notification of not being pre-selected
category: general [glöplog]
As a first-time submitter I was especially nervous to not get into the compo, even though I did know that preselection usually isn't a problem in those categories. I was expecting for my entry to be played first (due to the ordering) and as the first entries played I totally thought I didn't pass preselection. It was a nice surprise to see my entry on screen a little later.
However, what really made me nervous was the unknown status of the submission. I was checking the messages in PM so often in fear of missing a message that there was a problem with recording or running the entry. Info like "Entry received and checked" or something along those lines would be great.
However, what really made me nervous was the unknown status of the submission. I was checking the messages in PM so often in fear of missing a message that there was a problem with recording or running the entry. Info like "Entry received and checked" or something along those lines would be great.
@djh0ffman: Among others, Assembly and Mekka^Symposium used to do this. But nowadays this, luckily, seems to be a thing from the past.
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In Partymeister or whatever, why not just display Accepted in Compo / Not Accepted in Compo / Waiting for Jury. No need to communicate anything and instead of fretting during the compo or bothering organizers, people can refresh the intranet frenetically instead.
As I noted, Wuhu does this, but then the parties using Wuhu are usually smaller and are less likely to have that problem.
Personally I can see arguments for both sides here - some artists want to know if they made it, others want the excitement of the compo to see, and organizers both want to communicate but also are too busy to deal with disgruntled complaints. It's a tough question.
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Can someone tell me a party in the last 5 years which releases entries which haven't passed? Just curious if this is some relic from a bygone era.
Don't know about the last 5 years, Assembly def' used to do this.
Assembly did used to do that indeed, publishing the all of the releases regardless whether they qualified. I think the practice was ended somewhere around 2012 or so. Assembly also did (and still does?) notify you in the management system whether you qualified well in advance, usually immediately after the jury had been held.
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Assembly also did (and still does?) notify you in the management system whether you qualified well in advance, usually immediately after the jury had been held.
Yes, we still notify in the management system about the entry status if it is waiting for jury/disqualified/not qualified/qualified. The status is usually set right after jury (or at the compos where there is no juries, when organizers have checked the entries).
An information to the Partymeister-Site, when the compo finally starts would be nice.... I was also preselected and I can live with it. The only thing which makes me sad is when I see worse productions (out of my sight, of course) which are in the compo.
My two cents: As a compo organizer I don't really get why we shouldn't provide those status flags to competitors. It's also good to separate if the entry didn't get qualified or is disqualified. As in the first case it was just preselected out but the latter means that there is some violation of rules or law or so in the prod and I think this is an important point to communicate.
Sure some people ask the feedback and reasons for being preselected or disqualified but it's not that many people in the end that it would create a major workload to organizers or at least that is the impression I have gotten.
As a scener who participate in compos I really really really liked to know if I was preselected out or even more if my entry was disqualified. It would make me feel less anxious. And also it would be nice to get the feedback or reasons especially in the case of disqualification. Not because I would want to argue about the rules or so but because I'd like to avoid making the same mistake again.
Sure some people ask the feedback and reasons for being preselected or disqualified but it's not that many people in the end that it would create a major workload to organizers or at least that is the impression I have gotten.
As a scener who participate in compos I really really really liked to know if I was preselected out or even more if my entry was disqualified. It would make me feel less anxious. And also it would be nice to get the feedback or reasons especially in the case of disqualification. Not because I would want to argue about the rules or so but because I'd like to avoid making the same mistake again.
" We have preselections - which can beat your preselections "
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If you want to maximize being a total Ass of Embly, you do NOT tell if an entry got selected to be shown, but you DO release and spread the entry nevertheless.
Luckily Assembly came to its senses and stopped this practice a couple of years ago.
For Solskogen, as long as we've used Wuhu (which was... for a long time), we've let people know. We haven't gone out of our way to find people and scream YOU'RE NOT IN THE COMPO, but we've used the system, and over time people have picked up on this and learned to check their submission status.
For demos/intros/anything real-time, we reached out to people in the case of "we simply can't get this to run" of course, but the compo with the biggest impact has always been the music compo. It was always our most popular compo(s) and the number of entries the last few years was so high we couldn't play all of it. At some point, we made it a point to state clearly: "We will play a maximum of 15 songs" (or thereabouts; I can't recall exactly) and told people to check their submission status before the compo if they wanted.
Of course, people who aren't chosen are disappointed, but hey ho - that's life. I can only really recall one occasion where someone got genuinely outwardly upset, and this was _AFTER_ the compo when this person was absolutely furious because "their entry was clearly a lot better than what was played in the compo". Well, no; it wasn't, and that's why it wasn't played, but whatever.
Anyway; telling people up front: a clear yes from me. It also helps the compo crew a lot, because it cuts down on the "WHY DIDN'T YOU SHOW..." hounding post-compo.
For demos/intros/anything real-time, we reached out to people in the case of "we simply can't get this to run" of course, but the compo with the biggest impact has always been the music compo. It was always our most popular compo(s) and the number of entries the last few years was so high we couldn't play all of it. At some point, we made it a point to state clearly: "We will play a maximum of 15 songs" (or thereabouts; I can't recall exactly) and told people to check their submission status before the compo if they wanted.
Of course, people who aren't chosen are disappointed, but hey ho - that's life. I can only really recall one occasion where someone got genuinely outwardly upset, and this was _AFTER_ the compo when this person was absolutely furious because "their entry was clearly a lot better than what was played in the compo". Well, no; it wasn't, and that's why it wasn't played, but whatever.
Anyway; telling people up front: a clear yes from me. It also helps the compo crew a lot, because it cuts down on the "WHY DIDN'T YOU SHOW..." hounding post-compo.
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Sure some people ask the feedback and reasons for being preselected or disqualified but it's not that many people in the end that it would create a major workload to organizers or at least that is the impression I have gotten.
The thing is that, at least in the mode how we organise music compos at Evoke, I couldn't give any feedback anyway, because the points are awarded by an external jury - I, in my function as compo organiser, only put together the jury and count the points together (on the exact preselection mode, which, I think, is the most balanced and fair solution, see here). In this case, any questions from non-selected musicians are even more pointless, because I can't answer them.
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i wouldn't want to be listed on the big screen as "not good enough for this compo but thanks anyways" :D
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It has been done at previous Revisions and I thought it was nice gesture. Especially when there were scene veterans in the list, showing to newbies that it's not just them who didn't make it ;)
maybe this is music compo specific but... i've been in the preselection jury in many music compos and there are tons of good entries that are not played. both due to generally high song quality and, to some extent, the subjective opinions of the jury members. there is no shame in not having your song played.
I'd rather favor extending the compo's total running time to squeeze in a couple more quality entries (as decided by the jury or individual person who listens through all tracks) than preselecting them and sending the creator/s (who are also ticket buyer/s) home feeling disappointed. Of course that's easy to say for smaller parties where preselection usually isn't a big deal anyhow. Timetable optimization might also be useful sometimes, of course you cannot scrap a pre-announced main graphics compo block but .. do I really need that spontaneously introduced 45 minute fun compo full of joke entries or should I play some more quality music tracks / demos instead if that means they won't have to be discarded?
Questions over questions .. :D
Questions over questions .. :D
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Of course, people who aren't chosen are disappointed, but hey ho - that's life. I can only really recall one occasion where someone got genuinely outwardly upset, and this was _AFTER_ the compo when this person was absolutely furious because "their entry was clearly a lot better than what was played in the compo". Well, no; it wasn't, and that's why it wasn't played, but whatever.
I can remember one case where the disqualified person engaged in a constructive discussion with the compo crew and got a rundown on how to make a song sound better.
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Quote:Of course, people who aren't chosen are disappointed, but hey ho - that's life. I can only really recall one occasion where someone got genuinely outwardly upset, and this was _AFTER_ the compo when this person was absolutely furious because "their entry was clearly a lot better than what was played in the compo". Well, no; it wasn't, and that's why it wasn't played, but whatever.
I can remember one case where the disqualified person engaged in a constructive discussion with the compo crew and got a rundown on how to make a song sound better.
I can remember several examples of both. And one time with the same guy (he was furious and then listened and learnt from the feedback).
What could be entered easily into the system as feedback is the average jury score vs the score needed to qualify. Not much of feedback but at least you will know how close you were. But maybe that’s just making things worse...
Now I don't know how much work it is to make slides and play the tracks, would imagine it is partly automated(?)......but would a Honorable Mentions "Event" at some time during the party be an idea. Or play these tracks in the background during the GFX,PHOTO,ASCII...etc compos. Or include them in the playlist for when the random party info slides are on.
Guess one would need an extra box to tick off in the party system to confirm if you want your track played in such an event/playlist or not.
Probably a hassle for orgas, but could be a little comfort for disappointed composers who is in need of a little bit of fame during a big party like Revision. "HEY, OKKIE BE QUIET!! LISTEN!! MY ENTRY IS PLAYING ON THE PA!!! YAPPI DOODLE DOOOOO!!!! \0/ "
Guess one would need an extra box to tick off in the party system to confirm if you want your track played in such an event/playlist or not.
Probably a hassle for orgas, but could be a little comfort for disappointed composers who is in need of a little bit of fame during a big party like Revision. "HEY, OKKIE BE QUIET!! LISTEN!! MY ENTRY IS PLAYING ON THE PA!!! YAPPI DOODLE DOOOOO!!!! \0/ "
What Gargaj said,
Feedback for the sceners is a long-time investment in better demoparties, higher-quality products and less frustration.
I mean, even knowing "I ran against 50 other people in order to fill 15 available slots in the compo" gives you a better judgement (more peace) than "just nope".
Feedback for the sceners is a long-time investment in better demoparties, higher-quality products and less frustration.
I mean, even knowing "I ran against 50 other people in order to fill 15 available slots in the compo" gives you a better judgement (more peace) than "just nope".
One could imagine there'd be times where it's not physically possible to give any proper reason for not making it to the screen.
There's been stories of gfx compo juries going well beyond 3 hours or music compo juries exceeding 5 hours. At least the gfx compo anecdote is from a reliable source. If there's too many entries or if the jury just takes too long, it may not be humanely possible to give any explanation or even a fair judgement.
I'd assume marathons like those have resulted in a random element being introduced to who gets the screen time.
There's been stories of gfx compo juries going well beyond 3 hours or music compo juries exceeding 5 hours. At least the gfx compo anecdote is from a reliable source. If there's too many entries or if the jury just takes too long, it may not be humanely possible to give any explanation or even a fair judgement.
I'd assume marathons like those have resulted in a random element being introduced to who gets the screen time.
At the hilarious somewhat 1984-themed "everything is under control" breakpoint (2008? 2009?) the not selected entries were always listed on the big screen after the compo reading "there have never been entries by..."
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At the hilarious somewhat 1984-themed "everything is under control" breakpoint (2008? 2009?) the not selected entries were always listed on the big screen after the compo reading "there have never been entries by..."
I remember coding those slides :)
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I'd rather favor extending the compo's total running time to squeeze in a couple more quality entries (as decided by the jury or individual person who listens through all tracks) than preselecting them and sending the creator/s (who are also ticket buyer/s) home feeling disappointed.
Extending it to... what? The point is that the line has to be drawn somewhere and someone is always going to be disappointed. There’s no way around that with a compo that regularly draws 40-50 entries.
So the question becomes: does the process really become any more fair or comforting if the amount of played songs change due to the personal preferences and sensibilities of whoever is preselecting... or is it more straightforward, honest and fair just to stick with the same amount of entries / the same runtime every year?
I mean, I’m not really asking a question here. :)
If you set a limit of 15 and you get 16 entries, you probably drop the preselection. :-) There's always some organizer discretion.
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if you don't check your messages all weekend. In this case, changing the policy around preselection wouldn't help you here..
A built-in, somewhere "there, there... yes, here!" on another page, message? Not very ergonomic as solution, and not solving the iissue. Basic forums got email notifications.
Anyway, let's hope the communication will be improved.
