Hey Ngamer, thanks for posting your comments here.
Ngamer wrote on 09/01/04 at 17:40:25:Lower the # of matches per day as the rounds progress. Wow, 128 contestants? This should be interesting, as I've never seen this type of contest pulled off with more than 64 before. Going 4 matches a day in the early going is a good idea, sure... but you really ought to scale that back as the tourney continues and the matches grow more popular and exciting. By the time you're down to the Sweet 16 (or at the VERY least the Elite 8), it really should be just one matchup per day.
Yes, after round 2 it will definitely be 1 match a day. Or maybe 2 matches a day for the last 32, if it's going to be a poule system instead of a knockout in that round. But round "last 16" will definitely be 1 match a day.
Quote:Allow voting over AIM. Let's face it: people are lazy. ...
Tanney, if you don't have broadband and wouldn't be able to stay online all day, I would strongly suggest that you find someone who can, to help you share the vote-collecting burden. ...
We used email instead of AIM because voting over AIM would be complicated, since Tanney can't leave his comp on 24h/day. And having someone else collect votes might result in delays in getting the results ready.
But maybe there should be some solution for it. We'll think about it.
Quote:Create a matchup/results topic. And don't let anyone post in it, other than those involved in that day's matchup. This is the way we've done things, and it just works so wonderfully on so many levels. First, it's a single location for people to check the entire history of the Contest up to that point, as well as find out the very latest news. But secondly, it's the perfect place for the contestants to make their own "campaign speech" and try to win votes, without spamming the board the death with new topics. Back at our 64-man only Elite, where everybody knows everybody already, these speeches weren't all that useful in persuading. But with 128 users, from across three different communities, I could see a few words here and there swinging plenty of votes.
Some interactiveness and some way for people to promote theirselves is also on our "to do list". We're going to post the latest results of the contest on the site though. Not in a messageboard topic.
But I have some more messageboard ideas. I'll talk to mark about it.
Quote:Make the matchups highly visible. Oh boy, here's a tough one. There's no way everyone will have the time/ambition to keep them updated across 3 main pages. .. What I did was to just keep things up to date on the top of our message boards, but I'm not sure that, with this system and these Mods/Admins, that's going to be an option. But certainly it's worth looking into.
Don't worry about that. It's the first thing we took care of when planning this contest. No matter how hard you try... the matchups of the day will be impossible to miss. :)
Quote:Allow people to predict how things are going to turn out. A hightened level of interest is anyways created when you know that, heading into an especially important matchup, your "bracket is on the line," as we say. wheat knows what I'm talking about. But, I wouldn't worry about this just yet... it would work best if you run through the first round, get it down to 64 players, and when that's over, take a short break. In that time (maybe 2/3 days), the 64 could be seeded based on their performance into a classic March Madness-style bracket. Then you could enter that bracket into bracketmaker, and have an automatic prediction system already in place.
Just a thought, and I realize it would take a little extra work, but I can pretty much guarentee it would pay off many times over in the end.
Well, for me, it didn't make a difference if i had a prediction bracket up or not. My interest int he contest was as big in 2003 (with prediction bracket) as it was in 2004 (no prediction bracket). And doesn't such a bracket system cause people to send their votes more to the people in their own bracket, instead of to people they really support?
If someone can find the time to create an account at bracketmaker, it could be useful I guess. For me it's not worth the time though.
Maybe it's an idea just to let people post different kind of predictions in some messageboard topic, instead of using bracketmaker?
Quote:JWhalls:
However, that doesn't really help me from being concerned about potential downfalls here. I hope we get some kind of bracket (or additional seeding within group 1) when it hits 64/32. Otherwise, I fear that we'll be looking at a lot of group 1 vs group 1 battles, which could easily eliminate someone that should go deep into the tournament.
Don't worry. There will be additional seeding when the contest hits last 32. The remaining 32 players will get seeded 1-32, based on their scores in the first 2 rounds.
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