WAR SEASON II: Discussion

[PTGigi]

Quick but important note: several people have PMed me WAR suggestions because they don't feel comfortable posting them publicly because of how suggestions are being received. May I politely ask the receivers of suggestions appear less hostile (there is a much better word for here, but I can't think of it at the moment)? I'm not saying to be like "YEAH LET'S DO ALL THE SUGGESTIONS!". In the end, I'd be okay if nothing changed. But I think no matter the situation, it's a bad sign if people feel like they can't speak openly...

I very, very much like Felly's two week suggestion, I personally felt very rushed especially with my schedule. It also might entice more people to do group discussions, I saw a few people asking their group for suggestions before they submit a piece and I honestly might have done that had I not only had time to work on entries Saturday with 0 time to ask for a double check. I don't think I see any negatives to a two week change.

I agree with more time for judges and the multiple judges ideas. I understand the forum size makes multiple judges a bit harder, but there is one thing that may not be just me: I really didn't notice the judging application thread at all. I maybe caught wind of it once, didn't really know what it was, and moved on. Had I known more, I probably would have happily applied to be a judge. So maybe a more vocal call for judges? Also a single judge system looks unfair. While I do not doubt the honesty of the judges, someone could make the argument that judges could have a bias towards individuals and/or teams. Again, I don't think this happened, but it was brought up by a few people.
Within the idea of more judges, I think there's a few ways that could go:
-A "committee" that gives out one score per person
-A panel of judges, each giving a different score that's then averaged (like the Olympics I think?)
-User voting (this might be better with the more judging time).
-A combination of a panel and user voting

The only other thing I might say, a final two cents on my opening point, is the "it's just a game" attitude. I completely understand what is meant by that, but at the same time that attitude can be used as a negative point. I hope I'm the only one who felt this way, but I honestly didn't enter the final week because of that. As fun as the prompts looked, I stopped caring and saw no reason to focus my energies on something that's "just a game". I regret feeling that way after the fact and I also apologize to my team for that.

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That being said, I overall enjoyed WAR. I think we did pretty awesome, Prism League. Hope everyone had fun! This is making me want to set up some mini contests or something. I use to host a few on random forums every now (that are all dead ;0; ), so maybe it's something I should try start up again /o/