Re: Anonymising pp contest entries?

[JT Thomas <odbo255@...>]

--- Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe@...> wrote:
> At 9:57 PM -0700 5/28/2002, JT Thomas wrote:
> >BTW, Ron I have some concern that there will be some bias conscious or
> >otherwise in the contest due to knowing the entrants
> 
> You don't have to worry about _conscious_ bias; Marty and I will make every
> attempt to be fair.  If you think we won't, however, I advise you not to
> enter the contest, because if you lose, you'll complain of bias, and if you
> win, you won't be able to feel good about it.  (Marty says that if you
> think she at least doesn't have the capacity to be brutally frank about the
> work of someone she knows, you don't know her very well.  :-)  After all,

woah, easy you two - I meant no offense!

> as an editor, objective criticism is her profession.  And I, Ron, having
> just been the subject of her tender mercies in green pen on my _Games
> Journal_ article, can attest to this.)
> 
> As for unconscious bias...
> 
> >is there anyway to
> >anonymize (sp?) the entries? Should this become part of the judging/entry
> >process? Is this already accounted for?
> 
> The "Time Marches On" contest was not anonymous, and we have modelled the
> "Ludic Synergy" contest on it closely.  Sincw we did not specify an
> anonymising process in the rules, it seems a bit late to put the egg back
> in the shell.  At the moment, we have already received one entry, and have
> a general idea about who will be doing two other entries, because the
> entrants needed to ask us if some particular game qualified as a game
> system.  That means we can definitely put names to one of the entries, and
> probably put names to two more, even if the latter come to us anonymised.
> 
> As long as the piecepack community remains small, it's likely that judges
> will be able to recognise the authors of anonymous entries by their styles,
> in any case.  However, as the community becomes larger, we may want to
> adopt some of the procedures of the annual Interactive Fiction Contest
> <http://www.ifcomp.org/>.  I don't know what those procedures are; can
> someone enlighten us?

As an on-again, off-again, semi-compulsive cyclic hermetic participant of
said community let me make some observations: it has become an accepted
although nonenforced practice in the IF community to adopt pseduonyms for
submissions to ifcomp. Author prestige has been known to skew judging
perception and is an issue that the community has yet to successfully resolve
to everyone's satisfaction.

My concern actually stems directly from the observations and lessons learned
from that community, if the piecepack contests could incorporate an
anonymising process as part of either the submission or judging cycle I
believe our contests would significantly benefit.

My $.02

-JT


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