Important - Judging Stuff

[S u N f r O s t ~]

Hey all.

There have been a lot of concerns lately about judging. As a result, I would like to suggest two courses of action.

First of all, I would like to have a brief dialogue about judging, in which everybody can speak and have their voices heard. To facilitate this, I would like to ask everybody to PM me their commentary on how judging is going. Do you think races are judged fairly? Do you have any personal concerns you would like to bring up? What do you think needs to change? What should we do to make judging fairer? And anything else you would like to bring up regarding judging. I would like to act as an unbiased party that will listen to your concerns and talk to you about them. Following the conclusion of these conversations, I would like to make a thread summarizing these concerns but leaving who had what concern anonymous. In fact, everything you bring up with me will be held in confidence - I want everybody to feel confident about PMing me their true feelings and views on the matter. After I have made this thread, I would like us to discuss these concerns as a site. By doing this, I feel as though everybody will be able to communicate at an even level regardless of seniority. I also want everybody to have their views heard, and I am also genuinely curious as to how you guys think things are going.

My second course of action is what I'm going to call a Judging Forum. I would like to create a race out of thin air, pull horses from random stables and ask all people interested in participating to judge the race I create. When results are provided, detailed feedback from the judges will accompany the race. I would love it if the feedback was modeled after what I did in the Judging guide I posted in our board - a kind of step-by-step of your thought process as you judged the race. When results are PMed to me, I will post everything I receive in another thread. Hopefully, by doing this, the diversity of perspectives that we as a site have in regards to judging will be displayed. I would then ask everybody to read through the thread, and comment as they will on the results and what they see there. The point of this would be to demonstrate the perspectives of all the judges on the site, and talk about them in a calm manner. The results would of course be anonymous, and the race would not actually exist or count for horses' records.

If you like this idea, please reply saying so, and also indicate if you would like to participate. I hope that we have the majority of the site participate! And I also hope that everybody will PM me their commentary. I really want to diffuse the tension and go back to enjoying the site guys. Please tell me what you think

EDIT: Alternatively, Holly has mentioned the idea of PMing results of races to one person, who would then post the results for every week so the judges remain anonymous. What do you guys think of this idea?

[*Ripley*]

I will participate in the judging forum.

Alternatively, pming results to one person a week would be okay. I would not want to be that person every week so it would be something that would have to rotate. Luckily, most of us are dependable in our activity so we could share that burden.

[Cavallo]

I think we can all agree that no one wants to to go to a "system" with points etc....That being said, there needs to be an open rule about asking for feedback. People cannot be taking things personally. I have learned this the hard way lol. BUT at the same time if feedback is asked there needs to be logical and sound explanations, not just generic blah blah blah because I like this horse lol. I think that the new guide for judging is something that we need to incorporate for providing feedback. I know that if we keep things on the current system there will be bias, but this needs to be overwhelmed by logic.

I understand that upsets happen, but they are happening like ALL THE TIME now and I understand wanting to give other horses spotlights and wins....but there needs to be a balance.

I agree with Ripley. If an admin is posting results that are PM'd then there needs to be a rotation so one admin isn't stuck doing it all the time.

[Holly]

I know for one thing, I am one who worries about what others say about how you placed their horse in a race. That is why I give feedback for some races to give some uplifting words for each horse. The PMing may work, but I do like the idea of the Judging Forum. I just feel that members shouldn't be scared to judge. Shouldn't be scared of the backlash. Feedback is good.

[creativecause]

Maybe what we could do is require feedback? That way everyone is on the same page and there is some sort of understanding as to why each horse was placed where they were?
Alsoooo
I'll participate in the judging form

[rendezvous]

I honestly believe that in the case of some races it comes off as biased at times, but I assume that in some cases it's unavoidable. Bigger fields require more criticism throughout and I believe that they should always have at least 1-2 brief sentences explaining why the judges placed which horse where, I know this is usually done already, but I mean like ALWAYS for the bigger races. The 'I don't think X horse was feeling it today' bit I see sometimes is kind of confusing because I know it's a realistic sim but, I have no idea how these horses are supposed to feel randomly xD These 'feelings' often mean a horse gets a bad placing. If we're going to do 'feelings' why not have let's say, random events every now and again and you'll get a "oh this horse is in a bad mood this race week" and it'll justify the horse not placing well, or something along "oh this horse is in a super good mood", this is where you could get those underdogs. I'd imagine these 'moods' could be generated randomly for a race or two for different weeks, it'll give a judge more basis to pick a horse on instead of imaginary feelings from thin air.

I'm all for the judging forum, something like this could even be good practice for us new-ish folk! I'm interested to see if anyone will get the same judging placements for whatever field of horses are chosen.

Unfortunately, I can't see myself agreeing to Holly's idea, although it is a good one! It'd be a big load for any one person, and it would make race weeks even longer in terms of waiting for the results to be posted.

Well this is my idea on everything thus far =3

[*Ripley*]

I do agree with Ren on Holly's idea. There is one or two ways the anonymous judging can go. Either faster because people feel protected or slower because one person is in charge of processing entire race weeks.


I believe that we should mandate feedback for races larger than 3 horses. For races smaller than three, feedback can be requested by the owners if they want to know why a horse hasn't been winning lately (say if they've been in a seconditis streak).

A lot more people are posting feedback for July Wk 2 and I think it's phenomenal. So way to go everyone