Scummies Ideas, Suggestions and Comments Thread

[Andrius]

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.

[Andrius]

The people who have served as Scummies Judges and the people who are complaining about how the system works seem to occupy two separate groups.

Scummies Judging generally looks like this:

STAGE ONE: Organizing how you're going to tackle it and what awards to do first. This is when you're excited and want to do this. Some people post initial thoughts on games they already have formed opinions about or are familiar with. Judges also recuse themselves if compromised/etc from certain categories.

Weeks pass.

STAGE TWO: Putting off the reading. You're less excited, and you now have to actually READ every game. You might even start to dislike the people constantly nominating games because there's little vetting the games from anyone, and the judges are the few people who actually have to read through EVERY nomination. For categories like KODAK MOMENT, it is simple. You read a couple pages. For the big ones (Paragon/GOTY/Best [Team/Town/Godfather/Setup/Flavor] you have to read the entire game to understand what happened.

Time passes.

STAGE THREE: This is when the Scummies are actually here and the Writers are beginning their work. This is when you're supposed to be done, but you're not because the categories you saved for last are the ones that require the most reading: Paragon and the BEST categories. Someone from the Steering Committee generally says HEY GET A MOVE ON regularly. And, of course, the last-minute nominations can also throw wrenches into the system if you've already formed opinions.


I considered doing it this year, but the time investment is significant, especially when nominations are rolling in constantly and you know how long this takes from past tenure.

[Andrius]

To be fair, Andries, I think we greatly streamlined things this year.

I'm sure you have! I'd expect no less of you.

But it still requires tons of reading. You can't just throw out noms without consideration etc.
My words may no longer be relevant because of time but the biggest thing I wished to convey was the sheer TIME required in doing this.