Hi there.
This is an interesting idea, Pounder. I'm sitting on the fence at the moment. I don't think I'm inclined to support the format posed in the OP, but I could support a change in format if an especially good one is ironed out. Otherwise, I would prefer we keep the present format, as I really have no problems with it.
In the interest of exploring what would constitute an especially good format, let me outline a few issues I see involved with the idea of changing the format of the competitions.
First of all, I'm of the opinion that changing the format of the competitions is not strictly necessary; that there is not any significant inequity in the current format that requires rectification. While it is certainly unfortunate that many deserving entries do not make it to the yearly competition, do people take these competitions so much to heart to warrant something being done about this? Or is that generally taken lightly enough that we needn't bother? Now I don't mean to suggest that any change that isn't really necessary should not be made, but I think we should be certain if this is that big of a deal.
This whole idea brought to mind
this competition, where all the losing entries were pretty much blown out of the water by what went on to become the PCX graphics of the year. Interestingly, there were some calls in this thread for some sort of a runner-up competition due to the fact that it was obvious from the beginning who the winner would be. So now to my second issue: I don't like the idea of the qualifier for wild-card or potential wild-card status to be a certain percentage of the number of votes of the winner. My case being in the linked competition, where one entry, incidentally my own, made a particularly strong showing against the eventual winner, but didn't even attain fifty percent of the amount of votes of the winning entry. I don't say this at all to brag, but I personally consider my entry that month to be the best graphics I've created and I believe that entry could have held it's own in the yearly competition. But, under the tentative format proposed in the OP, my entry would not have qualified. I would be more supportive of the idea proposed by Balthasar
here where simply the runners up are chosen, but I have issues with that idea as well that i'll get into in a bit.
I would like to take a moment now to clarify that I in no way have any hard feelings about that competition, in fact I am more than satisfied with the result and am extremely grateful to have done so well, and proud to have been bested in the monthly competition by the subsequent PCX graphics of the year. I simply thought that competition served as a good example to my point.
Another issue I would like to bring up is that of complexity. The format of the current competitions is pretty simple: the winner of the graphics of the month competitions duke it out in the graphics of the year competitions. Making things more complicated may come with certain risks. Before I go into those, recall Balthasar's proposal of simply choosing the runner-ups in each of the monthly competitions. One of the issues I have with this is that I see doing run-off competions as a fairer way of determining which entry is truly the second best. The benefits of this fairness is, however, probably outweighed by the detriment of this proposal's complexity: it would mean twelve more competitions, which is obviously overkill. This brings me back to the potential risks involved in complicating the rules of the competitions, and/or creating additional competitions. One of which, I think, could be the decline in interest and voter turnout in the competitions should the rules and processes involved be anything more than very simple to understand, and the competitions to be anything but few in number. This ties into what I believe to be another risk in increasing complexity: decreasing meaningfulness. The competitions are a great blessing and considerable fun, don't get me wrong, but a victory is otherwise of little more than symbolic value. Would there be all that much of point or worth in having lesser titles? Complicating the current format by adding more competitions or various runner-up positions may also risk reducing the meaning of or the focus on the 'important core' competitions and titles associated with them.
Speaking shortly on the issue of having two votes (or any quantity of votes greater than one), there is a significant risk involved here too. While in one person, one vote competitions, a single vote per person is assured, allowing multiple votes with the expectation that noone will abuse this ability by voting more than, say, twice is dangerous. Even one person voting in such a way can compromise an entire competition. A solution of sorts could be found in making the poll public; as any abuses could be potentially identified and discounted. However, having a public poll may not be seen as something that is acceptable in any case.
One more issue that I think needs to be looked at if we are going to change the format of the competitions is if a proposal even achieves what it sets out to do. Again recall Balthasar's idea (I'm sorry for picking on you so much, Balthasar!), where it is suggested that once the runner-ups from each of the monthly competitions compete, the victor is chosen as wild-card to be present in the yearly competition. The other problem I had with this idea is that this doesn't really do much to solve what was considered the original problem - that there were very deserving entries that weren't making it into the yearly competition - as only one actually would. Moving on, we should consider that in any competition there are going to be very deserving entries that are ultimately left behind, and this goes for any secondary competition involving runners up or wild-cards and the likes just as much as it does for the primary competions. Is there any system we can come up with that can give as many deserving entries or the most deserving entries a second chance as possible? Because I think that deserving entries falling behind is largely a factor of how people vote. Any change in format may only be able to do so much to bring to the forefront these deserving losing entries, and these entries are still subject to the whims of those voters. My point is that we should also be looking at the effectiveness of a proposed format in adressing the percieved problems of the current system.
I think we should remember that while we may all agree that some deserving entries do not make the cut, It is the voters that we ultimately have to rely on to decide what 'deserving' even means.
Hopefully I've provided some useful perspectives for this discussion.
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