spoondiddly wrote:Opening this to the general interwebs is a good idea, but does cause a few complications with management.
- Open submission is probably the best way to go, since a form on the main page won't limit this to .org users the way forum submissions will. That said, even with a clever database there's quite a bit of management you'll need to verify info, release date, and sort duplicates due to mispells, bad info, multiple video locations, etc. At least some of those can get sorted against the org's own database, but expect this will take much more effort than in previous years.
- There's no way to prevent submissions on another's behalf without their knowledge. There needs to be some way to contact the original editor, both in the case they win an award and in general, so they know they're nominated or can opt out.
- YouTube users in particular can be very bad for reup'ing other's videos. Sorting out ownership will take some effort.
- Verifying dates could be problematic if the only source available is an upload time.
One requirement should probably be the videos are publicly available in some form.
The VCAs have always doubled as a membership and donation drive (to some degree at least), but as its scope changes expect the effect will be more indirect.
These are all super legitimate points and raise the question of what you (meaning you, the .org administration) hope to get out of it compared with all the extra work that would come with opening the contest to multiple communities. Like, I get that the VCAs were once a big deal, but the past few years there's been barely any activity on the VCA forums and I'd be curious to know how many people even voted over the last couple years (I don't expect this data to be released, but I suspect it's a very small number). If you really, truly believe that you can revitalize interest in the VCAs by expanding this out into the wide world of the Internet At Large, then by all means, go for it, I just think that it may be too much work for comparatively little reward.
Also -- starting a new VCA program in March seems like it'd be too late, especially given all the extra work that would come from spreading the word out to multiple communities, getting buy-in from them, having them advertise your new plan to their members, and then sorting through each and every video submission you get (however that might look) to verify that they all meet the proper standards as outlined by spoondiddly above, and then going through multiple rounds of judging to get to the winners. This is, frankly, a discussion we should have been having months ago, not a month into the new year. I think it's possible to do all this, but I think that, if we're going to be realistic about it and really want to represent the
best videos of the year, it might be worth it to put in a lot more planning and scrap the VCAs this year, so that instead of some half-baked plan that ends up falling flat, we do it right the first time next year.
For what it's worth, a lot of people are coming out of the woodwork to comment on this so it's clear there's still interest. And I don't want to be seen as someone who's just being a naysayer, but I think everything that's been put forth so far is somewhat unrealistic for the proposed timeframe, and by March of the new year most people won't even care about last year's best videos (which could result in lack of interest from other communities). The VCAs should, imho, always be started within 1-2 weeks of the new year when the previous year is still fresh in everyone's mind, and they should be advertised
heavily across multiple communities with a solid plan of action like a month in advance of that.
