Seeking feeback for MMHC judging rules change Options

[Cleo_Serapis]

Hi all,

We've been having a discussion in the staff forum with regard to the rules we've had in place for this contest since it started.

These rules probably need to be revised. In the past, the Sollars family always chose the winner (as they had contributed the prize money). But that has changed in the last two years.

In the current rules it states: "The voting for the finalists will be conducted by the staff of Mosaic Musings. Each will select their top three choices, which will then be forwarded to the Sollars family. In the event that a submission receives multiple votes by the staff, those pieces are automatically included as a finalist."

Well, that is not applicable at this writing as I pay the winner the prize money and therefore we're thinking we should create a poll for the members to decide. We think the best was to go with this contest going forward is to have the members choose the winner in a poll. The problem is, what if we had the max of 50 submissions? This is why we had incorporated the 'finalist' process in the beginning. It limited the number of entries to vote on.

A suggestion for this question is to define the process based on a minimum number of entries that would then require a finalist process to take place beforehand? In other words: If there are less than X number of submissions in any given contest, a poll will be conducted whereby the members choose the winner following the closing date of each contest. If however, there are more than X number of submissions in any given year, the finalist selection process will take place by (5) appointed judges, who do not have any submissions that year. Each would choose 3 submissions, sending their nominations into the admins, who would tally the results and announce those submissions that received multiple nods. Once that process is completed, a poll would be opened for the membership to vote on the winning entry.

I'm thinking that the magic number would be 15. If less than 15 submissions, do a member poll straight away. If more than 15, seek out the 5 judges and their 3 nods each (of which any duplicates are finalists) determining the 'finalists' to be voted on in a subsequent poll.

What do you all think of this idea?

~Cleo and the Mosaic Musings Staff