Mafiascum.net

I think runner up might be a good thing to do sometimes?

In post 923, mastina wrote:

In post 920, BBmolla wrote:If the point of the scummies is to give light to great play, I think adding a 2nd and 3rd in each category would shed light on more plays and help with circumstances where judges are really torn between two great examples and have to choose one.

Possible compromise:
Years ago, they used to list all of the nominees for an award.
Now, they only list the winner.

In the reward ceremony, we could go BACK to listing all the nominees. That's an absolute zero effort thing (it should literally just be a copy-past thing guys), but it allows for a second spotlight beyond the original nomination, so to speak: "these were the others who were considered", and with that extra mention, those people/situations/games might get a higher level of exposure.

My goal and backstage agenda was to push for a "finalists" list to be published one month before the ceremony to build hype. Basically take all the nominees and pare it down to 4-5 finalists for each award, then only have the judges need to judge those 4-5 finalists. It'd be more Oscar-like and would build hype and recognize other finalists who were close to winning.

Why can't we bring Best Town Performance back but distribute it to only the players that deserve it?

because then you have a group of 4-5 people picking through a player list and handing out awards to very specific people which will result in more drama than you even can imagine

the amount of butthurt people complaining they should've been involved in that award/win and the quote walling that would happen for/against that kind of shit would be ridiculous

it's not worth the effort

Plus it's kind of impossible to assign credit to specific players in an objective way

It's either all or nothing

I think I prefer all to nothing

Lemme tell you how judging best town went down.

It was just a statistics fest. Judges went "Well, these towns had mislynches, so they're out. These towns didn't doc protect correctly, so they're out. These towns didn't vig correctly, so they're out." It was mathematical process of elimination that had no place in an awards system like this. And the reason it was like that is because best town group is a silly award and so people judged it the best way they knew how. It's gone for a good reason, not to mention the billion other reasons like rewarding shitty town play with an award.

in general an award is more meaningful if it has a somewhat narrow criteria for judging. best town as a group is just too broad to judge in a consistent way that actually rewards anything other than good sheeping.

so it was basically because judges were ~lazy~ (replace with whatever applicable word) and not because the award itself wasn't a good one to have? k

so how you can you reward good town play without putting an insane load on the judges?

nixing the award entirely doesn't sound like the solution...

finding better judges, or defining a clear criteria (i.e. as has been done with Don Corleone) sounds closer to the goal.

In post 10, Realeo wrote:

In post 2, Psyche wrote:so professor mafia

is

gone
and community contributer too

Can't we have this back~but if no one gets is, then it's simply not rewarded.

Like 2015?

i like the gist of this idea and would like to endorse it in this the appropriate thread

In post 9, Pine wrote:Maybe make Professor Mafia an all-inclusive award, covering all aspects of teaching, ICing, theorycraft, mentoring, and generally improving the playerbase.

In post 8, mhsmith0 wrote:

In post 2, Psyche wrote:so professor mafia

is

gone
and community contributer too

FWIW, I would recommend that at least one of these be returned, or possibly best IC for newbies.

and also this gist

disagree w zakk btw

Best Replacement: Instead of giving out a subjectively judged award for Best Replacement, we felt that replacing should simply be done if someone wants to help out. However, we are happy to announce that the staff will begin giving out "Replacement Hero" pins to users who replace into games and complete X number of games in a calendar year. These "pins" will be small JPG bars that'd go above Scummies banners or below titles in your user profile to show that you've pitched in and helped out a mod in need. The exact number of games needed for this pin is still being determined, but expect more updates on the Replacement Hero pins from zoraster in the near future!

oh and whatever happened with this

Let me, uh, get a little more systematic about what I think a lot of people might think is missing in the scummies.

Right now, the scummies do a lot to recognize good play and good moderation. That the ceremony pulls this objective off reliably and artfully every single year is really amazing. But the site as a whole is -or *aims* to be- more than that. We have a whole Newbie queue aimed at systematically introducing people to the game, as well as a massive Wiki and literally thousands of (yes, rarer) threads centered on substantial theoretical and didactic discussion. We have a lively GD subforum filled with even more threads where people are talking constantly about topics as varied as music and politics, sex and investing. All of that rabble is integral to what MS is about, but the Scummies' categories don't really reflect that.

The idea of an inclusive award that treats as comparable the Community Contributor ethos and Professor Mafia ethos (as well as perhaps even the Best IC and Best Replacement ethoses) would do a lot to cover this part of what this site is, but there are other options that could be enacted as well or instead. There could be a public vote Scummy (or not public vote) like Game of the Year that recognizes maybe the best new GD (or MD) thread (though Speakeasy threads might have to be ignored for many reasons). I don't specifically endorse the idea of a body of work award, but there's that, too. I can't think of anything else right now bc im terrible and stuff.

Come up with a clear vision of what that should be, including standards that can be judged on some basis other than "I kinda feel like picking this" and it's worth considering.

Also, I'm not sure I really want to encourage "winning" posts and threads in discussion any more than people already do.

hey not to be a massive binch but would a condorcet-compliant system be preferable to instant-runoff voting in the final round of voting since (i assume) there are relatively few ballots in play and IRV values a 1 far more than it does other information/ranks

if that was the intention cool no problem that's fine but just thought i'd mention

yeah yeah trust me to raise this

I mean that was the intention. In the past, it's just been a straight up public vote from the judges for their favorite. Although narrowing the field to finalists hopefully means the judges dedicate nearly equal attention to all selections, I think hat judges, particularly in the larger groups, will inevitably begin to focus their attention more on their top couple rather than spending a whole lot of time figuring out whether they think #4 or #5 on their list is more deserving of the #4 spot. I'd love to be wrong about that, but I'm trying to be realistic.

I'm not particularly married to it though.

yeah fair enough

as well as perhaps even the Best IC

I have a question. What does exactly the Best IC do? Why we give award to the Best IC?

I mean, IC is a special position since it's a right. Take example of military, which is a community service. They don't award "The best soldier", they award "Extremely Competent Soldiers". Plural. More than 1. They don't say, "Hey you're a good soldier, but you ranked #20 so sucks to be you because we only give to #1!"

Instead of rewarding one award to the best IC, can't we just award multiple award to competent(s) IC?

Because I think IC is intergral to this community and deserve better than just one receiver.

Then it becomes a participation award

In post 933, zakk wrote:finding better judges

Judging is A LOT of work.
Especially when there's little discretion in nominations and there's a good half-dozen or dozen games entered for each category.

And its entirely a volunteer basis.

I was a judge for 2011. And another year.

In post 944, N wrote:Then it becomes a participation award

I wouldn't mind that
Just make sure that it's not A PARTICIPATION AWARD (referring to ones where EVERYONE gets them)

Suggestion: would it be possible for the judging process, after the rewards are handed out, to be made public? (Maybe not fully so, but at least some basics?) I'm seeing some sentiment of people feeling the judges have made some REALLY weird, wacky calls--they don't understand what made the judges decide to make their selection. This isn't exactly something the ceremony itself gives; the most you typically get is a quote either from the game itself or from a nominator of the award about why it deserved nomination. That's...not exactly the most informative of processes. Seeing the actual judging after it has been done in a greater capacity would allow users to go, "Ohhhhh! That makes sense, now!", or at the very least, make it more tangible what their disagreements are.

This would also offer the judges a form of critique--with it all behind closed doors, who can tell the judges how to improve? Only those with access. And I'm sure that any judge who is worthy of being a judge holds interest in how to do their job better, and would love the feedback. But how can general users provide that feedback if they can't actually see what the process was? It's near-impossible.

So there's clear benefits on all ends to this, and I can't really see a downside to this. It'd basically be like releasing a mod PT after the conclusion of a game: by doing so, the mod shows their process, and lets users know what happened and why, opening themselves up to feedback on how to improve their modding process.

No.

the downside is that nominees and others can put, intentional or not, pressure. It risks it becoming a popularity contest. Or perhaps more of one. And in the mean girls way. This isn't an idle consideration. One year someone leaked the discussion to one of the nominees and it caused CONSIDERABLE ill will.

In fact, this year I moved even more toward an anonymous system where final votes were submitted only to me. Discussion still took place, but the votes were private.