I propose an unbiased competition

 I have been with DUP for a little while now and although I'm not submitting my poetry often I do read others. I really enjoy the competitions because not only do they challenge us but they gives us a bit of excitement. Something I've noticed happening though (not all the time but it does happen) is assigning a trophy to someone that is favored not by poetry submission but by favoring the poet themself.  So therefore that person wins by default regardless of the competition.

 I have an idea I would like to offer to the DUP crowd. I would like to have a competition where the participants are unnamed until the reveal of the winner. The voting of course will be done by the readers and not me.  This way everyone regardless of DUP status will have a fair chance at a trophy.

 This will be done by submitting your entry directly to my inbox and I will post them myself to the competition thread. The voting will be done also by submitting your vote to my inbox. I don't mind putting in the work it will take to have this function properly as long as I have the support from the rest you you. Further details on voting and submissions will be explained when the competition is posted.

 How do you all feel about me doing this?  I would like honest feedback about my idea please. If I am wrong in doing this then tell me and I will not peruse it any further but in my opinion it will challenge the most well known poets against the less known poets who feel they go on unnoticed.

 I would like opinions and suggestions reguarding my Silent Comp. Thank you.

Another reason I am posting this as a discussion is to make people aware that I will be doing this. I would like everyone to participate without the feeling that they will go on unheard due to their competitors.

it's feckin brilliant!! if only someone had thought of it before. actually it's been done on a couple of occasions, voting was either done by inbox or by poll. I have absolutely no probs with you using my competition format ..you seem like a nice guy    

Krosgood said:  I have been with DUP for a little while now and although I'm not submitting my poetry often I do read others. I really enjoy the competitions because not only do they challenge us but they gives us a bit of excitement. Something I've noticed happening though (not all the time but it does happen) is assigning a trophy to someone that is favored not by poetry submission but by favoring the poet themself.  So therefore that person wins by default regardless of the competition.

 I have an idea I would like to offer to the DUP crowd. I would like to have a competition where the participants are unnamed until the reveal of the winner. The voting of course will be done by the readers and not me.  This way everyone regardless of DUP status will have a fair chance at a trophy.

 This will be done by submitting your entry directly to my inbox and I will post them myself to the competition thread. The voting will be done also by submitting your vote to my inbox. I don't mind putting in the work it will take to have this function properly as long as I have the support from the rest you you. Further details on voting and submissions will be explained when the competition is posted.

 How do you all feel about me doing this?  I would like honest feedback about my idea please. If I am wrong in doing this then tell me and I will not peruse it any further but in my opinion it will challenge the most well known poets against the less known poets who feel they go on unnoticed.

 I would like opinions and suggestions reguarding my Silent Comp. Thank you.

first, you may want to delete your other two threads which have the same title. It will drive you nuts if you have to maintain three threads of conversation on the same subject.

It is not a bad idea. You're not the only one to question whether some of the comps are judged by popularity and cliques. Even the comments left for some entries (and lack of comments under other entries) during the active comp do cause us suspect favoritism in some cases.

But many who have been here a while do recognize the style of their faves, so anonymous entries aren't always secured secrets of who wrote what. And who can stop the news in PMs of revealing "so and so wrote this; make sure your vote counts"...or similar alerts among cliques?

I'm not saying don't try the idea; but I do think it's not guaranteed to fix the prob of unfair/biased wins.  

The triple posting must have been because of my phone. Thank you for letting me know. I will try to figure out how to delete the other two.

As far as the PMs revealing the "so and so wrote this..." I guess a trophy is more important to them than a fair fight.

Thank you for the heads up on both topics.

You're title of "unbiased" is a bit condescending and in itself biased  because there are so many factors that determine a "trophy" winner ... Including number of entrants - the interest the assignment generates - number of judges ...

... What you're proposing has been done before by DUP poet Alexander Case:

http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/forum/competitions/read/6117/

There have also been any number of competitions judged by anonymous judges selected by the host, to generate multiple reads and perspectives on submitted work.  Usually there's a point system only disclosed to the writers after the fact.

What you're proposing was done five months before your joining so there's no way you could have known, but if you're looking to setup a more balanced format for competitions don't be so presumptive.

Thank you for the input LobodeSanPedro as negative towards this idea as it sounds i'm sure you mean well and I take it as constructive criticism. My goal is not to steal the idea someone had already thought of or to set up a new format for anything. What i'm trying to achieve here is to have all of the work in the competition read by everyone. Not just the ones who have familiar names and writing styles.

http://deepundergroundpoetry.com/forum/competitions/read/1190/


here's mine from 2011, you're welcome to use the format if you like

Thank you Lepperochan. I appreciate that.

Violence, I encourage any member to use fairness and transparency when running their comps, so I think it's great what you're doing. The anonymous comps are great, but it puts a heap of responsibility and work back onto you. I use a panels of judges for all my comps, because it's fair to the poets entering the comp and it's efficient for you. The scoring method you set for the judges is again up to you, but I use a ranking system because everyone's benchmark is different when it comes to scoring. Here's my ranking system if you want any ideas for your own system:

case28 said:All-righty then!

I've had a couple enquiries about the judging and my ranking system. I use a ranking system instead of scoring system, because I've found everybody has different expectations and benchmark for what makes a great poem, so this can lead to inconsistencies in scores. Sometimes I've received the same score for the poems being judged, which doesn't really help when you are trying to determine one winner.

To make this more transparent for the judges and to make the comps a lot more consistent in the scoring, I've come up with a simple ranking system. For this system to work well and to give everybody a ranking in the comp, the comp organiser or one of the judges reads all of the poems and ranks every poem in the comp. So if there was 13 poems in the comp, the poems would be ranked from 1-13, with the highest ranking poem receiving 13 points and the lowest receiving 1 point.

The other judges are then required to rank the three best poems in the comp. The highest ranking or 1st poem gets awarded 10 points, the 2nd poem gets 9 points and the 3rd poem gets 8 points.

All these points then go into a spreadsheet and the scores are tallied and each poem is ranked with the percentage of the total points given. In the case of this comp, DU Swingers Party: SENSUAL POWER, there was a total of 226 points up for grabs. The results for 1st, 2nd and 3rd place is as follows:

1st place Petit Minou & Atakti with 26.5% of the total points
2nd place Gahddess_Worship and Miss Mikhailov (_shadoe_) with 21.7% of the total points
3rd place CraicDealer (lepperochan) and Madame Lavender with 14.6% of the total points

I hope this explains how my ranking system works, in the end I'm trying to achieve a transparent way of determining a winner, at the same time taking the heat off the judges so they don't have to justify their scores.

Actually all the comps in voting status are completely unbiased, because no one can see who wrote what, since all entries become anonymous when one gets sent to vote.  And I'm not saying let every comp go to vote --it's taking way to long to clear the abandoned backlog as it is.  Just food for thought. :)

MadameLavender said:Actually all the comps in voting status are completely unbiased, because no one can see who wrote what, since all entries become anonymous when one gets sent to vote.  And I'm not saying let every comp go to vote --it's taking way to long to clear the abandoned backlog as it is.  Just food for thought. :)

Are you sure "completely unbiased"?  
I have read several comps before they were abandoned. Later I have seen those same comps when they hit voting, and I do recall who wrote what.

I don't let the names influence my vote, but my point is, if someone else recalls who wrote what (just as I can recall) there is still a chance someone will vote for their fave. (This is why I said some folks who've been here a while recognize the style of certain authors.)

good luck with whatever methods are decided. I'll just hit the comps run by people whom I trust are fair.

As lepperochan said, it's been done before, but of course doing it again sounds good. If it's been done before, that must mean people wanted it to be done. In theory it's a good idea, though I think it still presents problems, as poets can be easily recognised by their styles, thus bringing personal ties back and us to square one. Basically, I think prejudice will always be a problem for a minority of writers and voters, no matter how we try restraining it. Therefore, the best way to remove as much of it as possible, in my opinion, is to just open the voting to readers - as opposed to one person who might have his own set of prejudices - as you suggested, Violence, and forget the anonymous postings idea. That's just my two cents, though, and of course I may be wrong.

Many "old salts" use a point system they fancy (variations differ)

each judge individually critiques x amount of points per poem (entry)
example
Creativity-4
Fluidity-3
X-factor-5

whatever Your criteria terms are ...each judge goes through every entry with their points...sends them to the host and the host gathers the points from all judges (usually 3 or more judges)... voila -tally winner by diverse minds

that's just one example how many are done
in my mind- quite fair considering this is from a few people judging independently.
You guys treat these trophies like fast food lol
seems the ones who have the most trophies tend to enter comps like crazy...some take breaks for a while, so You might just be seeing their names as they make their rounds again.

Engr. V cited a point system a couple months ago on a thread (but I don't remember which-so hit him up too)

Oh...
I play comps...once in a while...I think I have 3 trophies...maybe 4 (that's over the course of a few years)
most of mine are critique

HollyDove said:[quote-275240-MadameLavender]Actually all the comps in voting status are completely unbiased, because no one can see who wrote what, since all entries become anonymous when one gets sent to vote.  And I'm not saying let every comp go to vote --it's taking way to long to clear the abandoned backlog as it is.  Just food for thought. :)

Are you sure "completely unbiased"?  
I have read several comps before they were abandoned. Later I have seen those same comps when they hit voting, and I do recall who wrote what.

I don't let the names influence my vote, but my point is, if someone else recalls who wrote what (just as I can recall) there is still a chance someone will vote for their fave. (This is why I said some folks who've been here a while recognize the style of certain authors.)

good luck with whatever methods are decided. I'll just hit the comps run by people whom I trust are fair.

[/quote]

True, and I guess it depends on how long the comp has been hanging around, and how long the voters have been members here, to have remembered them, so I guess it isn't entirely foolproof.

But, at the rate we're going with clearing the list, it will literally be years before they all have winners declared--some of the ones that have gone to voting have been sitting there for months on end, so therefore if we factor in that aspect, by the time we pare down the list, we'll all be old and senile and won't remember crap anyway, let alone who wrote what in a comp, years ago when it first got abandoned.