I don't think we're taking into account the core problem with the voting.  Voting on
other images that are competing against yours
is a conflict of interest.  Now most of us I'm sure do try and be objective, and rate
fairly, but that doesn't mean everyone does.
The short-term desire to win can overshadow the long-term goal of a fun and fair
competition.  As the number of voters decreases the
conflict of interest will tend to make the results chaotic.  I can even think of one
way to cheat and put almost any image near the
top, although I would never do it, unless I wanted to prove it could be done.  My
point is, at core the IRTC really is more of a
community event than a competition.  The only way to get truly consistent results
would be a panel of impartial judges.  I'm not
suggesting we change the voting, just realize that it is what it is.

Andrew Wilcox

Post a reply to this message

The "Surrealism" topic certainly intimidated me, and I didn't vote
this round (panel judge) because I didn't trust my ability to judge
the topic. While I enjoy Dali's work, most surrealistic works don't
interest me. I'm thinking the judging will improve next round (not
just because I plan to vote! :-) as many others may have had the
same feeling.

That said, there are always entries that finish in the 10-20 range
that I thought should be top 3, maybe even the winner. Entrants/
artists/programmers should always be prepared for their work not
to be understood or appreciated. Nature of the game?

By the way, I toyed with entering the Surrealism round with a
warped/stretched lama. Title to be...The Dali Lama

One thought (from someone who spends most of his Spring and
Summer on a bicycle) is the voting would be easier if the images
were made available for voting as they are posted.

Post a reply to this message

Renderdog wrote:
>One thought (from someone who spends most of his Spring and
>Summer on a bicycle) is the voting would be easier if the images
>were made available for voting as they are posted.

Oops, I just realized that would never work. No one would want the
competition checking out their images before they entered, so they'd
wait to enter.

Post a reply to this message

Roberto A. wrote:
> Why don't we change the rules for voting? Can we have a "jury" winner and a
> "popular" winner?
> 
> I think that the winning entries should be chosen by a jury of 12 people,
> formed by 6 permanent judges, and the 6 winners of the previous round (or
> perhaps 6 - 3 permanent, and 3 winners of the previous round). What do you
> think? Is that feasible?
> 
> The "popular" jury would be the present mode of voting.
> 
> BTW, I vote for Gilles Tran, Jaime Vives, Txemi Jendrix and Jim Charter for
> the permanent board. :-)
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Roberto
> 
> 
I am certainly flattered to have my name mentioned for such a mission. 
  Your suggestion of distinquishing a 'popular' and a 'jury' winner does 
point up the problem that the winner, as it now stands, is the popular 
winner. ie. The one that most people can agree on for possibly 
contradictory reasons. It therefore may not exhibit the most 
originality, beauty, expressiveness, cogency or other qualities we value 
in art, independant of its popular appeal, because we can never totally 
agree on these issues.  So there is room for a "dark horse" to sneak 
through, because it draws the minimum disagreement.  The other deception 
in my view, is that just because we can assign a bunch of scores, 
average them to several decimal places, and end up with a continuous 
ranking of the images from highest to lowest, doesn't mean that we can 
truly discover the quality of the images to this degree of accuracy. 
There is some gratuitous fun perhaps in beating out another competitor 
by a couple of places but realistically we know that the relationship 
between popular ranking and artistic quality must be viewed in a much 
more general way. I think your suggestion has merit because it 
accurately points to where the artifacts now exist in the system.  But I 
find that the contest as it is structured has a rough and ready appeal 
and greater durability.  The trick is to realize where some artifacts 
may lie and take them in stride.  Meanwhile there will always be a bias 
in any permanent panel we can put together.

-Jim

Post a reply to this message

Well put. I agree with you.

Post a reply to this message

> Here's a much better idea: Start your own competition. The shortest-code
> competition was popular enough and was IIRC not an official competition.
> Just select a topic and a jury, find a little web space to post the
> images, and then announce your competition in p.gen. I'm sure you can
> get enough takers if the topic is good. You might try looking on the
> IRTC topic suggestion list for ideas.

Well, unfortunately I don't have the time for that. In fact, I'm such a
nobody on the general raytracing community that I strongly doubt anyone
would be much interested. :-) But I agree with you, there's plenty of room
for other competitions.

That was only a wild suggestion to draw ideas from to improve the current
IRTC. Take a look on Jim Charter's answer, it was pretty illustrative of the
reason behind my suggestion.

Regards!

Post a reply to this message

"Txemi Jendrix" <tji### [at] euskalnetnet> a écrit dans le message de
news:3f7395a1@news.povray.org...

> If I enter my image and get a 35th position and
> someone sends one image with ladybugs and
> stairs and get the 16th position, my conclusion
> is that something is going wrong for me.

Well, one third of the votes is between 10 and 12... and this includes your
image and the ladybugs one. It's a very narrow range after all. I'd say that
the voters just expressed the feeling that all these images were not very
distinguishable from a quality point of view.

> IMHO the winner image has nothing to do with
> the topic (and I don't want to talk about the link given by
> Gonzo in a previous post in this thread, it talks by itself).

Actually there was never any doubt for me that the winning image was the
best one. It's a great image, possibly one of the best I've seen on the
IRTC, and well above the competition. And yes, it's completely off-topic and
(possibly) done last year so that's 2 violations and on these grounds alone
it shouldn't have been allowed to run. Still, if I had voted in this round,
I probably would have voted it best picture since there's no "on-topicness"
note (the concept for this image is very good too so there's no reason to
vote it down there).

The IRTC is an open competition. This is what makes it interesting: not only
anyone can run but the voting is quite fair IMHO (little bias, little fraud,
voters are by people who care). It's simpler to administrate too, I guess.
But of course, this also allows situations like this one (off-topic image
winning) or even a situation like the Architecture round, where the winner
image was a highly professional-looking image, but also off-topic due to its
lack of content. This also leads to an awful lot of bad entries, which not
only makes viewing and voting somehow tedious but also makes the IRTC a hard
to take seriously as far as 3D competition go (hence no sponsors, for
instance).

The alternative I can see is to have a prior selection of the entries, with
a panel entitled to accept and reject images on the ground of content. This
would certainly lead to better, always on-topic images and more
consideration outside the IRTC community. But it would add a lot of overhead
on the admins (maintaining the panel, writing rejection emails...). There
would be some some bitching from the authors of rejected pictures,
accusations of partiality etc. And, of course, it would be less friendly in
general.

G.


-- 

**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

Post a reply to this message

"Gilles Tran" <tra### [at] inapginrafr> wrote in message
news:3f748490$1@news.povray.org...
|
| Still, if I had voted in this round, I probably would have
| voted [PovPlanet] best picture since there's no "on-topicness"
| note

Technical Merit? Yes, many beautiful abstract images can be made with
seed(123) and a few while loops. I see that you're impressed with this
one, but the voting categories make it plain to me that this competition
is about the artistic as well as constructive nature of 3D images. The
frustration felt by many here is I believe caused not by simple
disagreement with the judges, but by the bewilderment caused by the
judges' fudging of the category scores.

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message

In article <3f748490$1@news.povray.org>,
 "Gilles Tran" <tra### [at] inapginrafr> wrote:
>IRTC, and well above the competition. And yes, it's completely off-topic and
>(possibly) done last year so that's 2 violations and on these grounds alone
>it shouldn't have been allowed to run. Still, if I had voted in this round,
>I probably would have voted it best picture since there's no "on-topicness"
>note (the concept for this image is very good too so there's no reason to
>vote it down there).

According to the FAQ, there *is* good reason for voting it down on 
concept/theme if the picture is not on-topic. I haven't entered in quite 
a while, but I do keep that in mind when I vote.

"The third category, concept/theme, is in some ways a contradiction--the 
more creative artists get, the less some judges think they are adhering 
to the theme.  The original name for the category was "creative 
interpretation of theme". How you interpret this category--as reward for 
creativity or punishment for failing to stick to the topic--is up to 
you."

So either way is fine, but there definitely *is* reason to vote it down 
if you think it isn't on-topic. It just isn't required--but then, 
nothing is. You can vote a high technical score because they used a lot 
of blue if you want. "They mean whatever you want them to mean, in         
general."

Jerry
-- 
"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him to fish, and you've
depleted the lake."--It Isn't Murder If They're Yankees
(http://www.ItIsntMurder.com/)

Post a reply to this message

> ... (from someone who spends most of his Spring and
> Summer on a bicycle)....

Nice to see you here again!  I'd wondered where you had been off to, but I
had actually figured you were out bicycling (cycling?) somewhere.  For me,
it's mostly gardening that keeps me away from the computer (at home anyway)
during Spring and Summer.  Plus, it's just hard to go into the basement and
plug away when it stays light until 10:00pm all through June and July.

Real Life is more fun in the Summer, I guess.  Virtual Reality rules the
Winter...  ;-)

-- 
Jeremy

Post a reply to this message

"Shay" <sah### [at] simcopartscom> a écrit dans le message de
news:3f748d35@news.povray.org...
>
> Technical Merit? Yes, many beautiful abstract images can be made with
> seed(123) and a few while loops. I see that you're impressed with this
> one, but the voting categories make it plain to me that this competition
> is about the artistic as well as constructive nature of 3D images.

I think that dismissing this picture on the ground of being just a few
rand() and loops doesn't do it justice.
What impresses me is in fact the artistic merit, i.e., the composition, the
choice of colours etc (and I'm not even too much into this sort of
math/abstract sort of 3D these days). I find some of the details just
delightful, like the little round half transparent screens or the elevated
borders of the holes, or the way the author used overexposition or the whole
tone range. True, the basics are simple (just primitives and some rand())
but it's all the more impressive. Having done my share of "let's use random,
perhaps it will turn out pretty" sort of images, I also tend to appreciate
this when it succeeds. For me, it's a good (and necessary) reminder that one
can do great things with little means but with a sure taste and a strong
imagination.

G.

-- 
**********************
http://www.oyonale.com
**********************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray and Poser computer images
- Posters

Post a reply to this message

Renderdog wrote:
I'm thinking the judging will improve next round (not
>just because I plan to vote! :-) as many others may have had the
>same feeling.

That was my main point in my previous posts (before I let irritation hijack
my keyboard :-/).  This round is not the norm.  Chalk it up as an anomaly,
get over it, and then get back to friendly, competitive, constructive
feedback and great images.


>
>By the way, I toyed with entering the Surrealism round with a
>warped/stretched lama. Title to be...The Dali Lama

Heh heh, I had the same idea. Would have been funny had there been 7-8 of
those! (And according to my Webster's, the animal is a Llama. A Lama is a
Tibetan monk. Warping & stretching a Lama could get a distinctly different
reaction...)

RG - This whole thing makes me wonder if the reason surrealism was declared
offically dead in 1941 was because by then the definition had been
stretched so thin in every direction that no one could even identify the
body ;-0

Post a reply to this message

Gilles Tran escribió en el mensaje de noticias 3f748490$1@news.povray.org...
> > If I enter my image and get a 35th position and
> > someone sends one image with ladybugs and
> > stairs and get the 16th position, my conclusion
> > is that something is going wrong for me.
>
> Well, one third of the votes is between 10 and 12... and this includes
your
> image and the ladybugs one. It's a very narrow range after all. I'd say
that
> the voters just expressed the feeling that all these images were not very
> distinguishable from a quality point of view.

Thank you very much for your explanation, now it's clear.

> Actually there was never any doubt for me that the winning image was the
> best one. It's a great image, possibly one of the best I've seen on the
> IRTC, and well above the competition. And yes, it's completely off-topic
and
> (possibly) done last year so that's 2 violations and on these grounds
alone
> it shouldn't have been allowed to run.

I do totally agree with you.

> Still, if I had voted in this round,
> I probably would have voted it best picture since there's no
"on-topicness"
> note (the concept for this image is very good too so there's no reason to
> vote it down there).

¿?

> The IRTC is an open competition. This is what makes it interesting: not
only
> anyone can run but the voting is quite fair IMHO (little bias, little
fraud,
> voters are by people who care). It's simpler to administrate too, I guess.
> But of course, this also allows situations like this one (off-topic image
> winning) or even a situation like the Architecture round, where the winner
> image was a highly professional-looking image, but also off-topic due to
its
> lack of content.

That's what I was talking about when I said dangerous movement.
The latest tendences seem to point to good images, but that have nothing to
do
with the topic or in the last case even with the rules.
Not so long ago, the IRTC was a different thing.
Now it seems like " The topic is '#####' or whatever you want"
What kind of contest is one in which their latest winning images are
completely off-topic?
Understand me, I also love the IRTC and that's why I'm writting
right now. The topic is the basement of a contest like the IRTC,
and I love to see the different interpretations of the topic in a
hundred (more or less) brains-hearts-with-computer around the world.
Even if we take it with a little of humor we can say that now your
image has to be off-topic to win.
But it's not funny at all. Not for me at least.

>This also leads to an awful lot of bad entries, which not
> only makes viewing and voting somehow tedious but also makes the IRTC a
hard
> to take seriously as far as 3D competition go (hence no sponsors, for
> instance).

Yes, but many of us, me 1st, have entered in the IRTC with images
that have ended in the bottom of the ranking. Usually we all have
worked hard to enter better images in the next round. There are a lot
of examples.
Talking about the lack of prizes, it's always a disadvantage for a contest
not offer any prize apart from "being the winner".
I have never win the IRTC, but I have my prize everyday when pressing
render.

> The alternative I can see is to have a prior selection of the entries,
with
> a panel entitled to accept and reject images on the ground of content.
This
> would certainly lead to better, always on-topic images and more
> consideration outside the IRTC community. But it would add a lot of
overhead
> on the admins (maintaining the panel, writing rejection emails...). There
> would be some some bitching from the authors of rejected pictures,
> accusations of partiality etc. And, of course, it would be less friendly
in
> general.

I don't know if that's the solution, perhaps we should look in the other
way;
"what has changed?"

Regards

Txemi Jendrix
http://www.txemijendrix.com

Post a reply to this message

gonzo wrote:
>Heh heh, I had the same idea. Would have been funny had there been 7-8 of
>those! (And according to my Webster's, the animal is a Llama. A Lama is a
>Tibetan monk. Warping & stretching a Lama could get a distinctly different
>reaction...)
>
>RG - This whole thing makes me wonder if the reason surrealism was declared
>offically dead in 1941 was because by then the definition had been
>stretched so thin in every direction that no one could even identify the
>body ;-0


I would have loved to see someone do the Dali Llama, if only to use
it as a desktop and hear the groans when people "got" it!

As for voting and the winner this round, I judge off-topic images
very low on concept because I consider the topic part of the concept.
And I would have taken some off the technical score because of the
brief text file and lack of source code (I don't consider visiting web
sites a part of the IRTC judging process). It's a fine image, but not
one I would have picked for this round. I guess one vote does make
a difference...

I have to say I'm looking forward the the "Decay" round; should be a
lot of interesting entries there. Also, I hope Txemi decides to try the
IRTC again; his work has definitely been some of the most interesting;
unique and well thought out.

Post a reply to this message

"Txemi Jendrix" <tji### [at] euskalnetnet> wrote in message
news:3f7395a1@news.povray.org...

<big snip>

  Txemi, I know you aren't going away my friend, but this is what
*I'm* going to do for the IRTC in the next round:

   I'm going to do a "Decay" scene.

   I'm going to submit it.

   I'm going to *TRY* to comment on as many images that I see and like
in this next round. (That's if I think I could improve them in some
helpful way that is).    :o/


> Hoping I haven't started a flame war...

  Not with me you haven't.   ;)

    ~Steve~


> Bye.
>
> Txemi Jendrix
> http://www.txemijendrix.com
>
>
>
>

Post a reply to this message

St. <dot### [at] dotcom> escribió en el mensaje de noticias
3f75d888$1@news.povray.org...

>   Txemi, I know you aren't going away my friend, but this is what
> *I'm* going to do for the IRTC in the next round:
>
>    I'm going to do a "Decay" scene.
>
>    I'm going to submit it.
>
>    I'm going to *TRY* to comment on as many images that I see and like
> in this next round. (That's if I think I could improve them in some
> helpful way that is).    :o/

Maybe I haven't put it as clear as you, but that's exactly what I'm
doing and what I'm going to do.

> > Hoping I haven't started a flame war...
>
>   Not with me you haven't.   ;)

Glad to hear it. Big THANKS.
See you

Txemi Jendrix
http://www.txemijendrix.com

Post a reply to this message

I do exactly the same analysis.
I wouldn't take any definitive judging about the IRTC after this round.
I prefer to turn my attention toward the next topic.

JC

Jeremy M. Praay wrote:
>>P.S. Ok, 1 rant addendum...  I do not think any of the top 3 were bad,
> 
> they
> 
>>are all fine images, I just feel that there were better, and that I find
> 
> it
> 
>>odd that so many excellent images received such poor scores.
> 
> 
> After having thought about this whole issue, and after having slept on it.
> I think the biggest problem is that most of us IRTC folks aren't actually
> artists, and have had no formal art training.  "Surrealism" is a very artful
> topic, being voted on by largely non-artists who may know nothing of the
> surrealist movement other than seeing a few of Dali's soft-watches.
> 
> This round is "Decay".  Art is not a major component of the topic itself.  I
> personally expect judging to be more normal.  This round seemed to be the
> exception rather than the rule.
>

Post a reply to this message

Philippe_Gibone <Ph.### [at] wanadoofr> escribió en el mensaje de noticias
3f73b46a$1@news.povray.org...
> > Hoping I haven't started a flame war...
> > Txemi Jendrix
>
> I'll be on your side
> Philippe Gibone

Thanks Philippe. I think we all have found the answer.
Voting and commenting is important, maybe now
more than in the past.
Lets try to recover the IRTC.
It will not work unless we'll do the effort. At last
we are the ones who enter in the competition, the
ones who vote, and the ones who are really responsable
of the IRTC future.
Bye

Txemi Jendrix
http://www.txemijendrix.com

Post a reply to this message

"Philippe_Gibone" <Ph.### [at] wanadoofr> wrote in message
news:3f7322ac@news.povray.org...
|
| I made a mistake when voting : for off-topic images I rated
| Artistic and technical Merit as honestly as I could, but I
| was wrong, I think, now that an off-topic image should be
| rated (1, 1, 1)

No, I think that you were right the way to vote the way you did.
Attempting to correct any other factors by "donking" what you feel to be
off-topic entries will only cause more problems.

In truth, I think that it's mostly the technical merit scores which
skewed this round. At any time in the IRTC, most of the entrants will
have a low enough experience level (and in some [most?] cases
intelligence level) that they see downloading and using a macro from
Gilles' site or rotating a few boxes around a sphere as a significant
technical achievement. Any who have moved past that level are very
likely not to receive the credit they deserve for their modeling and
technical work. If these experienced entrants want to keep competing,
then they will need to accept this and focus their efforts on making
more *attractive* images. At the same time, any voter who wants to
contribute to the legitimacy of the IRTC results should pay attention to
improving his technical merit judging.

 -Shay

Post a reply to this message

Shay wrote:
>"Philippe_Gibone" <Ph.### [at] wanadoofr> wrote in message
>news:3f7322ac[at]news.povray.org...
>|
>| I made a mistake when voting : for off-topic images I rated
>| Artistic and technical Merit as honestly as I could, but I
>| was wrong, I think, now that an off-topic image should be
>| rated (1, 1, 1)
>
>No, I think that you were right the way to vote the way you did.
>Attempting to correct any other factors by "donking" what you feel to be
>off-topic entries will only cause more problems.

Off-topic is sometimes a very gray area too, there are degrees of
off-topic... did the artist just submit an image with no regard to the
theme, or is it 'sort-of' related and I just don't get it.  If it's clearly
not related, I'll give a low concept score and probably take a point off
the artistic and technical too simply because I don't think a blatantly
off-topic entry should be permitted to take place away from on-topic
entries. If it's a sort-of then I score concept by how sort-of I feel it is
and let artistic and technical stand. I reserve 1,1,1 for rules violations,
and I don't think off-topic is a rules violation.


>In truth, I think that it's mostly the technical merit scores which
>skewed this round. At any time in the IRTC, most of the entrants will
>have a low enough experience level (and in some [most?] cases
>intelligence level) that they see downloading and using a macro from
>Gilles' site or rotating a few boxes around a sphere as a significant
>technical achievement. Any who have moved past that level are very
>likely not to receive the credit they deserve for their modeling and
>technical work. If these experienced entrants want to keep competing,
>then they will need to accept this and focus their efforts on making
>more *attractive* images. At the same time, any voter who wants to
>contribute to the legitimacy of the IRTC results should pay attention to
>improving his technical merit judging.


Well, I can't complain about my own overall score (any time I finish top 10
in a round with that many good entries I'm happy!) But my artistic and
technical scores puzzled me, and don't seem to fit your theory. If I was
judging my own entry I'd have probably reversed those two.  I thought
artistically it was pretty good while technically it was so-so. My score
says the opposite. Go figure.

I have noticed that different topics seem to get more extreme levels of
interest on one category. Some topics are more technical by nature
(architecture) while others get more artistic focus (lanscapes) and some
(surrealism) get more concept scrutiny. And that's probably not a bad
thing, otherwise I think they'd all start to look the same.

RG - well, I think I finally have an idea for 'decay' but it will require
some serious work on lighting... that's technical, isn't it?

Post a reply to this message

"gonzo" <rgo### [at] lansetcom> wrote in message
news:web.3f78a3466f3cbf13a0c272b50@news.povray.org...
|
| But my artistic and technical scores puzzled me, and
| don't seem to fit your theory. If I was judging my own
| entry I'd have probably reversed those two.  I thought
| artistically it was pretty good while technically it
| was so-so. My score says the opposite. Go figure.

My theory isn't that all of the technical scores will be necessarily
reversed, just that there is a lot of confusion about what technically
is required to produce an image. The same is true in p.b.i.. I could go
home tonight and in a few hours create something trivial like a Borg
cube, and if I posted that in p.b.i., people would be lining up to tell
me what a genius I am. If I posted something truly difficult, however,
it would fly over many heads.

For this reason, I believe "technical merit" should be removed as a
voting category from the IRTC. When the last competition's highest
technical merit score went to what appeared to be an entry in the
shortest code contest, then it is obvious that the IRTC judging pool is
not nearly sophisticated enough to assign a score to that criteria.
"Technical merit" has apparently become a tilt for images with lots of
tiny (even identical) bits.

 -Shay

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I finally figured it out.

The results from this round were surreal.

Andrew Wilcox

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