[Cherie]

Originally Posted by Shaun

To be fair - as I have stipulated with Josiah - it's also entirely possible that someone else tampered with the votes to try and frame those who've benefitted from them. There shouldn't be any public accusations. I have a pretty clear idea of who I think is behind it but even discounting the obvious 300+ votes nonsense, there will have been people who thought "hmm, I'll vote 3 or 4 times" and that's just as bad and unfair, really. I don't see any need for a poll in an event like this when so much effort's been put into the entries themselves, it seems only fair that a little bit of effort should go into the voting too.

I've mentioned to Josiah that I'll "reclaim the game" but only in a few aspects.

- I'll post the thread and announce it when we've agreed on a start date.
- I'll collect all of the votes (via PM, and also count the judges' scores)
- I'll collect the entries as they are submitted by participating members

Otherwise, Josiah will do pretty much exactly what he did the night before last, because he did an excellent job with it and was a good host. So Josiah will still:

- Host the event with his (now customary) videos and opening titles, etc.
- Design whatever he likes for the event (such as those song-information banners for the voting)
- Reveal the results (the only difference here is that I will know them this time )
- Have a Wikia for the event as he has done for...gosh...I don't know actually. 5 years maybe?

The only thing that I think needs to be decided on is the final scoring system. I think having the judges' scores counting for double (ie. instead of 17pts, 16pts, 15pts, it was 34pts, 32pts, 30pts... this time around) may be a little bit unfairly balanced in favour of the judges, and leave us open to scrutiny and accusations of bias/nepotism. I will have a tinker with the judges as usual because it's healthy to keep the panel a little bit different each time, but I think I'm pretty fair in hiring them because I go for people who either:

- Know the game well and know what makes a "good song"
- Have a moderator status and therefore a little bit of authority / are inherently impartial
- Represent a section of the forum that is otherwise not too closely affiliated with the majority of the song subjects (ie. as always, most songs are about chat-and-games in-jokes, or mods/bans, and can read as gobbledegook to non-posters of that area)
- Are just generally pretty fair and mature and can look at the game objectively as a celebration of creativity, effort and humour/musical prowess.

So I think keeping the "Jury vote" the same is fine (ie. all participants can vote with 12pts, 10pts, 8pts, 7pts, 6pts, 5pts, 4pts, 3pts, 2pts and 1pt for their ten favourite songs in order, but not for themselves) and any non-participating member can vote in the exact same format. Judges of course have to rank themselves somewhere otherwise are at a disadvantage - and I don't think any judge put themselves higher than 4th this time around? I put myself 8th. Midway is usually fine although I'm happy with this shady area being replaced by a "each judge gets [10pts]* and then takes themselves out of the ranking" scenario.
*[10pts] here would be a middle-mark for a Eurovision that has 20 songs submitted, so bang in the middle.

With 10 judges I think having singular points helps both keep the results closer/less predictable, and prevents us from having too strong of an influence on the final results. For example, if you removed the judges and left it to the players this time around it would've resulted in:

1) Shaun
2) LukeB
3) MB

Add in the judges and LukeB and I disappear from the top 3 entirely

I think, finally, and sorry I know this is going to be a long post but I want to address everything, making sure the voting remains open for a lot longer is also imperative and saves us from the stress of trying to get 20+ votes in under 24 hours. So I am toying with the idea of having Josiah host the live show on, say, a Friday, and then having the results show on the following Monday. That gives everyone the whole weekend to catch up, read everything thoroughly and not just skim-read quickly to get a vote in, and also gives us more time to prepare the results Like I say, this is just an idea and all of these things I've suggested are just ideas I'm happy to discuss with regular players in here.

Is it though, if it was an open vote where you could vote multiple times, just like it is at Eurovision and every other reality show then what is this issue, there wasn't a one vote per person rule so i don't really see the issue.

It's just a fun game at the end of the day, the right song won as everyone agrees and it will be memorable and as you say give people inspiration for the next one