I'm a bit skeptical about having judges. Having judges picked out from autemo is just another voting in between the whole thing and it wouldn't really represent the community's vote but instead, the judges. It would make the community obsolete when it comes to figuring out who is the winner. It would be down to only a few people.

Another aspect I got is about having judges from outside autemo. I feel this would restrict the creativity, the 'artsiness' and holding people back. Especially if the judges were people from the automotive industry, for example. They will surely have their ideas on what looks good and what looks realistic (not only visually but also design-wise) and to me that could be disadvantageous for autemo having to kind of set a new standard from the outside of the community. Of course, since autemo has the commercial side to it already by having clients who give out their requests and set the standard on the works they commission. This shouldn't be the case on WTB which is all about the community and free without having to conform to a standard.

Even if there were to be judges, they'd have to be from different backgrounds; someone who knows cars, someone who knows photoshop and photomanipulation, someone who knows general theory about images and maybe someone from autemo, for example. And also there would have to be a fairly large number of judges to keep it fair for everyone competing and also to distribute the responsibility among judges. Changing it to that kind of scale could turn out to be too stiff and official though.

Just some thoughts. I say the community votes as it has done to this point.

I feel a compromise could work in this case. What if we say... picked a certain amount of members from the community, maybe 25 or so?

We would ensure these members are trustworthy, post often, know the ins and outs of chopping, the styles people go for, the skill that goes into the work etc. I feel that would keep the community side to the voting, because those 25 or so people belong to the community, but it would also weed out the people who vote for their friends, or just vote randomly, screwing up the entire process for the people who put in a lot of hard work.

I guess it boils down to what you guys feel is more important:

1: Having the entire community involved in the voting process.

OR

2: Ensuring the votes are fair, even and trustworthy.

I don't think it's possible to have a solid mixture of both. Those are just my thoughts by the way, we're of course open to changing the way things are run if it's what you guys feel is necessary.

In the end i think it should be kept original.

But then i seen the countless ways some use to try to cheat and such, which is bad.
So i think having it like those "talent shows" and such.

Combo of votes of public (really important, as it gives one dimension of art, which is its appeal to "masses" under test) and also group of "judges" who dont personally take part in the competition.

One way to backup, is to inform in before hand that there is "checkingteam" in place which checks the votes (checking the fulfilling of rules and such) which would spot out the awkwards votes.

Since even if i would like to believe on the open voting there surely will be attempts of giving easy points to some teams, for fullfilling whatever agenda each has in mind.

But keeping the entrants secret wont work.

There is too much room for stuff which is impossible to regulate and would be easy way to cheat on.

I really dont think i will join into it next year either but this is just my idea for it.

I'm not sure how you could determine who gets those places without having the teams complete a chop - which would mean a round of some sort. Almost every year there are surprise teams that perform really well, despite being relatively unknown (think of all the Polish teams). So yeah, basically we just need more knock-outs per round to make the competition shorter (as JD suggested).

About judges - I think it could be a good idea and the more the better. I would agree with having 25-30 respected members being judges. You need to try to get a wide range of members from all countries too, as although these guys are judges they can still subconsciously be biased.

While I agree with this sentiment ollie, I think the community is too divided to rely on. You'll find some of the more active, vocal members being opinionated but loyal towards each other, and most of the background community to be very trend- and "flash-" sensitive. I believe that's what made the regular competition results so surprising sometimes, because the majority of the "background"-votes would be against something that was considered accepted fact and shared opinion among the "regulars".

I think what the WTB needs is consistency in voting. Some form of judging panel would work best because then you can make the WTB rounds more challenging and inform the judging panel to judge based on the given criteria/limitations.

Personally, given the format of the WTB, I think they should be the cream of the crop chop-wise. And it needs those additional challenge parameters in order to bring that out. Keeping the voting open to the trend-sensitive general community that disregard those parameters is like shooting yourself in the foot.

As a last thing I also believe there to be a lot of bias based on nationality, fanbase, style or otherwise in the current voting system.

@Construct

While I agree with what you have said, is it fair that the 'regulars' so called 'accepted' opinion should be word of law. Perhaps the regulars have it all wrong.

But its a tough choice. Sometimes a lot of effort and time has been put into a very good looking chop, and a much simpler, messier and less technically skilled chop beats it.

Possible solution:
Calculate the Standard Deviation of all the votes, and ignore every vote outside 2 standard deviations of the mean. Man i'm so cool.
While that would work, it's too much effort.

So a more practical answer, a bit like these phone in votes on TV
->Judges vote and give a score. This score will count as a certain percentage of votes, maybe 50%?
->Community have individual votes. Judge's score and community votes are combined.

That way we are more likely to get a fair vote, without leaving the power all with one group of people.

So basically you mean the same idea i said earlier lol?

Not quite - you suggested checking that the votes are valid? (unless I misunderstood)

My method involves judges give a score, then the community votes. All votes (provided they are within rules for minimum post count and country restrictions) are counted and will not be disqualified if they seem unfair. Hopefully the judges score will help balance it out.

That was the base of my idea.

The checking votes and such is other ideas already which could be all combined ofcourse.

I think that is better have 30 judges that vote the chops (numbers 1-10, no classification) and the amount of the vote determin the knocked-out an the passed. Even, as i said, each team is represented by a number in order ofregistration and it is showed in the chop (es.: Team 23/Team 18...). Obviously the chop wips can't be shown before the deadline of the round.