There was a reason why I hesitated to announce the results of the voting contest...
When the voting deadline closed, I was in the top 6. Then the author whose mod was in the top 5 asked for the latest three votes to be removed even though they were high votes because she felt that they were suspicious votes, so her selfless act pulled her down, allowing me to enter the top 5. As much as I wanted to tell everyone that I made it to the top 5, I wasn't sure whether the results announced would reflect that. In fact, a part of me feared that the worst was yet to come.
The results were announced a few hours ago, and they baffle me.
http://www.bioware.com/biozone/articles/2006_04_12_contest_winners/
The top five modules as selected by our panel of judges. These modules were hand selected after every single module submitted to the contest was reviewed from the 313 submissions.
1. Myranni's Magic by Mat Jobe
2. The Realm Below by Chris Amos
3. Aspects by Neilan 'Darric' Naicker
4. A Moonless Night by Kevin Chan
5. Ghosts of the Past by Illemira/Aedalena
The top five as voted on by the community (excluding any modules already selected for the top five by our judges). These rankings are based solely on module final rankings according to NWVault at the time the contest closed:
1. Firestarter by Adam Miller
2. Walking with the Ghost (Contest Version) by Chris Tihor
3. A Hero's Death by Thad Boyd
4. The Badger, the Cat and the Book by Chris R. Deatherage
5. Find the Fish! by nereng
Let me draw your attention to two mods in particular - "Walking with the Ghost (Contest Version)" and "Find the Fish". "Walking with the Ghost" was submitted late as the author himself wrote. Quite a number of community members commented that it's a disqualified entry because of the fact that it was submitted late, and yet it's in the top 5 for the voting category. Why? My mod, "The STAR Quest" and "Grains of Truth" received higher ratings each compared to "Find the Fish" (8.7+ vs 8.59), and yet not one of those three entries are listed in the top 5, while "Find the Fish" is. In fact, looking at the search results, quite a number of other mods had received higher ratings than "Find the Fish", but weren't in the top 5 for the voting category.
I posted my response in http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=477035&forum=41. I doubt I'll get a reply from them (or one that would be satisfactory). While I knew I won't win from the very beginning, to lose in this manner, when there are mods up there that by right shouldn't be there, is downright ridiculous and insulting.
I guess I should have realised that this contest won't have a good outcome from the way they treated the contest from the start.
[edit]
Jay Watamaniuk 's sorta answered in a very roundabout way.
"As far as judging goes I asked Maximus for a list of the top ranked modules. When we received that we removed those that had been picked as part of the judges top 5. After that we used a combination of the stated rank and our discretion because this contest is about quality of writing and at a certain point it is impossible to judge one type of writing ‘better’ than another so we wanted to put together the best list we could with all the great submissions. We were very reluctant to outright disqualify a quality module based on factors such as word count, number of characters and we were even a tiny bit flexible on submission time because our legal stuff took more time than originally thought and we had a very short window of for those submissions. The stated parameters were followed to an exceptional degree in nearly all cases and it made Kevin’s job of taking a good look at the writing that much easier which was the point. He is ecstatic on the turnout and hopes we can run this again. He is still looking at modules as we speak by the way and his interest has indeed been peaked."
I'm not satisfied with his reply, but then again, I don't expect them to come up with a satisfactory answer at all.
Chris Priestly replied too.
"I know there are also a lot of "But how did X win and not Y?" or "A got more points than B, why does B win out?" type of questions. I think Jay is going to comment on this later but we did not simply take "the most votes" or "the highest scores" due to some issues with voting and stuff. Jay consulted with Maximus over at the Vault and, after using some "secret BioWare/Vault powers" the winners were chosen."
The results were announced a few hours ago, and they baffle me.
http://www.bioware.com/biozone/articles/2006_04_12_contest_winners/
The top five modules as selected by our panel of judges. These modules were hand selected after every single module submitted to the contest was reviewed from the 313 submissions.
1. Myranni's Magic by Mat Jobe
2. The Realm Below by Chris Amos
3. Aspects by Neilan 'Darric' Naicker
4. A Moonless Night by Kevin Chan
5. Ghosts of the Past by Illemira/Aedalena
The top five as voted on by the community (excluding any modules already selected for the top five by our judges). These rankings are based solely on module final rankings according to NWVault at the time the contest closed:
1. Firestarter by Adam Miller
2. Walking with the Ghost (Contest Version) by Chris Tihor
3. A Hero's Death by Thad Boyd
4. The Badger, the Cat and the Book by Chris R. Deatherage
5. Find the Fish! by nereng
Let me draw your attention to two mods in particular - "Walking with the Ghost (Contest Version)" and "Find the Fish". "Walking with the Ghost" was submitted late as the author himself wrote. Quite a number of community members commented that it's a disqualified entry because of the fact that it was submitted late, and yet it's in the top 5 for the voting category. Why? My mod, "The STAR Quest" and "Grains of Truth" received higher ratings each compared to "Find the Fish" (8.7+ vs 8.59), and yet not one of those three entries are listed in the top 5, while "Find the Fish" is. In fact, looking at the search results, quite a number of other mods had received higher ratings than "Find the Fish", but weren't in the top 5 for the voting category.
I posted my response in http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=477035&forum=41. I doubt I'll get a reply from them (or one that would be satisfactory). While I knew I won't win from the very beginning, to lose in this manner, when there are mods up there that by right shouldn't be there, is downright ridiculous and insulting.
I guess I should have realised that this contest won't have a good outcome from the way they treated the contest from the start.
[edit]
Jay Watamaniuk 's sorta answered in a very roundabout way.
"As far as judging goes I asked Maximus for a list of the top ranked modules. When we received that we removed those that had been picked as part of the judges top 5. After that we used a combination of the stated rank and our discretion because this contest is about quality of writing and at a certain point it is impossible to judge one type of writing ‘better’ than another so we wanted to put together the best list we could with all the great submissions. We were very reluctant to outright disqualify a quality module based on factors such as word count, number of characters and we were even a tiny bit flexible on submission time because our legal stuff took more time than originally thought and we had a very short window of for those submissions. The stated parameters were followed to an exceptional degree in nearly all cases and it made Kevin’s job of taking a good look at the writing that much easier which was the point. He is ecstatic on the turnout and hopes we can run this again. He is still looking at modules as we speak by the way and his interest has indeed been peaked."
I'm not satisfied with his reply, but then again, I don't expect them to come up with a satisfactory answer at all.
Chris Priestly replied too.
"I know there are also a lot of "But how did X win and not Y?" or "A got more points than B, why does B win out?" type of questions. I think Jay is going to comment on this later but we did not simply take "the most votes" or "the highest scores" due to some issues with voting and stuff. Jay consulted with Maximus over at the Vault and, after using some "secret BioWare/Vault powers" the winners were chosen."
posted by Swift at
12:30 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home