intfiction.org

Ah, that's okay then. I guess the 42% don't matter?

Okay, let's make it so that authors can only update 58% of their game.

If you can think of a proposal that will get 100% support, or even more than 58% support,* then you should put it forth. And in fact people have proposed tweaks to make it more acceptable either way. But if the choice is going to be updates or no updates, then I don't see why the 42% should matter more than the 58%.

And frankly, I think you're coming off as though you think your views have a right to be heard to the exclusion of anyone else's. There are very few occasions on which everyone will be satisfied with something. If the rule isn't changed back, it doesn't mean that the views of the people who disliked the rule don't matter, it just means that they didn't carry the day. That'll happen.

*Mind you, all these polls are incredibly unscientific, so I wouldn't take 58% as a gospel number either way.

The 42% have a lot of options as to how to judge their games, including the original way to. As part of the 58%, I wouldn't mind original versions being the defaults.

That aside, I think there's a reasonable point here. How strongly do the 42% feel, and how strongly do the 58% feel, and what are the key sticking points? I suppose a lot of this has been addressed in this topic, but if the 42% say "No way. Burn IFComp burn!!!!" and the 58% think "gee, it's kind of neat," that's a bit different than people not minding either way but slightly preferring allowing updates.

Similarly if there is a huge break in judges' opinions on updating and authors', that's important. I don't know what it'd mean specifically, but it'd help point towards a solution.

As much as I dread surveys, I'd be willing to put up with one just so that we have relatively agreed-upon rules for 2012. I think people have found a lot of approaches to this that aren't black and white.

And I think it might be useful to see how many authors update their games from 2011 as opposed to the previous year, to see if the new rule actually got the results it intended to.

I just feel that we could have written/unwritten guidelines for judging games that may be modified. Sort of like how guidelines have been developed for beta-testing. Many people auto-give 1's if there are no beta testers in the credits. This is fair and valid, but I'd hate for this to be a hard and fast competition rule, especially since some authors DID have their games tested and did not put it in. (Note: updates worked very well for some people who didn't know about this. But perhaps this could be added to the rules for writing a game for IFComp, that ABOUT or CREDITS should have such a list of people. Or placed more prominently.)

Similarly I'd hate for there to be a hard and fast rule against updating, but I wouldn't mind if conventional wisdom says the updates won't get looked at as hard.

I don't think any authors really bent the rules this year with updates, and I don't think anyone who did so or plans to do so would be particularly welcome in the community in the future.

Yep. And in this sort of poll, where the choice is whether or not to change a state of affairs that already exists, you can probably expect the "no" votes to over-represent the actual population of naysayers, since they are most likely to feel aggrieved at status quo. (FWIW, to the degree that I give a fig about the issue at all, I'm firmly in the "yes" camp--but I didn't bother to vote.)

--Erik

_________________
Glimmr: Advanced Graphics for I7
blog | download | bug-tracker

I'm not sure that this is entirely good statistics -- for a start, updates-allowed is both the status quo and a change to long-established rules, so it doesn't quite fit with your principle as stated. And I think the principle's kind of shaky anyway: polling often shifts substantially to favour new policies as they become well-established.

For what it's worth, this part of the 42% don't have strong feelings on the matter, and would even change his vote if it was possible. (Since I voted early, before the debate really got started.)

_________________
"The thing I like about deadlines is the wonderful whooshing noise they make as they go past."
- Douglas Adams

It's not only not good statistics, it's not statistics at all

My main point is simply that internet polls like this one self-select their samples, whereas scientific polls attempt to select a sample without inherent bias. People will vote in a poll like this to the extent they feel aggrieved by the situation, to the degree they think the new policy is cool, to the degree the debate provokes them, etc. (limited of course by whether they actively visit this forum).* I haven't really been following this--except to be mildly exasperated once in a while by some of the sky-is-falling rhetoric--but the balance of passions in the arguments suggests to me that the status-quo dynamic is in play regardless of how new the status quo is. (Also, didn't the comp organizer indicate an intent to keep the rule for next year, and isn't the poll itself something of a protest of that..?)

None of this means anything, of course--it's just a half-hearted defense of a thumbnail argument, one that never had any data behind it.

--Erik

* I suppose that there is also a subset of people who just like to participate and express an opinion. Depending on how many of those folks are voting, you might get closer to an unbiased sample.

_________________
Glimmr: Advanced Graphics for I7
blog | download | bug-tracker

Didn't the old rule (of not allowing updates) meet with pretty much 100% support? I don't remember there ever being this level of discussion before when the old rule was in place, aside from that guy who entered a buggy game and then wasn't allowed to fix it and complained long and loud about the rule being in place that he was fully aware of when he entered the comp. Oh, and Paul Panks. I remember him complaining about the old rules a time or two but I doubt anyone would claim he was an authority on anything.

Dude, your argument's getting ridiculously extended. Seriously, you're this close to The Lurkers Support Me In Email.