Another Patch Contest?

[hakey]

If you're interested in another contest, have any suggestions for a theme, or preferences vis-à-vis Ace or Zebra, please speak your brains here.

[Howard]

If you're interested in another contest, have any suggestions for a theme, or preferences vis-à-vis Ace or Zebra, please speak your brains here.

How about Zebralette sounds?

[Bronto Scorpio]

If you're interested in another contest, have any suggestions for a theme, or preferences vis-à-vis Ace or Zebra, please speak your brains here.

How about Zebralette sounds?

Nice idea!

Cheers
Dennis

[hakey]

How about Zebralette sounds?

Yes, I like this idea too.

[mcnoone]

How about Zebralette sounds?

Sounds good.

[hakey]

I'll leave this thread running for a couple more days and make an 'official' announcement on New Years Day.

In the meantime anyone have any thoughts or suggestions regarding the format and the way future contests (up until Urs' patchbending site takes over) are run?

I'd quite like to see it become a community managed affair - so, rather than being one person's responsibility, the choice of theme for each contest and any other decisions would be made by consensus.

And, so as to avoid the reliance upon one person to collect the entries, how about using some kind drop box for submissions?

It'd also be interesting to hear from those who have never taken part before - what could be done to encourage you to enter? The prizes are pretty damn good(!), and plenty of people own u-he synths, so what's putting people off? Is it too difficult, or the themes not interesting enough, or what?

[MtL]

I just bought my first u-he product, and I'm very excited. Generally, about many things: Zebra2, this awesome community, making synthesizer music in general.

1. How about a contest inspired by a fine art image. The image could imply a sound specifically (like this) or it could be more abstract (like this). The object is to then create a patch that best captures - or interprets - the tone/mood/vibe of the image.

I've never participated in a u-he contest, so I'm not sure how you can better administer/collect data. Would Google Docs Forms work? Are the contests decided by voting or judging?

[MtL]

I went and checked the last ACE contest thread. Is it important that people vote through forum threads, to make things open and accountable? Because if so, maybe the Google Form wouldn't work.

Although, if you made each voter type int their KVR handle AND the name of their patch, then you could quickly sort through for any double entries. I'd be happy to help with this! (Although I'm supposing that precludes me from participating in the contest?)

Forehead smack on the images up above not embedding. I'll earn my wings soon!

[Slinky Productions]

what could be done to encourage you to enter? The prizes are pretty damn good(!), and plenty of people own u-he synths, so what's putting people off? Is it too difficult, or the themes not interesting enough, or what?

OK!

I've entered some competitions before and the way I prefer is to vote secretly and anonymously. Voting publicly in a thread means you can see who is leading and who is behind and that leads to conscious or unconscious strategic or sympathetic voting in my opinion. I think that all the entries should be collected and when the deadline is reached all patches are renamed as 0001 0002 0003 etc by a volunteer and then published in the patch set. So people submit their votes with the usual 1-2-3 point systems but the votes are secret and the patch names/creators anonymous!

when the votes are collected and counted THEN you publish the set with the patch names and creator names and also publish the votes of who voted and how they voted.

this is the fairest system and I don't take part in these competitions unless it's as close to anonymous (during the voting) as possible!

[Shabdahbriah]

what could be done to encourage you to enter? The prizes are pretty damn good(!), and plenty of people own u-he synths, so what's putting people off? Is it too difficult, or the themes not interesting enough, or what?

OK!

I've entered some competitions before and the way I prefer is to vote secretly and anonymously. Voting publicly in a thread means you can see who is leading and who is behind and that leads to conscious or unconscious strategic or sympathetic voting in my opinion. I think that all the entries should be collected and when the deadline is reached all patches are renamed as 0001 0002 0003 etc by a volunteer and then published in the patch set. So people submit their votes with the usual 1-2-3 point systems but the votes are secret and the patch names/creators anonymous!

when the votes are collected and counted THEN you publish the set with the patch names and creator names and also publish the votes of who voted and how they voted.

this is the fairest system and I don't take part in these competitions unless it's as close to anonymous (during the voting) as possible!

+1

[Slinky Productions]

oh and I forgot to add that I think only people who have submitted entries to the competition can vote! however the set can of course be shared to the public!

[Urs]

Hmmm, I don't think the patch names need to be disguised. And of course the author names have always been taken out of the patch meta data.

I don't mind anonymous voting. But I think it makes fraud easier unless votes are really restricted to contest entrants. But then someone has to do quite a bit of work.

[hakey]

I don't mind anonymous voting. But I think it makes fraud easier unless votes are really restricted to contest entrants. But then someone has to do quite a bit of work.

Yep, and that person can't take part in the contest, so they're doing a fair bit of boring administration for little reward - not to say that the running of the contest then becomes dependant upon that one person.

It's possible that with the present system the odd person might be tempted to vote tactically, but my feeling is that if it has happened in the past then it hasn't altered the result in a significant way. I think that people just vote for the patches that they like.

I reckon it's preferable to have a system that's fairly simple to run and to trust in people's sense of fair play.

[Slinky Productions]

Hmmm, I don't think the patch names need to be disguised.

It would just ensure there's no subconscious give-aways to forum regulars thereby making it absolutely fair for all involved no matter how long they have been in the community.

I don't mind anonymous voting. But I think it makes fraud easier unless votes are really restricted to contest entrants. But then someone has to do quite a bit of work.

of course votes should be restricted to only those who enter. But I couldn't disagree more about it being 'quite a bit of work'. I seen how the last couple of contests were conducted and it was most fortunate that the last organiser disappeared otherwise you would have had something like 5 entrants. From the outside it looks like the extra time doubled the amount of contestants.

it sounds like alot of work, but in practise I assure you it won't be. It's the fairest way to conduct a competition otherwise there are holes for cliquey behaviour.

I suggest if you want to generate more interest and not just have the same handful of people entering and voting for each other all the time you give my method a try at least once

[hakey]

@joel - Welcome to the patch contests!

I think that the very long URL in your first post is messing with the width - is there anyway that you could shorten it, or maybe just delete it, so that the thread is readable for everyone?

Thanks.