Hey, six replies during the creation of this post. Cool.
I volunteered to run this.
Thanks again. We're largely a bunch of ungrateful whiners, and I wouldn't want the responsibility of organizing the bunch of us for a whole month.
1) Planning in advance. I guess it ruins the surprise, but Interest Threads and Suggest A Contest Threads should be up a month in advance.
Suggest a Contest threads, yes. (I'd recommend converting the Interest Threads into a single "Event Host Bidding" contest the last week before the month begins--see a bit further down this post.)
2) More individual judges. I liked the way Frocto worked out and it's a shame Paco/Defenstration never got to step up to bat.
Sure. Any particular reason why event non-participants can't
all be judges? Maybe throw out contestants' highest and lowest scores before calculating standings?
3) Be pushier. I get the vague feeling that some of the contests might've gone through if I hounded people. However, I don't like the idea that I have to mother individuals who want to play mario kart to actually get off their asses, IM similar individuals, and actually do it.
Well, it's like I was saying; people like these events and they want to participate, but they don't want to put up with the event of trying to figure out who's participating and who isn't, when those people are available, whether they have friend codes for the appropriate party, etc. Hounding them to figure that out probably wouldn't work. It's too much like insisting that "you're going to have fun whether you like it or not." I think stuff like Chess and Mario Kart and so on might work better if the host just declared "August 23 is CHESS DAY; get into #finalfight any time that day and play as many people as you can." Take the scores posted in the thread and treat them like
Bucklin ballots, or something. Do whatever it takes to minimize the prerequisites standing between the idea of an event and its realization.
4) Be more organized. I apologize for TF2 and Brawl falling apart. Those probably would've gone through better if people knew who to actively seek. I.E. if I just gave you pre-determined match-up brackets.
Again, even the brackets might be expecting too much of us. Better to just declare in advance that "THURSDAY NIGHT IS FORT NIGHT" and everybody who shows up is declared a WOElympic participant.
The danger there, of course, is that then you risk people missing out on events they're really interested in--which is why I recommend a Bidding Competition for "event host" positions. The week before the Olympics start, you post a list of all the events that have been proposed. Everybody gets that many points to bid. If there are sixteen events, and I really want Blokus and Chess to happen on nights when I'm available, I might bid eight points for each one. Kazz might bid all 16 on Blokus. (People can reallocate their bids in response to other posts.) At the end of the week, the thread is locked, and the
first person to bid the highest bidded amount for an event becomes the host and organizes the event; anybody who tied with the host has veto power for the host's proposals. Any event which received no bids is withdrawn due to lack of interest.
5) Standards set in place ahead of time. Should be easy, a lot of them were established this year. I guess that assumes we even run next year or that I do it. I guess I'll just gather my findings and leave them for myself or another, if they care.
Sounds sensible.
6) More negative points. Around the last week or so of the Worstlympics, I developed a pretty robotic intolerance of the insults. I'm stupid? No, you are, here's your achievement. You're banned? Great, less entries to grade. Nobody entered a contest? It's dead, thanks for being apathetic. Hell, aintaer and I had a spat. Did I have time to really sit and think about whether or not his direct insults to me, after a month of direct insults, was a joke or not? No, thanks for being a Judge, get out. I'm not sure if this makes me intolerably mean or able to deal with problems with the tools I'm given or insane. Probably all three.
It'll be good to have them set up in advance. I really like the idea of going into something like this with the ground rules established, so that when the inevitable whining appears, you can shrug and point to the rules; your hands are tied. A lot of potential for friction here, though, although that's par for this crew.
7) More achievements. They were a great idea. Thanks, SCD.
Yes.[/quote]
8) More events. I think I did a decent job of giving you guys the tools to hop into the Speed Run, I bet more freeware events would work with proper set-up.
Hell yes. Anything with a with a relatively independent, asymmetrical participation requirement is perfect.
Ok, thinking about it, More Events with GUARANTEED HOSTS. It disappoints me that you guys could've played Settlers or Diplomacy, but when I asked people who cared about that stuff to do it, they didn't care, so they didn't happen.
Yeah, exactly. If an event doesn't have a host, unless it's basically the Bullshit/Active thread or some variant thereon, it's likely to die in obscurity.
9) Better directing. I get that people didn't want to read 40-80 new fucking threads. I personally don't understand why they couldn't just read the titles and go from there(people who confessed they were only going to play in what interested them, NAMED what interested them, and then no-showed) or didn't use a web browser's find function (people who ask WHERE IS X CONTEST when it's been sitting there in preview form for two weeks, or even better, when it's been opened and bumped for a few days). I guess it all comes down to more "what's effort?"
Anyways, I guess it'd help to separate the various contest types into sub-forums. Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Month-Long. Or.. Writing, Freeware, Tourneys, Art?
I think having people more involved in the set-up would mitigate these problems somewhat. Going from no mention of the olympics to OLYMPICS ARE NEXT WEEK was kind of a shock to the system. There was a lot of information to absorb, and it was easy to lose track of what you'd read about and what you were just remembering from years past. Otherwise, these all sound like ideas with potential, but I have no particular favorites among them.
10) Different month, maybe? Niku went to QuakeCon, Lyrai went out.. but I'm hard-pressed to see how this was a bad month for anyone, given that nobody told me. I think the last big Pyolympics actually had a "Do Not Host In September PLEASE" ruckus.
It's the last month in summer, and at least some of us are still going to schools. I think personally I would favor any season as long as it happened right in the middle, rather than at the end.
But finally, I do think this was a good year, even if it seemed like others might have disagreed.
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