WAR SEASON II: Discussion

[Elysia]

Hi. Um. I'm still not a fan of writing out massive paragraphs of text in this thread that eventually lead into circular arguments with people, but I wanted to say something that I think Felly feels but hasn't clearly articulated (although if she doesn't feel this way, feel free to correct me lol ooops).

Constructively pointing out what you perceive as a flaw in an existing system shouldn't be perceived as hating the entire system itself. That's silly. Like. Let's say you go to Disney World. Day one, you have a great time, ride the roller coasters, buy some deliciously overpriced funnel cake or something idk, take pictures with the princesses, and so on. At the end of the day, you go back to your hotel, sit in your poofy, Mickey-themed bed, and think, "Gee, that was awesome, but it was super hot outside and I think I'm going to be sunburned tomorrow. Oh dear."

Perhaps you talk to your friends, who also agree that they're sunburned and that's kinda a downer. Perhaps you suggest to Disney that they build awnings over their longer lines so patrons don't wait out in the sun (which they actually did, but this is a ridiculously detailed rhetorical metaphor at this point). Perhaps you decide that a great way to fix this would be to bring a hat tomorrow (or to convince Disney to sell overpriced hats next to their overpriced other merch, which they also do!) "But I was at Disney World all day today," you tell yourself, "and I've never worn a hat!"

Um. What I'm trying to say is that it's possible to constructively point out flaws in something (what Felly/others (?) are trying to do) without attempting to completely tear it down and destroy it (what I'm afraid people perceive Felly/others (?) to be doing). You can go to Disney World, have a great time, get sunburned, dislike being suburned, and still have had a great vacation.

That being said:
=I think judging panels (or just two people, idk) for some of the more subjective categories would be something worth considering. I've taken part in a bunch of different art/writing-based contests on other forums, and this is the only system that relies on a single judge to dispense all of the scoring. I feel like the current system puts a ton of stress on the single judge (ie, Neo signing on to Week II of Creative Writing and finding out that there are novella-length submissions that he has to single-handedly read, evaluate, and rank in a span of twenty-four hours (sorry D:), not to mention setting up the next week). However, if current participation levels really aren't strong enough to merit two people per category judging, perhaps opening it up to user voting could be considered? I kinda see this as a dangerous line between popularity contest and actually working, but it'd be kinda cool if everyone was secretly a judge ^^
=This is probably just me being silly, but is there a reason why judges absolutely have to evaluate everything on Sundays? Like, it seems to be asking a lot of them to rank and grade things all in a single day, when we have six days to work on them (again, this is mostly for time-intensive categories like Creative Writing). Would it be possible to have a staggered system, kinda like:

Week One: WAR begins! Sunday - Saturday, contestants work on Week 1 entries. Sunday, new theme posted!
Week Two: Sunday - Saturday, contestants work on Week 2 entries. Judges judge Week 1 entries; judging due Saturday of Week 2 or something (or perhaps earlier if we want to scoreboard updated faster, idk). Sunday, new theme posted!

And so forth? I could see this tying in nicely with perhaps having more judges per category, since this frees up a lot of time.

Sorry, just my two cents. I had a great time at Disney World WAR with you guys.