- Join Date
- Oct 23, 2018
- Posts
- 1,680
- AKA
- Chris
- Gender
- Male
- Time Zone
- MST
- Switch FC
- SW-3906-8627-4487
Thank you guys so much for the feedback!! Reading through this thread has been really good and I'm glad so many people are passionate enough to bring things up.
On the topic of participation points, the change this year was definitely experimental and I think we've learned a lot from it. I think that with the drastic shift it went as well as it could have this year, but I think that there definitely should be changes made for future years.
I think that for the art contest and writing contest, removing participation points is a good change. In those two areas specifically, we want quality submissions and not something that was written up in 10 minutes at the end of day. People also shouldn't feel like they need to write a short story or come up with some pretty piece of art if they do not want to. To accommodate this shift of quality vs quantity, they definitely should be two day (or even week long) events.[EDIT] the more I think about this the more I think starting these during pre-camp and having them be week long would be the best idea. Having them last two days would be a lot to schedule during the week, and with more time it feels more fair to remove participation points. Give people more time to brainstorm and work in their writing/art and the quality will definitely go up.
For flash/mobile games, saltybet, and cabin banners, I think that bringing back participation points would be good. Cabin banners are full of jokes in general, so trying to bar out low-quality submissions feels counterproductive when some of the jokes are funniest when they look like crap. Maybe we could make them entirely participation and give shoutouts to ones that stick out, like we do for the scavenger hunt items? That way we don't have two art contests and people can focus their time solely on the actual competition if they want to.
For flash/mobile games and saltybet, I feel like it may be a good idea to put a minimum score that people need to hit to qualify for points. The idea behind this is just that some people will literally get a score of like 7 and then post it for points, which doesn't feel like it's what we want to make the focus. It doesn't need to be super high or anything, but enough that you need to at least play the game a little bit to get the points for it. The only issue I see with this is that it may increase the pressure on people to do well, but if the minimum score is easy enough to achieve hopefully that wouldn't be a problem? Or maybe it's a case where if the minimum score is low anyways, is there a real reason to have it? I'd like thoughts on this idea if anyone has them.
Regarding the scavenger hunt, a lot of the items were harder this year to make people work for their points more. I think that overall this was a mistake on our part. In the future I think having the items be relatively easy to access but making the bonuses more difficult is the right way to go.
Concerning the scavenger hunt, I definitely think that it should be separate from puzzles in the future. I also think that the puzzles shouldn't be a race. Both of these ideas felt ok on paper, but I think the puzzles would be much better if people could solve them at their own pace throughout the day instead of needing to do them ASAP. I also think specifying how many puzzles there are at the beginning of the day would be a good idea so people know what to expect.
I definitely think that there's a lot of improvement regarding the puzzles themselves. The idea for ARG inspired puzzles was solidified a week or two before camp started, and I think that really shows. A lot of them were repeats or similar things, and got stale fast. I think that with more time to plan for them and come up with creative solutions, they'd be a lot better. It sounds like most people are in favor of keeping them as long as they're fine tuned which makes me happy cuz they were my brainchild this SC lol. If they've got support and people want to see them return, I think that having more people involved with their creation would be a good idea as well - more people means more variety.
Other random thoughts!
- If Quiz Time:tm: returns, I definitely think it needs to be adjusted more from the Azuricast format. Questions should definitely be standardized for the participants (which means no listening in, even for the tiebreakers) and honestly should probably go easier -> harder the further you get. 3 minutes or so also sounds like it'd work well for the time limit, I think it feels kinda anticlimactic to have the whole thing be done in one minute.
- I like the idea of a blacklist for campers who disappear without notice. If you sign up and won't be around much, let us know. Otherwise, if something comes up and you won't be around, let us know. If someone completely poofs without telling anyone and has 2-3 days in a row with no points, that's a big problem. I think having consequences would also possibly help keep people around lol. Obviously we should be lenient and accommodating but it's not fair to let someone ruin a cabin's scores and then invite them back to do it again.
- I do think Discord should be mandatory. This doesn't mean you need to necessarily be active there, but people should be expected to join the server as they will be out of the loop if they don't. Making it clear that it is a big part of camp also means that cabin members will know they will be missing things if they do not join. There were some issues with campers who weren't on the Discord going and doing things without the direction of their cabin leaders and that's something that we definitely need to try and prevent in the future.
- Results being added after the events being posted is definitely a good idea and should return. Ty Lizzy (:
- I think it would be neat to offer more thoughts about things like writing and art, but honestly I'm not sure if we want to add one more thing to the list of tasks that need to be done before results can be posted, especially if it's something that may generate salt from some users. If we give reasons for placement I feel like it's inviting people to argue with the reasoning to try and get their scores higher, and to be frank not everyone on camp staff is a fantastic writer/artist to start with so judging itself can be hard sometimes. I feel like if people really want their feedback they can reach out to the leaders directly.
- Giving more of a breakdown for points is a good idea, but I think it also fits into category of "more work for leaders to do at 1:00 in the morning". Outlining how many points were from which things wouldn't be too hard (especially thanks to Regine's spreadsheet skills
) but I don't think more than that would offer many benefits, especially compared to how much more work it'd take to crawl through everything and add it to the results. That's also the part of day start that takes the longest - we can co-op with counting points, but only one person can edit the thread at a time.
On the topic of participation points, the change this year was definitely experimental and I think we've learned a lot from it. I think that with the drastic shift it went as well as it could have this year, but I think that there definitely should be changes made for future years.
I think that for the art contest and writing contest, removing participation points is a good change. In those two areas specifically, we want quality submissions and not something that was written up in 10 minutes at the end of day. People also shouldn't feel like they need to write a short story or come up with some pretty piece of art if they do not want to. To accommodate this shift of quality vs quantity, they definitely should be two day (or even week long) events.[EDIT] the more I think about this the more I think starting these during pre-camp and having them be week long would be the best idea. Having them last two days would be a lot to schedule during the week, and with more time it feels more fair to remove participation points. Give people more time to brainstorm and work in their writing/art and the quality will definitely go up.
For flash/mobile games, saltybet, and cabin banners, I think that bringing back participation points would be good. Cabin banners are full of jokes in general, so trying to bar out low-quality submissions feels counterproductive when some of the jokes are funniest when they look like crap. Maybe we could make them entirely participation and give shoutouts to ones that stick out, like we do for the scavenger hunt items? That way we don't have two art contests and people can focus their time solely on the actual competition if they want to.
For flash/mobile games and saltybet, I feel like it may be a good idea to put a minimum score that people need to hit to qualify for points. The idea behind this is just that some people will literally get a score of like 7 and then post it for points, which doesn't feel like it's what we want to make the focus. It doesn't need to be super high or anything, but enough that you need to at least play the game a little bit to get the points for it. The only issue I see with this is that it may increase the pressure on people to do well, but if the minimum score is easy enough to achieve hopefully that wouldn't be a problem? Or maybe it's a case where if the minimum score is low anyways, is there a real reason to have it? I'd like thoughts on this idea if anyone has them.
Regarding the scavenger hunt, a lot of the items were harder this year to make people work for their points more. I think that overall this was a mistake on our part. In the future I think having the items be relatively easy to access but making the bonuses more difficult is the right way to go.
Concerning the scavenger hunt, I definitely think that it should be separate from puzzles in the future. I also think that the puzzles shouldn't be a race. Both of these ideas felt ok on paper, but I think the puzzles would be much better if people could solve them at their own pace throughout the day instead of needing to do them ASAP. I also think specifying how many puzzles there are at the beginning of the day would be a good idea so people know what to expect.
I definitely think that there's a lot of improvement regarding the puzzles themselves. The idea for ARG inspired puzzles was solidified a week or two before camp started, and I think that really shows. A lot of them were repeats or similar things, and got stale fast. I think that with more time to plan for them and come up with creative solutions, they'd be a lot better. It sounds like most people are in favor of keeping them as long as they're fine tuned which makes me happy cuz they were my brainchild this SC lol. If they've got support and people want to see them return, I think that having more people involved with their creation would be a good idea as well - more people means more variety.
Other random thoughts!
- If Quiz Time:tm: returns, I definitely think it needs to be adjusted more from the Azuricast format. Questions should definitely be standardized for the participants (which means no listening in, even for the tiebreakers) and honestly should probably go easier -> harder the further you get. 3 minutes or so also sounds like it'd work well for the time limit, I think it feels kinda anticlimactic to have the whole thing be done in one minute.
- I like the idea of a blacklist for campers who disappear without notice. If you sign up and won't be around much, let us know. Otherwise, if something comes up and you won't be around, let us know. If someone completely poofs without telling anyone and has 2-3 days in a row with no points, that's a big problem. I think having consequences would also possibly help keep people around lol. Obviously we should be lenient and accommodating but it's not fair to let someone ruin a cabin's scores and then invite them back to do it again.
- I do think Discord should be mandatory. This doesn't mean you need to necessarily be active there, but people should be expected to join the server as they will be out of the loop if they don't. Making it clear that it is a big part of camp also means that cabin members will know they will be missing things if they do not join. There were some issues with campers who weren't on the Discord going and doing things without the direction of their cabin leaders and that's something that we definitely need to try and prevent in the future.
- Results being added after the events being posted is definitely a good idea and should return. Ty Lizzy (:
- I think it would be neat to offer more thoughts about things like writing and art, but honestly I'm not sure if we want to add one more thing to the list of tasks that need to be done before results can be posted, especially if it's something that may generate salt from some users. If we give reasons for placement I feel like it's inviting people to argue with the reasoning to try and get their scores higher, and to be frank not everyone on camp staff is a fantastic writer/artist to start with so judging itself can be hard sometimes. I feel like if people really want their feedback they can reach out to the leaders directly.
- Giving more of a breakdown for points is a good idea, but I think it also fits into category of "more work for leaders to do at 1:00 in the morning". Outlining how many points were from which things wouldn't be too hard (especially thanks to Regine's spreadsheet skills

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