SASO 2016: Talkback

[referees]

This post is closed; thank you for your feedback. If you would like to provide constructive criticism, please contact the mods directly. All further replies to this entry are screened.

The mods still plan to reply to the topics listed at the bottom of the post.

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This is not the final wrap-up results/etc. post—that's coming in a couple of days. But while the mods tabulate final scores and create prize graphics, now's a good time to look back and reflect on your SASO 2016 experience.

Please leave comments giving us feedback on the event this year! What did you like? What did you dislike or find frustrating? What can we improve for next year, and how can we improve it? What was your favorite part of the event? Least favorite? Would you participate next year or not? Why? If you could mention your team when making your comment, we'd appreciate it.

If you would prefer to submit your comments in private, you can e-mail us at anime.espn@gmail.com or send us a Dreamwidth PM. We would prefer it if you'd put "Talkback" in the subject line.

Here's what the mod team plans to improve for next year:

• Voting program reliability. We'd like to apologize again for all of the server dowtnime, and definitely plan to make it much more stable for next year. The voting system in general, though, will remain the same.


• Bonus round program reliability. We think we got most of the kinks out during this year, but want to keep it stable for next year too.


• Dreamwidth capability for NSFW cross-posting. We didn't have time to implement it this year, but next year it should be ready to go.


• Clarifying the rules, especially on what "popular culture media" is acceptable to include in SASO work.

We also wanted to thank you again for being patient with us this year. We had a lot of technical hiccups, and you were all so kind while our heroic codermods worked out the kinks. We really appreciated your support.

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Mod Replies: (updated 12:55PM EDT 8/28/16)

Please note that inclusion of a topic on this list indicates that we're going to address it, not that we've made any decisions on judging/implementing or not implementing it.

Voting:

The preliminary vote system

Triggers in a participant's assigned vote pool

Juried panel (having the mods decide which entries were the best)

Voting mechanics

Bonus Rounds:

Promptless rounds

One day break between bonus rounds

Bonus round prompt and fill tracking/filtering

Recs round work count

Image size limit

Remix round

Remix/rec round timing

Rec round

Quality control (both prompts and fills)

What is allowed as a fill (tags and ratings)

Unscreening bonus rounds

Fairness to small teams

Comment screening

Main Rounds:

The anonymity policy

Professionalism:

Twitter tone

What information gets posted where

Considering a dreamwidth announcement community

Mod participation in the event

Comments

(frozen comment) Team Grandstand

[tempestuously]

I wanted to address some issues about grandstand and MR2 participation. I have read several of the mods' Tumblr rundowns on waning participation in MR2. As a Grandstand participant, I can safely say that I lost a lot of motivation for following this contest once it was clear that Grandstand no longer had a role in the Bonus Rounds. From the Fantasy Bonus Round on, Grandstand had nothing to do but vote. Which made it very hard to stay interested long enough to vote. I believe that allowing Grandstand to participate through providing prompts throughout the contest would help with this matter. It was so disheartening to not be able to contribute to the contest for pretty much a month and then be expected to care enough to review/vote on the contestants. I get that remixes and recs and the like can be fun, but I would like to see more Grandstand-friendly options for the second half of the contest in future runs.

On this note, as someone who reviewed every single entry in every round to ensure fair voting, it was deeply frustrating to rarely be able to vote for the 3 teams I most enjoyed. I get what you're trying to do in giving everyone a fair shake, but I want to be able to give support the teams that I most enjoyed. I understand the concern is people voting for their favorites and not being impartial, but that's going to happen regardless of what measures you take to mitigate it. Either you hold participants to their integrity or recognize that a game like this will always face a highly "popular" slant. The current system doesn't quite reflect the true spirit of voting.