A few weeks ago during the Gothicomp voting, a user made a statement on warseer about soliciting votes for their entry that brought up a question that has bugged me for quite some time and I was asked to post a topic on this over here on Taccoms.

The question is why do we bother calling competitions painting competitions when the votes, anonymous or not, can and likely are skewed simply by the popularity of the submitter? I'd start by saying this in no wise has anything to do with the outcome of the competition and I wouldn't have mentioned it at all had the comment not be posted on warseer in the first place, but since it has I think it is a topic worthy of discussion.

I'd like to put forward that anonymous entry really does nothing to prevent solicitation of votes because the submitter will always recognize his image and simply solicit votes for the correct entry. Second, I think the community voting mechanic is important to these online competitions because it get the community involved more completely and provides them with a sense of ownership in the decision that a straight panel of judges would remove.

With that in mind and to get the discussion going, I think that it should be a combination of judging panel and community votes. Having judged art competitions before, I think that there needs to be a group, as in the conversion competition, that is qualified by their background to judge the painting rather than the photographic quality of the individual entries. In order to keep the community involved, I think that the result of the community vote and two other judges would provide a way to balance the popularity aspect of the straight community vote and the more impartial nature of the closed panel from the conversion competition.

Thoughts, or discussion?

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-Vaaish

The idea that somebody from the GothiComp was soliciting votes is -if it is true- a tad disappointing.  I say that because my expectations of the people in this forum have always been set higher; in other words, it never dawned on me that anybody would do that.  Epic (and by extension Battlefleet Gothic) strike me as more mature games and attract a more mature type of participant to whom competition is a higher calling than victory.

That and the prizes that are being offered aren't so huge that they would encourage somebody to go out of their way to cheat.

Besides, the voting is designed around a basic premise: Warmaster Nice wins first place and then the remaining votes are counted up so the scraps can be dolled out. This prevents anyone from being able to take the prizes home anyway.  

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

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If someone wants to win that bad then so be it. I agree with Moscovian, I would have never thought of anyone here cheating. I just don't see ppl wanting it that bad. I'm fairly sure if there was no winners/voting there would be about the same amount of entries still, as the mature gamers just wanna share there minis.

Again I feel the members here are of a high caliber then you would find after school at your local GW shop.

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I've never voted due to popularity of individuals, and heck, I even won a category in the Epicomp one year so it can't be a popularity contest.  

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Agreed, it is a disappointment. It never occurred to me either.

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"I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate." N. Peart

A panel of experts sounds like a good idea, however presumably the best painters, such as WMN who would be candidates for this would want to enter the competition themselves?

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I am not sure if the member who Vaaish means was very serious in his remark but I do know that sometimes participants (this and previous years as well) announce GothiComp (or similar) on there 'home' websites/forums and say which entry is theirs and/or pointing at them. In some cases asking for a vote.

Happens. Doesn't affect the winning entries though. As the majority still goes voting by quality.

But if there is a majority supportive of a judging panel in addition to a voting community I think we should seriously consider that option.

Vanvlak, Cybershadow?

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http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=19176

I tend to prefer a discussion on the pieces in questions then 3 or so judges soliciting opinions if they so desire then making a decision. Whether or not I get to vote is immaterial. Saying 'oh that chaos fleet is nifty' is good enough for me.

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Alternatively, we could ask the OSCE to send someone over for election monitoring.

I prefer community voting and trust the community... plus someone soliciting votes elsewhere means people have to sign up to the boards before they can vote (perhaps for their friend, perhaps not), and maybe will stay.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

*chuckles*

Well TBH I haven't really had time to work on anything for this year's comp so if I ever do get around to finishing anything it will be for a single category only.

Anyway: I don't think it'll be possible to set up a completely neutral system: Just as people have different painting styles, they also have different photographic styles, so you'd usually be able to tell who's submitting the photos anyway. People can invite friends or even create fake forum accounts to vote for themselves if they really wanted to, but tbh it just seems to be a lot of hassle for a competition in a small close knit community such as this. From memory there's usually no more than a handfull of entries that are from non-regular members, and I don't recall ever seeing more than 50 total votes in a category.

As for "professional" judging:
I've been helping CS and Horizon out when judging the conversion category in the GothiComp. A couple of months ago I raised the question on what criteria an entry should be judged, and how each criteria should be weighed against each other. Ie. how much does "the original idea", the craftsmanship, overall looks, themes, cool details etc. etc. count in the final decision. Ultimately though it often boils down to a gut feeling. Something may be brilliant craftsmanship, but that doesn't necessarily means that it got that stroke of originality that makes it really interesting to look at. We've often discussed models where less was more: A simple conversion that wasn't perticularly difficult to execute, but just seemed tremendously characterfull.
I think the issue of judging painting is even more difficult. Most pepople will recognize a nicely painted miniature when they see it. I think the problem arrises when we begin to discuss some of the more advanced painting techniques. Should a model that is painted using NMM automatically range higher than one that doesn't because it is more difficult to achieve? Is careful blending techniques the mark of a better painter than an effective wash and drybrush? Should you weather your model or not? I think this boils down to a matter of personal preference (and also the "fashion" of miniature painting at any given time), and it also depends a lot on what suits the particular type of miniature. Personally I'd find judging something like this very very difficult because I have certain opinions about what I like and what I don't like. I can recognize good craftsmanship when I see it, but if I don't think it suits the model, then what? There are also cases when less is more; when a simple but effective paint job just does the trick really well. And instances where people have spent months working on a model using a ton of advanced techniques and the result still looks messy.

I see Vaaish's point about camera skills sometimes distorting the votes, as people can be seduced by a nice photo, or turned off but a poor photo of an otherwise nicely painted miniature. But if judges were to make any fair judgement on the painting quality I think you'd need to see the miniatures with your own eyes anyway, as so much depends on lighting conditions and photographic techniques. And let's not even begin to discuss the quagmire that is Photoshop: IS it ok to use auto-levels, adjust color balance. Can you remove a bit of dust/hair, or what if that eye would look better if it just got tweaked just a little bit... You probably catch my drft. (Oh, and just for the record, I do adjust light and color balance on my photos when necessary. I may occationally also fix stuff like a strain of hair or a paint chip - they are gaming pieces and take some damage from handeling after all  )

The final problem then arises when you need to compare the judges' decision with the votes: Which one weight heavier in case of a tie? Most often there'll probably be a fairly close correspondence between the two, but still...

Anyway: My point is just that it might be a bit ovekill to go to such lengths to ensure a 100% fair competition. After all the aim of EpiComp has mainly been to create an image databank of nicely painted Epic miniatures as a source of inspiration for everybody, provide a bit of motivation for people to get their stuff painted, and perhaps most importantly a bit of community building.

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I think that it would a waste of time to pretend that this kind of thing is not going on. In fact, exposure for the games and - to a certain extent - for this site, is a founding reason for the competitions in the first place. Gaining this network and getting more people to look at fantastic pictures of the miniatures, and perhaps consider buying and playing - particularly in forums and places where people who are not already players will be made aware of them, is a 'good thing'.

In addition, I personally dont think that this has as huge a factor as is perceived. If someone here broadcast that they were taking part in a competition and asked for votes, I would check it out... and vote for the one that I thought was best anyway. Maybe this is just me.

To add to this, this 'opportunity' is open to all participants, and in theory should balance out over the competition. That said, there is a difference between pointing out the competition and the 'hard sell' of soliciting votes. In the past, we have had instances of a flock of new members joining the boards only to vote, and never being seen again, and I have toyed with the idea of simply switching off all new registrations in the final few weeks of voting.

This is another reason that we have deliberately stuck to prizes donated by the community, and in several cases both Exodus and DRM have donated prize pools that I have specifically reduced for exactly this reason. I dont want the competition to be about the prizes and spoils.

If voting was conducted by a 'representative panel' (whatever that means), it would restrict entries, and not necessarily clarify the winning entry/position. Look at the various 'discussion' that goes on after every Golden Demon competition.

We could go to a 'strictly come dancing' voting system (argh, the horror!) where a panel awarded half the marks while the community contributed to the remaining half marks, but would this really elliminate the problem?

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Nah, let's just do what we've been doing.  The prizes are nice, but they aren't thousands of dollars (or pounds if you will) and if somebody wants to go that wacky to win them I say let them go nuts.  It might just mean new people come-a-knockin' on Tactica Command's door and that is a small price to pay.

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author of Syncing Forward and other stories...

It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I've got my Milkbone underwear on.

I don't know his seriousness either, but it remains it was a comment like that which brought the whole thing up.



WMN: when I've judged art competitions, we have each judge rate every piece with a score between 1 and 10 and then add together the scores for each piece with the highest total winning. It is possible for it to tie but with three judges it's pretty uncommon and if it does we discuss the tied pieces more closely to determine the winner.

As far as painting style, I believe it's whatever creates the best mini more than the most complex technique. There is a place for washes, drybrush, wet blending, and NMM. No one technique is better or worse but each needs to be used appropriately to create a highly polished mini. I do agree that photography can play role in this as even the most amazingly painted mini will look like crap under a flash and bad lighting.



I don't think a half and half would, which is why I was thinking of 1/3 of the final score coming from the community and the remainder from the judges. Before posting I'd thought through other systems where judges weed out the entries and let the final round of voting be done by the community, but that reduced the number of images available in the gallery. By the same token, letting the community do the first round of voting and the judges do the final selection of winners didn't seem to make soliciting votes less attractive either.

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-Vaaish

I know I have certainly anounced the various compentitions on my 'home' forums to try and get community interest.  Never letting people know what my entry is but in many cases it would be obvious to anyone who knows me well (including Tac Com members).  My assumption would be that people who are interested enough to look at links and vote would make an informed decission and vote for the entry they feel is best.

Opening an new account to vote for yourself is somewhat sad.... but apart form that can't we just assume that voters will use their own discretion and select models they like?

The community voting format seems to work fine as is!

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