion is backup judges, so if you become suddenly busy, there's another people to replace you, or even in the last instance, have the decency to quit when you realize that you will not be able to do your work in a satisfactory time. One suggestion would be a judging deadline, this would help in organizing the events in a row and give the designers a guideline on what and when to expect.
As it has already happened, I suggest a vote to choose judges for the next contests, in such a way to enhance the quality of the competition, as well as to be a democratic way for everyone to express their tastes.
Such as the contests stay in the hype for a short time after they end, we rarely have episodes, another suggestion I have is in case the organizers warns beforehand that they will not make an episode, hire volunteers designers to create an "official" one that can be released along with the results
Would be good if this year 2023 has a calendar of events, it makes things more organized and prevents it from becoming a failure on organization in the end.
If there is a feeling that there are not enough staff to manage such events, the community is large and there are certainly skilled people to join (and no, this is not an attempt at self-promotion).
I hope that I will not be harmed in this and the next contests as well in community roles by my ponderings, I'm only doing this because events are what keep the SMBX community active, and I feel outraged when I see the careless that has become.
All the best everyone

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Re: [LEVEL PACK AVAILABLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Emral » Sun Jan 01, 2023 3:51 am

As the event manager team lead I highly appreciate your feedback, and give a detailed response below. I will spoiler this response as to not derail too much. If you wish to reply to this post, or have questions, shoot me a PM. After this contest is over I will open a general contest feedback thread where posts like this can find a proper home.
Spoiler: show
Sux wrote:
Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:20 pm
stuff
I think you're rightfully upset, and I have long taken some learnings from the situation to apply to contests going forward to try and prevent it from repeating. I just want to make a few things clear about your suggestions, because while I appreciate them a lot, there seem to be some misunderstandings (perfectly fine as peeks behind the curtains are rare).
Sux wrote:
Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:20 pm
First all, choose judges who are really committed with the contest
I fully agree with this. The problem with voted judging is that the turnout is rather low. The topic to apply for future judge positions is still open and will always be, but we haven't had an application in well over a year, so while we try to prioritize through that, it's hard to do so when nobody's there.
The other idea we've tried is judge auditions, which work generally alright but add quite a bit of a pre-production burden on everyone involved. A set of levels for the mock-judging has to be made/sourced with consent from the authors, and a month has to be pre-allocated for the judge auditions to be carried out. In an ideal world this would be no problem, but in practice it's often forgotten when (even in this contest!) asking "hey anyone wanna judge? lemme know if you're available" (as the judges that were chosen via that method have finished in a reasonable time frame) gets results just as good. It kinda died due to costs outweighing benefits. As cool as democratic votes sound on paper, they're kinda bogus here, we've learned.

The learning I've taken from this is that having more judges ready to jump in in case things turn south is a good idea. I offered to arrange a backup judge a few months back, but was declined.
An adjacent learning is that vanilla contests in particular are scary to judge because people give these levels their all, resulting in a lot of lengthy and/or difficult stages. I'm developing methods to hopefully make them more approachable in the future, which should help solve these issues.
Sux wrote:
Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:20 pm
Such as the contests stay in the hype for a short time after they end, we rarely have episodes, another suggestion I have is in case the organizers warns beforehand that they will not make an episode, hire volunteers designers to create an "official" one that can be released along with the results
I don't think there is a need to hire volunteers, as anyone downloading the level pack during judging can literally volunteer in the thread saying "hey I wanna make an episode out of this", set up all the rooms and then link the warps together within a weekend of results. Nothing's stopping volunteers from volunteering. I'm sure any host would happily retroactively make it official.
Sux wrote:
Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:20 pm
Would be good if this year 2023 has a calendar of events, it makes things more organized and prevents it from becoming a failure on organization in the end.
To be clear: The lack of an event calendar is completely unrelated to what happened to this contest. It wasn't done this year because of the previous calendar being a failure with numerous delays and cancellations. We've found it's better to announce things a few weeks in advance.
I have, incidentally, thought about a calendar for this year, as there are plans for contests this year. Though, even if I wanted to go through with committing to such a schedule, some of the events we have planned depend a bit too much on other timings to make a clear-cut calendar, so no calendar this year.
Sux wrote:
Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:20 pm
If there is a feeling that there are not enough staff to manage such events, the community is large and there are certainly skilled people to join (and no, this is not an attempt at self-promotion).
If it was self promotion you would have posted here viewtopic.php?f=106&t=27477 :p
(And the community is deceptively small, I think.)
Sux wrote:
Sat Dec 31, 2022 11:20 pm
when I see the careless that has become
I promise you that I'll do my best to oversee the events better and prevent another contest falling victim to the same situation.
E: As for results, I've been talking to Val and it shouldn't be much longer now. A few weeks max.

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Re: [LAST MINUTE SCRAMBLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Emral » Wed Jan 11, 2023 10:30 am

An update on the results situation.

Due to personal reasons surrounding Valentine, she had to drop out of judging and has given me the role of host. I'd like to leave it at that and just get to the main dealio I want to talk about.

I want to handle the release of the results in the following manner.
There are just 2 sets of reviews, those from Hatsune Blake and MECHDRAGON777, which is a bit of a disappointing number when compared to the plethora of feedback other levels got in other contests.
Not much we can do about it, other than activate a new judge and risk another prolonged period of silence, which I feel would be equally disappointing. While releasing with just 2 sets of reviews doesn't remedy the lower feedback amount received for last year's participants, my promise is that this (2023) year's Vanilla Contest will make up for the uncertainty and chaos that snuck upon us this (2022) time around, so I hope all this did not deter you from joining the next one.

So, here's what's happening to tide you over until release.



LAST MINUTE MEDAL SCRAMBLE

To flesh out the selection of medals a bit, I figured it might be fun for people who have played the levels to be able to stand in for part of a judge's responsibility without adding to the time left until release.
Vote on the google form below for up to 3 medals you want to hand out. I will select the best ones and make them real.

This mini-event lasts while I prepare the results release. Try to get your votes in BEFORE SUNDAY THIS WEEK.

The level pack

https://forms.gle/PiVmUnYYHpGpSKZU6 VOTE ON THIS FORM

See you on Sunday.

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Re: [LAST MINUTE SCRAMBLE] Spring Vanilla Level Contest 2022 - Rules & Discussion

Postby Emral » Sat Jan 14, 2023 7:42 am

Reminder to get your medal suggestions in TODAY!!!
See previous post for details.


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