Change Forum Song Contest Rules?

[dEhiN]

Hi all, so some of us chatted about the current Forum Song Contest, and specifically about song nominations. Currently, the FSC rules state that you cannot nominate a song that has been previously nominated, and there is a Used Songs thread that lists all previously nominated songs. This means that you cannot, for example, nominate a song that was nominated in the very first FSC, even if you were not part of UniLang during that time.

Because of this, some have expressed a desire to change this rule. One possibility is to get rid of the rule and the Used Songs list altogether. Another possibility is to keep things as is. And a third possibility is to modify the rule to include a time limit: previously nominated songs cannot be re-nominated for a specified period of time.

We'll decide this in a two stage process:

Stage 1) Decide what to do with the Used Songs list.

Stage 2) If we decide to change to include a time limit, we will have a second poll to decide the time limit.

We will run the first poll for 2 weeks.

[księżycowy]

As much as I wanted to vote for "get rid of it completely", I think I'll pick the more reasonable "time limit" option.

I'm hoping you made us able to change our votes dEhiN. Just in case.

I've already voiced my love for the USL elsewhere. I'll refrain from reproducing those comments here.

[dEhiN]

I'm hoping you made us able to change our votes dEhiN. Just in case.

I contemplated being mean and not allowing it, but I allowed it. Though perhaps you can confirm that and let me know?

[księżycowy]

Yup. It works.

[Quetzalcoatl]

The point of the FSC should not be the voting, which is just a silly forum game, but to find new music from all over the world. There are milions of songs to choose from, so why do we need to nominate one and the same song multiple times. Don't forget the December contests which include the best songs of each year.

No matter how the voting will turn out:

I promise you not to vote for any song that have been previously nominated. I will just boycott them, even if I like the songs, because I don't want to support that people start nominating songs that were successful in prior contests just to "win". I'd advise every user who is against changing the rules doing the same.

[TheStrayCat]

I voted to keep the list meaning that I support the no-used-songs rule, but if it grows too long to maintain, we can get rid of it while keeping the rule itself. The search function, after all, works pretty well.

[vijayjohn]

I haven't voted because I don't really have strong feelings one way or the other.

The point of the FSC should not be the voting, which is just a silly forum game, but to find new music from all over the world.

That's what the songs threads are for.

[księżycowy]

I don't really have strong feelings one way or the other.

Do you ever?

[vijayjohn]

I don't really have strong feelings one way or the other.

Do you ever?

I do, actually! I have some strong feelings concerning whether we should create certain subforums depending on what else we do or don't create.

[księżycowy]

Wow. I never thought I'd see the day.

[OldBoring]

This poll has no use. Whoever is the host in a contest, he/she can change the forum rules. Rules don't have to be the same for all the FSCs forever and ever. But each edition of the FSC can have their different rules decided by the host.

[vijayjohn]

In theory, yes, but in practice, everyone pretty much always just copies the same set of rules from the previous FSC except once when someone randomly decided to revive it after it had been dead for months.

[dEhiN]

Interesting discussion; my two cents are that I see Quetzalcoatl's point about people possibly nominating previous "winners" just to win, but I also understand the reason for wanting to scrap or limit the no-used-songs rule. I can't speak for everyone on here, but I know for myself, and I think for most of the current FSC regulars, our main goal is to find new music to listen to and enjoy. It's nice to win, and while Quetzalcoatl's point is a possibility, I personally think it's jumping to the worst conclusion unnecessarily. I also don't see a point to have an unending growing list of previous songs just because of the possibility that people will start picking previous winners to win again. Not only does that thread take a while to load, and will just get longer and longer, but having songs in there from years back defeats the purpose of the FSC: to find new music from all over the world. I wasn't around when the FSC first started, and I'm certainly not going to go through the whole used songs list to listen to each and every previous nomination. So then I have to miss out on some potentially awesome music because I wasn't around 7 years ago? Doesn't that go against the spirit of the contest?

[dEhiN]

I haven't voted because I don't really have strong feelings one way or the other.

Maybe I should've included an abstain option!

[vijayjohn]

I can't speak for everyone on here, but I know for myself, and I think for most of the current FSC regulars, our main goal is to find new music to listen to and enjoy.

This isn't the point of it for me; that's what I use the (other) songs threads for. For me, the FSC is an interesting game where everyone gets a sense of what kind of music everyone else likes to listen to, and everyone sees roughly how popular each nomination is. Part of what makes it interesting IMO is the fact that the set of participants (both nominators and voters) varies every month, so it's not always easy to gauge how popular or not certain kinds of songs will be. I don't usually do very well in the FSC at all, but I have won once (partly because almost no one voted ).

[dEhiN]

I can't speak for everyone on here, but I know for myself, and I think for most of the current FSC regulars, our main goal is to find new music to listen to and enjoy.

This isn't the point of it for me; that's what I use the (other) songs threads for. For me, the FSC is an interesting game where everyone gets a sense of what kind of music everyone else likes to listen to, and everyone sees roughly how popular each nomination is. Part of what makes it interesting IMO is the fact that the set of participants (both nominators and voters) varies every month, so it's not always easy to gauge how popular or not certain kinds of songs will be. I don't usually do very well in the FSC at all, but I have won once (partly because almost no one voted ).

I probably should've left out the "and I think for most of the current FSC regulars"! I think I've only won once as well.

[vijayjohn]

I probably should've left out the "and I think for most of the current FSC regulars"!

You could still be right about that for most of us. I'm an anomaly in many ways.

[księżycowy]

Interesting discussion; my two cents are that I see Quetzalcoatl's point about people possibly nominating previous "winners" just to win, but I also understand the reason for wanting to scrap or limit the no-used-songs rule. I can't speak for everyone on here, but I know for myself, and I think for most of the current FSC regulars, our main goal is to find new music to listen to and enjoy. [...] So then I have to miss out on some potentially awesome music because I wasn't around 7 years ago? Doesn't that go against the spirit of the contest?

Not to mention it's ridiculous to add extra work to the contest. If I did things right, I'd have to search the Used Song list to make sure it's never been used before (with or without the help of the search function), and if it has I'd have to find a new song regardless of the fact of whether it's new to me or not.

TL;DR: I never check the list, and I simply refuse to. If some of us are boycotting "recycled songs" then I'm boycotting the list.

This isn't the point of it for me; that's what I use the (other) songs threads for. For me, the FSC is an interesting game where everyone gets a sense of what kind of music everyone else likes to listen to, and everyone sees roughly how popular each nomination is. Part of what makes it interesting IMO is the fact that the set of participants (both nominators and voters) varies every month, so it's not always easy to gauge how popular or not certain kinds of songs will be. I don't usually do very well in the FSC at all, but I have won once (partly because almost no one voted ).

To me it's kinda both. I like the challenge of finding new music in some of my languages (at the moment Japanese and Irish), but sometimes I nominate a song I've heard before because I want to share it with others.

I also do like to see how well my songs do. I've been pretty lucky these last few contests since I started participating again. It's fun to see where my song (and the other songs too!) fall on the list. Even if I'm last.

The music threads are great place to share music, but you don't get the feedback quite like you do in the FSC. Not that anything is stopping anyone from commenting on songs in the music threads, but I notice that doesn't happen too often anymore. It's just a stream of songs, and that's about it.

[vijayjohn]

I like the challenge of finding new music in some of my languages (at the moment Japanese and Irish)

I make it much more challenging on myself, which I also enjoy. I used to just try to even out the distribution of languages in the used song list because I noticed there had never been any nominations in any languages whose names began with either Y or Z, and for X, the only nomination was the most internationally famous song there is in Xhosa. Similarly, there was only one song in Quechua listed under Q, one song in OCS listed under O, and only songs in Japanese listed under J.

Now, I've come to notice (and fix ) some other anomalies. I started doing this in February, when I noticed that even though there have been nominations in all kinds of obscure languages, there had never been a single nomination that was entirely in Punjabi, one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. Then I nominated one.

[księżycowy]

I tend to just stick to whatever language(s) I'm studying at the time, rather than go for obscurity (unless of course I'm studying an obscure language). I'll let that be your thing Vijay.