Song of the Year - Discussion

So, remember that Song of the Year thing we were talking about before the board crashed?

Yeah, about that.

How many people are still interested in having a contest between the 52 songs of the week or 156 top-three finishers from Weeks 01-52? And how many people remember some of the plans that were previously discussed, since we don't exactly have access to the old thread?

Some of the previous debates involved:
- just first place finishers vs. all tracks that place
- bracket format (tournament style, like the BSC) vs. en masse voting (like normal SotW voting except hueg)
- probably more stuff that I can't remember

This is more of a general discussion/consensus building thread; we'll make the official decision later on the contest format with some sort of poll. Throw out ideas, comment on ones people have already made, and generally just brainstorm on how this could work. Here are a few example plans as conversation starters, ripped from #sotw logs:

_DH_
[10:32pm] _DH_: Allow all 3 finishers from each week from week 1-52 for a total of 156 entries
[10:32pm] _DH_: the 6 battle winners get a first round bye so that narrows it to 150 tracks in the first round
[10:33pm] _DH_: Create 15 threads of 10 tracks each for the first round
[10:33pm] _DH_: The tracks in each thread (bracket) should have a good cross section of first, second and third place finishers
[10:34pm] _DH_: e.g. of one bracket would have three first, three second and four third place finishers
[10:34pm] _DH_: The top three from each bracket would move on to the second round for a total of 36 (30 + 6) tracks in the second round
[10:35pm] _DH_: * i mean top two from each thread would move on...not top three
[10:36pm] _DH_: From there, have two division...division A and division B - each with 3 threads of 6 tracks each
[10:36pm] _DH_: Round three would have the three winners from divion A against each other...similarly with division B
[10:37pm] _DH_: The finals has the division A winner going up against the division B winner
[10:38pm] _DH_: And there you have it
[10:40pm] CHz: How many points are we going to allow voters to distribute? We have groups of 6 and 10 to consider.
[10:46pm] _DH_: I'm thinking the usual sotw point distribution
[10:47pm] _DH_: For round 3, we have groupings of 3. For that, I'd say just choose one.

Mo0/CHz
[10:55pm] CHz: Mo0 has basically vanished, unfortunately, but we were talking about tournament style, except with just the top tracks and groups of four throughout. There'd be 13 groups in the first round, so 13 tracks would move onto the second. Add three wildcards to get 16, and then we can go from 16 -> 4 -> 1.
[10:56pm] Mo0: How would we determine wildcards
[10:56pm] CHz: Exactly.
[10:56pm] CHz: We probably wouldn't get enough of a spread to just take the top three tracks that don't move on.
[10:57pm] CHz: So we'd probably have to do it randomly.
[10:57pm] Mo0: But that'd be kinda crappy, some bad track might get lucky
[11:03pm] _DH_: how would each group be selected? randomly? or make sure there aren't multiple battle winners in each?
[11:05pm] CHz: Probably randomly. The plan came about literally right before you joined.
[11:07pm] CHz: Just for discussion's sake; it's a tournament alternative that doesn't include the top 3, just the winners.

In order for this to work properly as a tournament, you will need to determine each track's seed value. I think this could be determined either by the number of points each track recieved in its respective week (or ratio of points to voters in order to balance things out amongst weeks), or we could have a nominations round similar to that of Skate's Best Song Contests.

Since we're now not going to have any bracketed contests until BSC '06 (if then!) I now have a lot more support for tournament-style brackets. It would be a good way to get more people involved with SoTW (especially if it ran concurrently on STC), and a good way to raise postcounts in a constructive manner.

I'd say that the seedings could be pretty easily determined with the process that we've got in place--the total number of points, with the tiebreaker system. We decide on the number of noms, and all SoTW winners or runners up have their seeds calculated (and some probably would not make it). If there weren't enough, we could fill out the list with almost-runners-up--tracks that got a lot of points but didn't place.

I probably won't like the way a SoTY will turn out, in terms of the winning tracks, but the oppurtunity for lively debate and the eventual worldwide flame wars is just too good to pass up.

Bump to see if, you know, anyone is still interested in actually participating in this.

Skate's getting antsy and I can't say I wholly blame him. It's not like this has amounted to anything.

Personally, I think those in charge should just pick a format and run with it. If you have to do the setting-up, you get to make the choices and those who do no work are in no place to complain.

Any contest > No contest. I'll be happy with pretty much any format. As for songs, I'd prefer all top 3 songs from each week be included, though that would obviously be more work.

Originally Posted by Drakken

Any contest = No contest. I'll be happy with pretty much any format. As for songs, I'd prefer all top 3 songs from each week be included, though that would obviously be more work.

I think you're trying to say Any contest > no contest. >_>

:doh:

That's what I get for posting after 1 in the morning.

Originally Posted by Mo0

I think you're trying to say Any contest > no contest. >_>

Yes. Precisely.

So...make it happen.

I certainly don't mind seeing SotY becoming a reality and will participate as best as I can (barring school commitments). I might have my reservations before but I'm good to go with this now. I have to agree that the suggestions of interested members are just that. A lot of us are just trying to offer up ideas to help move this along but the ultimate decision with regards to implementation and format lies with the organisers.

I'm not really that interested in this contest as it will replace SOTW for 1-2 weeks (dependending on the voting system). So, I'd just take the numer 1 tracks from every week better than the fist 3, as it would take a long time to finish.

THE PLAN

Round 1
Each of the 52 week winners (NOT all top three finishers) will be divided into groups of four through random.org.

Each group of four will be given its own voting thread with a poll, to be created in a Song of the Year subforum (13 threads total). The winner of each group will move on to the next round.

The first round will last two weeks; six threads will be created and run during the first week and the remaining seven will run during the second week.

Wildcard Runoff
After the first round, we'll have thirteen tracks, so we'll need three wildcards to get to a nice power of four.

All thirteen second-place finishers from each group will be gathered into a megapoll, where voters will rank their top three choices in order (no SotW style voting; just first, second and third picks). The top three finishers will also move on to the second round.

This should take about three days, maybe more. We'll also use this time to prepare everything for the second round.

Round 2
Four groups of four tracks, five days to vote on 'em. We could add a little more time if necessary (our current time estimates are pretty flexible).

Round 3
One FINAL BATTLE with the four Round 2 winners. We'll give a little more time to this one... four days, maybe.

Miscellaneous Stuff
We're tentatively scheduling this for April 10 (that's a week from Monday), so we have a week period as advance warning and for people who have suggestions.

We're also thinking about extending Song of the Week voting during the time SotY runs to 10-14 days to alleviate some of the pressure from all the voting that'll be going on. How do people feel about this one?

Discuss.

Sounds good.

Yeah, nothing to say against it. Even the time schedule seems to be alright as well. Just let it happen, I'm in need of a new contest.

Where are you getting those three extra wildcards from?

Otherwise, this sounds far out, solid and right on.

Sounds good to me. Do it quickly, before what little interest there is wanes!

Originally Posted by Chuckster

Where are you getting those three extra wildcards from?

Originally Posted by CHz

All thirteen second-place finishers from each group will be gathered into a megapoll, where voters will rank their top three choices in order (no SotW style voting; just first, second and third picks). The top three finishers will also move on to the second round.

Originally Posted by CHz

Wildcard Runoff
After the first round, we'll have thirteen tracks, so we'll need three wildcards to get to a nice power of four.

My confusion. I thought you needed three extra tracks to fill the wildcard run-off, but really the three wildcards will fill out the brackets after the first-round winners. Moving on.

Interesting. Sounds like a good plan, but I do wish the second and third place finishers could be involved somehow, as some of them are in fact better than winners of other weeks. What if we doubled the contest time and included the second placers? We'd finish, then, right as Skate starts up the BSE contest.

If that is too much, I understand, but I do think there's more to SOTW than first place.