Rockin Rockford

[skywhopper]

I need some clarification from someone with more info than I have - what is the relationship between the score the judges gave each corps and the fan voting. Is the fan voting a part of the recaps that are up on DCI?

Fan voting has nothing to do with the actual, official scores. It's just an extracurricular activity.

[skywhopper]

Wow, BD was FIFTH in general effect.

[corpsband]

I don't think so: we're really talking about literally the most irrelevant portion of the show. People are taking this fan vote thing WAY too seriously. As far as we know, it did not impact the final placement of the show (and even if it did, who cares: this isn't finals and placements in mid-July mean nothing in the grand scheme of things), and all fan voting does is give fans the feeling of contributing to the event. As long as fans were told how to vote, then there isn't really anything to 'flub' short of a technical screw-up on DCI's end.

Well -- I'd call it a flub if:

1) the process is cumbersome

2) the vote does not necessarily reflect the view of those at the performance

IMO both of those are true.

If you want this to work, you make the process

A) easy enough for everyone in the audience to participate

B) well-designed enough to be confident that the results reflect the view of said audience.

Neither of these conditions were met.

I'm behind the idea -- I just wish they had spent just a little time thinking about it.

Edited July 18, 2011 by corpsband

[corpsband]

I think you're, at best, guesstimating how many people in the audience use their cell phone to access the internet. I recall reading an article on CNN last spring/summer that said that about a third of the entire US population used the internet from their phones, and that number had jumped a large percentage from the previous year (suggesting that there was another jump in users a year later).

While there are plenty of people who don't use their cellphone to a) text and b) access the internet, it is impossible to know how man people at the Rockford show did. You're assuming the vote largely came from corps fans throughout the country looking to sway voting, and I don't think that's a fair assessment (or at the very least you taking one extreme side of the argument and ignoring the other)

Those numbers incude people using APPS. Not sending a text to get a url to fill out form to vote.

My suspicion is that the VAST majority of votes were from those not in attendance. As I said earlier, the process is much simpler on a larger device and it does nothing to prevent invalid votes.

If I'm wrong I'll be glad to admit it publicly AND I'll be happy about it. I *want* the audience vote thing to work. But if the audience feels it's a sham it will have just the OPPOSITE effect they intend.

As for me assuming the "worst", I disagree. The worst would be a FMM in a CS program taking 30 mins to write a script automate it. I'm assuming that it was all done manually.

Conversely the "best" (for DCI at least) would be maybe 20% of the live audience actually voted from the show site and there was no off-site vote. Not very confident in this kind of result.

[oldsnare]

Fan voting has nothing to do with the actual, official scores. It's just an extracurricular activity.

Thank you - glad to hear

[chris ncsu]

Wow, BD was FIFTH in general effect.

Cadets got 2nd pretty much from high marks in GE and visual ensemble. Their drums and guard are still their low marks. AGAIN this year. They have to clean that up! Feet, too. Puzzling that they were doing very well in these captions and brass a couple weeks ago. Crown had it's own weaknesses, but BDs only big weakness was GE

[Schickmeister]

The guard score puzzles me for Cadets. That is a very experienced group they have this year.

[Lead]

Those numbers incude people using APPS. Not sending a text to get a url to fill out form to vote.

My suspicion is that the VAST majority of votes were from those not in attendance. As I said earlier, the process is much simpler on a larger device and it does nothing to prevent invalid votes.

Just asking - what would be so hard about creating a one-time text number, announcing at the show -

"OK everyone, it's time to send in your fan voting ballots. Tonight, text your fan favorite vote to: '48292'. Here are the numbers of your favorite corps (and change these for each show): 1 - SCV, 2 - Phantom, etc etc. From this point, you have 5 minutes remaining to text in your vote!"

That way, they could change the text-in number and only provide that to those in attendance over the loudspeaker. They could ALSO change the text-in number that corresponds with each corps so that the numbers can not be publicized prior to the event. Finally, allowing a very small window would drastically cut down on the Twitter/FB soliciting of votes, although I'm sure a small amount of that would still get out.

Even if the text-in number were static, at least changing the corresponding number of each corps would keep people from knowing that, for example, 6 always corresponds to a vote for Cadets, or whatever.

Just a thought.

[dans]

Wow, BD was FIFTH in general effect.

Wow, that high?

[cowtown]

I didn’t vote – I don’t text nor do I have a smart phone and I left my phone at home

The person that I went with didn’t vote either, he left his phone in the car – said he wouldn’t have voted anyway because it was too much of a process and he didn’t want to register for anything and get spammed

So that’s 0/2