Regarding to the incident in 8.18 (Spooky Scary Skeletons), where none of the highly upvoted cards in page 1 got to the final poll (including mine) because of the nature of the current voting system, I want to call some considerstion to the mods for changes to the voting system.
Let's get this out of the way first: I understand that the card with most votes doesn't need to get to the final poll, otherwise people will rush their submissions to get more votes, and the final poll will be filled with page 1 submissions. There just need to be a good way to calculate the score of each submission from the amount of upvotes it has.
However, for the current system, the score of a submission is calculated to be the percentage of upvotes that that submission have from the total votes given in the page that submission is in. The problem from this method is that whether a submission goes to the final poll can be affected by the performance of other cards in the same page. Your card just needs to stand out in the page you submitted, which means the exactly the same submission may or may not go to the final poll depending on where it is submitted. If the rest of the page is filled with well desinged cards you will have less chance to go to the final poll than if the rest of the page is filled with poorly designed cards.
In 8.18, the highly upvoted cards (40+ upvotes) in page 1 didn't go to the final poll because their numerous upvotes make one another's upvote proportion of the page less.
For changes, I agree on Tox's idea of calculating score from comparing the card's upvote and the average upvotes a card on page X would has. This would entirely elminate the focus on posting your card in a page where there are badly design cards (which is really bad spirit for our competition), as your card's is now unaffected by what others do.
Another way that I agree on is to replicate r/customhearthstone's voting system. (It's a hs design competition on reddit which is very similar to ours here at Hearthpwn, go check it out! (The mods probrably know about this already)) The submissions are comments stacked in 1 page, but the upvotes are hidden, and the comments are sorted randomly each time. So the basic idea of this system is that each submission gets approximately the same amount of possible upvoters that sees their card, which will definitely make it a fair system. However, that basic idea requires designers to submit at the same time. This system encourages the designers to submit at the fastest possible time to have more people see it before the dateline. Late submitters will get disadvantaged.
Lastly, even if the above solutions are rejected, can mods please hide the amount of upvotes of submissions in the submission thread during each design comp? It's a small thing to ask for, but I don't even know if it's possible on Hearthpwn forums. I think it's important to eliminate the bias you have for highly voted cards in the first place. I mean, when I scroll pass through a submission thread and saw a submission with lots of upvotes, I naturally become curious for the card and ends up giving it more attention than others about why a lot of people appreciate it, which in turn would probrably end up with me "bandwagoning" with the crowd and gave it the upvote that may not be given if I don't have a positive attention bias for it in the first place. Hiding the upvote amount would mean that whether people will upvote it or not depends solely on their thoghts and opinions on the card, uninfluenced by what others think. This is what upvotes should communicate.
I hope that the mods would consider and deal with this problem, so that awkward situations like in 8.18 will not happen again.
This problem of pages occasionally not having cards make the finals has existed for a long time in the competition, and we've taken steps to reduce it, but it's not something that can be completely removed without revamping the system entirely. We used to guarantee that at least one entry from each page would make the finals, but this bloated the final poll and often reduced the overall quality of the finalists.
To address some specific things you mentioned:
We are unable to hide the number of upvotes a submission has, the forums just aren't set up to allow this. We would if we could, I agree that removing this potential bias would be good - it's why the final poll results are hidden, after all - but we aren't able to.
We have to work within the confines of the forum system, so a set-up similar to the Reddit's design competition wouldn't work, as we have no way of randomising the submissions. A custom website could be built for this task, but none of us have that ability.
I'm not super sure I understand what you're referring to in regards to Tox's suggestion. It sounds interesting though, I'd like to hear more about it. It may have already been discussed and I've just forgotten.
In regards to the specific incident in 8.18, this happens very rarely, and in fact it's much more likely that submitting on one of the last pages will end with nobody on the page making the finals - we actually checked this in a previous Season, as people had raised concerns when nobody from the first page made the finals two weeks in a row. In response to that, we made the decision moving forward to err on the side of more finalists in the future, which has seen a reduction in pages not making the final.
i'm really late replying to this and maybe you guys thought of my idea and dismissed it already.
if you would like to hide vote totals why don't you make a poll at the start that is updated and use that as the voting system rather than upvotes. granted that would be a lot of work.
i'm really late replying to this and maybe you guys thought of my idea and dismissed it already.
if you would like to hide vote totals why don't you make a poll at the start that is updated and use that as the voting system rather than upvotes. granted that would be a lot of work.
Unfortunately, I just don't see how that could be practical. The moment someone enters a new submission, one of us mods would need to be instantly available to include them in the mass-poll. If we're not online - or we are not aware there's a submission - the delay would act against the poster's opportunities for votes. It would create a lot of issues for both sides: any cracks that develop in our coverage would work against the contestants and potentially instill negativity, so we would need to maintain a constant 100% moderator up-time and be perfectly on-the-ball with the poll. Didn't get as many upvotes as you were hoping? Well it must be the moderators at fault, for not updating the poll as fast as possible.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
You don't have to update the mass pole though. If you change the schedule, you could have people send you their submissions (via private messages), then you would make a mass pole after a deadline. From this mass pole, you'd have your winner (the most voted card) and possibly a second and third place winners because of the increase in submission density. Instead of 1 day for discussion, 4 days for submissions, 1 day of voting and 1 day for the final pole, you'd have 4 days of private submissions and 3 days of mass pole-voting.
It's just an idea, and i don't know how difficult it would be for you to do this. But think about second and third place prizes pls.
You don't have to update the mass pole though. If you change the schedule, you could have people send you their submissions (via private messages), then you would make a mass pole after a deadline. From this mass pole, you'd have your winner (the most voted card) and possibly a second and third place winners because of the increase in submission density. Instead of 1 day for discussion, 4 days for submissions, 1 day of voting and 1 day for the final pole, you'd have 4 days of private submissions and 3 days of mass pole-voting.
It's just an idea, and i don't know how difficult it would be for you to do this. But think about second and third place prizes pls.
The problem with that is the mod's inboxes would be flooded with entries, which may be annoying and very time consuming to go through.
With the amount of times I've came second or third place, one part of my brain would love prizes for them, but the other part doesn't because realistically, what could the other two get? I feel like keeping the prize to the winner keeps the integrity of the competition as well.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click the image to go to my custom Time Traveler class.
You don't have to update the mass pole though. If you change the schedule, you could have people send you their submissions (via private messages), then you would make a mass pole after a deadline. From this mass pole, you'd have your winner (the most voted card) and possibly a second and third place winners because of the increase in submission density. Instead of 1 day for discussion, 4 days for submissions, 1 day of voting and 1 day for the final pole, you'd have 4 days of private submissions and 3 days of mass pole-voting.
It's just an idea, and i don't know how difficult it would be for you to do this. But think about second and third place prizes pls.
The problem with that is the mod's inboxes would be flooded with entries, which may be annoying and very time consuming to go through.
With the amount of times I've came second or third place, one part of my brain would love prizes for them, but the other part doesn't because realistically, what could the other two get? I feel like keeping the prize to the winner keeps the integrity of the competition as well.
Maybe they could make a special account just for getting submissions.
You don't have to update the mass pole though. If you change the schedule, you could have people send you their submissions (via private messages), then you would make a mass pole after a deadline. From this mass pole, you'd have your winner (the most voted card) and possibly a second and third place winners because of the increase in submission density. Instead of 1 day for discussion, 4 days for submissions, 1 day of voting and 1 day for the final pole, you'd have 4 days of private submissions and 3 days of mass pole-voting.
It's just an idea, and i don't know how difficult it would be for you to do this. But think about second and third place prizes pls.
The problem with that is the mod's inboxes would be flooded with entries, which may be annoying and very time consuming to go through.
With the amount of times I've came second or third place, one part of my brain would love prizes for them, but the other part doesn't because realistically, what could the other two get? I feel like keeping the prize to the winner keeps the integrity of the competition as well.
Maybe they could make a special account just for getting submissions.
I'm just going to copy-paste what I said to one of the other mods about this idea here. While your suggestion of a special account does alleviate one issue, there are still many others. Adding in that extra layer of complexity to submitting is also a big turn off, imo.
The issue with that isn't that it wouldn't work or anything, it's that it requires so much more time investment and management on our part.
Not only do we then need to do the additional post with all the cards - making sure none were missed, maybe by being sent to the wrong person - we also need to keep track of who every card belongs to internally so we can put the correct people in a final poll. We also couldn't just put cards in a thread as they were given to us, they'd need to be added randomly which is a further complication. It also requires far more of potential voters, being faced with a whole submission page at a time instead of being able to check back occasionally. Not to mention the issue of cards that don't fit the theme. Do we just post them, only to DQ them later? That seems silly. So if we DQ them as they come in, we all need to see the cards to make sure none are missed. Then what do we do if someone is DQed? How do we tell them, if at all? Do they get another chance at submitting a card? How do we decide between minor edits and major changes?
Basically, I think the idea doesn't offer enough of an improvement of the system to warrant the massive increase in effort on our part to make it work - in fact, I'd be concerned that the increase in complexity to enter and the massive influx of submissions at once to vote on would actually turn people away from entering and voting, rather than encourage it. I'm totally open to ideas on how to improve it, though.
So, when does the next big comp start? Maybe this time, I won't miss another 107/108.
(inb4 it starts today)
We're not quite mean enough to start a competition out of the blue on Boxing Day =P
Current plan is for Season 9 (and the next Big Comp) to start in two weeks time. We considered next week, but didn't want to promise there'd be enough mods available to work two days into the new year.
The current submission and voting system is fine, as long as you don't post it on the first page. And wild card still exists (does it?), which could save some high-quality entries if the mods want.
The current submission and voting system is fine, as long as you don't post it on the first page. And wild card still exists (does it?), which could save some high-quality entries if the mods want.
I don't think it's the first page in particular, but early pages in general.
This doesn't have to do with the voting system itself, but with the fact that people with good ideas tend to post as soon as the submission topic is open.
i'm really late replying to this and maybe you guys thought of my idea and dismissed it already.
if you would like to hide vote totals why don't you make a poll at the start that is updated and use that as the voting system rather than upvotes. granted that would be a lot of work.
Unfortunately, I just don't see how that could be practical. The moment someone enters a new submission, one of us mods would need to be instantly available to include them in the mass-poll. If we're not online - or we are not aware there's a submission - the delay would act against the poster's opportunities for votes. It would create a lot of issues for both sides: any cracks that develop in our coverage would work against the contestants and potentially instill negativity, so we would need to maintain a constant 100% moderator up-time and be perfectly on-the-ball with the poll. Didn't get as many upvotes as you were hoping? Well it must be the moderators at fault, for not updating the poll as fast as possible.
Behold, foolish interlopers! I am commanding this mortal to spread the will of the Scourge throughout the interwebs, encouraging you to seek out me, Archlich Kel'Thuzad! Now coming to you as the tenth class of Hearthstone!
I am a finalist in this Class Creation Competition, so if you could give it a look I would be greatly appreciative <3
You don't have to update the mass pole though. If you change the schedule, you could have people send you their submissions (via private messages), then you would make a mass pole after a deadline. From this mass pole, you'd have your winner (the most voted card) and possibly a second and third place winners because of the increase in submission density. Instead of 1 day for discussion, 4 days for submissions, 1 day of voting and 1 day for the final pole, you'd have 4 days of private submissions and 3 days of mass pole-voting.
It's just an idea, and i don't know how difficult it would be for you to do this.
But think about second and third place prizes pls.
The problem with that is the mod's inboxes would be flooded with entries, which may be annoying and very time consuming to go through.
With the amount of times I've came second or third place, one part of my brain would love prizes for them, but the other part doesn't because realistically, what could the other two get? I feel like keeping the prize to the winner keeps the integrity of the competition as well.
Click the image to go to my custom Time Traveler class.
Maybe they could make a special account just for getting submissions.
I'm just going to copy-paste what I said to one of the other mods about this idea here. While your suggestion of a special account does alleviate one issue, there are still many others. Adding in that extra layer of complexity to submitting is also a big turn off, imo.
Basically, I think the idea doesn't offer enough of an improvement of the system to warrant the massive increase in effort on our part to make it work - in fact, I'd be concerned that the increase in complexity to enter and the massive influx of submissions at once to vote on would actually turn people away from entering and voting, rather than encourage it. I'm totally open to ideas on how to improve it, though.
You can find me here! Good luck everyone!
So, when does the next big comp start? Maybe this time, I won't miss another 107/108.
(inb4 it starts today)
Click the image to go to my custom Time Traveler class.
We're not quite mean enough to start a competition out of the blue on Boxing Day =P
Current plan is for Season 9 (and the next Big Comp) to start in two weeks time. We considered next week, but didn't want to promise there'd be enough mods available to work two days into the new year.
You can find me here! Good luck everyone!
I’m a web developer by trade, I could develop a site that would have masked voting and submission order randomization.
Mods would be able to login and remove/flag entries as normal. Double posts and entries with no submission wouldn’t be possible.
If this is something they really want, I would work on it for season 10.
I have worked as a web developer too, and that seems like a ton of work :C
There's that, and I also suspect that mods don't want to/are not allowed to use third-party apps or code.
Custom cards :
CLASSES : Alchemist (CCC#5 | Phase V) | Chef (CCC#4)
EXPANSIONS : Year of the Scorpion (Year Comp)
The current submission and voting system is fine, as long as you don't post it on the first page. And wild card still exists (does it?), which could save some high-quality entries if the mods want.
THERE IS NO GAME.
I don't think it's the first page in particular, but early pages in general.
This doesn't have to do with the voting system itself, but with the fact that people with good ideas tend to post as soon as the submission topic is open.
Well. The first promt for the new season is up now!
And stay tuned for the big comp that will be revealed later today!
I want a new title, but Flux won't let me have one,