My complete thesis on the formation of a way to run the Festival

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Kyriakos

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A proposition for the overall form and running of the civ3 festival of the decade.

This is my own imagining of how the festival could be. Hopefully it can serve as a basis for further suggestions, coming from many other people.

My main proposition is that we save ourselves from endless polls which might lead to little progress as to which categories, sub-categories and supra-categories are chosen for the festival, by sticking mostly to the already formed categories of the database.

This means that for Pcx, for example, we have 8 categories: Leaderheads, Wonders, Tech icons, City gfx, interface gfx, terrain gfx, building gfx, and miscellaneous gfx.

I am of the view that these categories should not be further broken up. I suggest against an opposing view mostly due the fact that the more contests there are, the less important winning in any one of them becomes. Moreover my dismissal of a different view comes from the calculation I have in mind for producing the entrants in the Decade Achievement awards.

The Decade Achievement awards should, in my view, be only one in each supra-category, namely the following: Gfx modpacks, Unit gfx, Scenarios/Modpacks, Maps, and Utility programs. You will have noticed that I joined Modpacks and Scenarios into one category, and that there is no category for tutorials and sounds. My view is that Modpacks and Scenarios are mostly the same, in that we do not have a quality and quantity of scenarios without a great deal of modded content that would demand a separate category for them.

Moving on I think it is time to present the full break-up of proposed ccategories, sub-categories, and supra-categories in my thesis:

Scenarios/Modpacks.

I suggest this is just one category, and moreover that it only appears as a Decade achievement award. The idea is that up to 25 separate people’s entries are submitted in a multiple choice poll in the subforum of the development of the festival, and that the first set number to get more votes proceeds to compete in the decade award. My suggestion is to have the first nine go through.

Gfx modpacks

As I already mentioned I propose there are eight categories for them in the regular festival, and one in the decade award.

Unit Gfx

Again eight categories are advised, namely all of the ones existent in the database, minus the multi-unit one. Then one Decade award.

Maps

Earth maps and Fictional maps as categories of the regular festival, and one decade award.

Utility programs

Same idea as with Modpacks/Scenarios: a poll to decide the first 9 that go through for the one decade award. No regular festival contest.

Ok, I think this almost sums up my proposition. Only thing remaining is how the entries are calculated, both for the regular festival, and the decade awards. My suggestions for this follow:


There are a couple of issues here. First how will the entrants for the regular festival contests be chosen? We have both people who still are active in the community, and others who have departed, either from the game or from the cosmos.
I think that one idea to solve this issue is to have a double method of choosing the entrants.
First they will be broken up to two categories: those who are still active and those who are not.

Those who are still active can reserve the right to self-nominate their works in all categories they have work to nominate in, provided that they have won at least one contest of the five years the contests have been running. I think that a lot of people have won, so this would suffice for those who are active.

Those who are inactive can have their work nominated in a 25 choice poll by others, same mechanism as the way to choose modpacks/scenarios for the decade award. However, in order to keep things tidy, I propose there is only one poll per supra category (eg one for ALL units, one for ALL maps etc) to choose the names of the people who are inactive/have not won at least one contest to be entered in the festival. This means there can be three 25-choice polls, one for Units, one for Maps, and one for PCX, to select the first 9 creators or creations to be entered in the regular contests alongside the rest.

This means that there will be around 25 names in the end, for all contests, 9 chosen by the poll, and 14 from the winners. I propose though that if in some category there are more than 14 different winners (I doubt there are) the number of inactive nominations drops accordingly, to form the number 25 in total again.

Lastly we come to the way the Decade nominations are calculated for entrants who are still active, for the categories for which the Decade Award is not the sole Award. I suggest that those can be entered in a triple way:
If they have won any number of yearly relevant contests.
If they have won a set number of non-yearly contests (lets say 3)
If they have won any number of relevant festival contests.

I think that this concludes my thesis. I hope it can generate some discussion.
 
I don't see why M-Units couldn't get a category as well. They're definitely part of the Civ-III modding history and require some skills to put together. I still remember Kryten's original thread.

Those who are still active can reserve the right to self-nominate their works in all categories they have work to nominate in, provided that they have won at least one contest of the five years the contests have been running.

I don't see the heck why anyone should have won anything to put their own stuff here. No, really, Monthly competitions are fun and are a good way to stimulate creation but they aren't in any shape or form a validation process for anything else.
 
This was meant to be a basis of discussion, obviously i am not dictating anything ;)

As for your question about the self-nomination process, i am thinking of the 25 limit in the polls. What do you suggest we do if there are more than 25 people who want to take part in a contest? Break it up to even more contests? And if so, on what basis will this be done, will a mod decide what to do or should we have poll after poll of deciding on every little detail there is?

I do not see why you don't like my suggestion. Is it not so that no one of those still in the community exists who has not won one single contest ever, and has some good work to put forward? Maybe the case is different, but to my knowledge all of the regulars who are around have won something at some time. So again i fail to see what your issue with this part of my suggestions is.

Of course, as a complimentary solution, there could be a small poll about "wildcards" too, to be added in the contestants, people who are around but have not won anything in these 5 years. I am sure this can be arranged. I was trying to keep things as tidy as possible.
 
This was meant to be a basis of discussion, obviously i am not dictating anything

Of course, same as I.

Is it not so that no one of those still in the community exists who has not won one single contest ever, and has some good work to put forward?

Wouldn't that the make the very rule moot ? If, anyway, (almost) everyone is eligible, why keep the prerequisite ?

It sounds, in theory if not in practice, elitist to restrain the tournament entry to those whose won a Monthly competition.. Competitions in which we are already both judges and participants (although I'm sure many don't vote when they're entering something). I know this kind of anniversary competition is quite self-centered by definition but this prerequisite pushes it further.

Besides, as far as I enjoy MC, we vote with very different appreciations sets.. Sometimes, one will vote for the most astounding animations, or the most original concept, or the prettiest model, or what is likely to help him the most with his mods, or what's his favorite theme, etc. That's very fine, it's a friendly competition after all - but it's not even barely adequate for an admission examen.

But, getting back to my first point, if this rule doesn't block anyone from entering, why put it there in the first place ?

By the way, I think Shiro Kobbure never won an Unit Monthly Competition, which is a shame given his high quality units.

What do you suggest we do if there are more than 25 people who want to take part in a contest?

If there is a lot of application, couldn't we vote in two rounds, keeping the first 5 from the first to second.
 
Moderator Action: The OP and other posts in this thread duplicate posts in the other threads. It is thus redundant. Posting the same thing in multiple threads is also one type of spam posting. Continue the discussion in the other appropriate threads. Thread closed.
 
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