Super Mario Bros. X Forums

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.