State of the Viewers Choice Awards

[Kireblue]

My English is bad, sorry
I am a follower of the a-m-v.org for some time now and I am new creating videos
My opinion is that this year the VCA 2018 awards are normal and in the course of this year 2018 will be discussed on this theme for next year
It seems very sudden to me to make such a radical decision in such a short time and just before the VCA 2018 begins.

you're not wrong. This definitely is a radical decision, and I wish that I had thought of it sooner. But I do feel that it's necessary to reverse the downward trend in terms of VCA participation. And so I'd rather do it sooner than later (especially since later would be a whole year away). The worst that can happen is that we fail this year and learn from our mistakes to make next year better. I don't really think that a extra year of planning will make much difference.

I haven't read all of these walls of text. So what i'm writing has probably been said before. I think you should try to keep the VCA alive. I won't trust a pre-selection by judges though. This is why the JCA's never worked.

What were the JCA's?

Judges Choice Awards, and I agree with Cenit. Every year they had issues. I even offered to run it one year, did a lot of legwork setting it up, and some people so hated how I did it that I actually just quit and said someone else should do it. That was one of my worst moments in the community, and I know that similar things have happened with the JCAs every year it was tried. No matter who ran it, or how it was structured, lots of people got angry, offended, and downright personally hostile. There are contests I've wanted to run (most notably my Generation Clash tag team video competition), BUT my experiences with the JCAs really soured me on it.

If you're interested in learning what the JCAs were, here is the thread from the last year it was ran (2011) viewtopic.php?f=5&t=107770&hilit=jca

Personally, I feel that the JCAs failed because it was running concurrent with the VCAs and split the community focus, required a greater commitment from the Judges, and didn't really have a lot of community participation despite having a lot of interest). And so although similar, I do believe that the idea we have for the VCAs will be more successful

[shavedog]

Been an avid follower of the VCA's almost since they started and still to this day look forward to them as much as anything every year so let's please keep them around at all costs! The worst thing that can happen is ideas to become fractured and things to be stalled because of disagreements going forward. So my vote is to try and come up with a way to continue on with implementing as many ideas to make people happy. I personally agree that changes from the old format need to be made the keep VCA's relevant. Opening it up to videos and voters outside of the .org would be awesome. Again it would mean more hassle but I think we already had so much of that in opinions amassed over what the best videos are that end up in the contest vs. best videos out there overall. I think that gap continues to widen each contest. I know I also feel bogged down with doing so much voting plus how the nomination process works. I just love getting to the finals. I think having a panel of judges be able to get us to the final vote would eliminate a lot of tediousness...and as long as we get a good mix of judges who knowledgeable on ALL the AMV's that were made in a particular year this would help eliminate AMV's going between the cracks. I tend to almost vote for a process similar to what is done for the Oscars where the judges would have to ability to get any videos in the category finals that deserve it regardless of a preset number. So in this way when fans get to vote for the finals they will have the most possible "best of" deserving videos to choose from. Lets tweak as much as possible to make the VCA's as exciting and worthwhile as they used to be, even if it means totally changing the ways they are done!

[spoondiddly]

Preview pics and/or videos is a really nice addition.
Can't name how many times I've gotten confused when videos with really similar names or multiples from the same editor are in a list, and have to click around to see which ones they were again. A picture's worth a thousand words and all that. Also handy to directly see all the ones you've never heard of in one place. Simplifies voting quite a bit.

[seasons]

I have not been able to take the time to write a fitting post that would articulate my thoughts on this in a helpful manner BUT I just want to get this in while I have a moment right now.

If it’s determined that there’s no time to implement any big changes to the VCAs for this year’s nominations/voting/awards, then we should look forward to getting that ready for next year and still continue with the status quo for now.

What I mean is please, please don’t cancel the VCAs for this year just because they’re not going as well as we’d like.

Good AMVs will still be acknowledged and that’s a good thing. A lot of viewers/fans will still participate, and that’s a good thing. It is not what it used to be and not what it could be but killing it off for a year would be a mistake (a possibility that may or may not be under consideration right now but I’d like to head off any serious discussion of that before it gains momentum).

If we don’t have the VCAs this year, they probably won’t come back ever again. Time and time again, that’s how these things go.

[Kionon]

What I mean is please, please don’t cancel the VCAs for this year just because they’re not going as well as we’d like...
If we don’t have the VCAs this year, they probably won’t come back ever again. Time and time again, that’s how these things go.

I certainly concur with this, and I wasn't of the opinion we should cancel the VCAs. Can't speak for the rest of the Admin/Mod team, but I would counsel strongly against canceling the VCAs, however it is they end up running. If that means 2018 is status quo, and 2019 is a new system, so be it.

[Kireblue]

Based on the feedback I've received so far, I don't have any plans on canceling the VCAs this year. I've spent the last week contacting potential judges for this, and so I think that we're almost ready to move forward with the new system if that's what people want.

[SSJDAVID]

Based on the feedback I've received so far, I don't have any plans on canceling the VCAs this year. I've spent the last week contacting potential judges for this, and so I think that we're almost ready to move forward with the new system if that's what people want.

Very excited for this! I look forward to it every year

[Mirage_GSM]

Long-time member, first-time poster on the forum. Hajimemashite!
Let me just say that I would be sad to see the VCA go away. I've always been looking forward to the contest to help me find some good new videos since I don't really follow new releases for most of the rest of the year.
I don't really mind if the voting process is changed up a bit if you think it would help participation, but please consider if Crunchyroll is really what you want to copy here - or WHICH parts of CR's concept you want to copy.
The Crunchyroll is heavily biased towards shows that run there, because only members can vote, and when two out of six finalists in several categories come from the same show then something is wrong with the nomination process as well.
Whatever you decide to do and whatever form it is going to take I'll be looking forward to the VCA 2018!

[Donaithnen]

An alternative to the Crunchyroll format is the way that r/anime on reddit is doing awards. From what I understand, they have popular vote determine three entries for a category, and then a panel of judges selects three additional entries for the category. So half are by popular vote, and half are jury selected. Then voting happens like you suggested.

I actually quite like this idea! There are definite downsides to both Judge based award panels and popular nominations, and this seems like a good comprise to me.

If you're still going to do both the semi-finals and finals round the judges could pick 10 videos for the semi-finals and then the popular nominations list could be consulted, starting from the top down. If a video is already on the judges' list it should get flagged (for the sake of transparency it will be important to indicate if a nomination was a judges' choice or a popular choice or both) and if not it's added to the list, until you have 20 total vids. (Or with the numbers adjusted for whatever the desired final total is.)

And as long as things are getting revised, i would also like to see a change in the voting method for the finals round. Instant-Runoff would be preferred, but i think even affirmative voting would be better than the current first-past-the-post method.

[Cenit]

I'm against this judges based system as well as not being able to enter your own AMVs. It will only further improve the circle jerk. RIP