Community Voting vs Judges (2023 Jam)

[GreenXenith]

In 2021, the Minetest GAME JAM combined community and judge scores together.
In 2022, the community scores were separate for a community winner, with judge scores for the top 3 placers.

Now: What if the final scores are determined by community votes entirely? (This is how many jams work)

Supplementary to that, perhaps the weight of a person's score they give is increased based on their ContentDB reputation (something like the total "helpful"s a reviewer has ever received, or other quantifiable metric), that way more trustworthy ratings are given slightly more sway (but not too much!).

Using community scores exclusively means everyone (you) have more say in the final outcome; It also means those who would qualify as judges are able to participate fully in the competition (and are likely to be people to have higher ContentDB rep anyway).

What are your thoughts?

(Note: the results of this poll are not binding, we are just getting a feel for the popularity of these specific ideas, we have others we may pursue)

[Zughy]

I think the voting system shouldn't be handed to the community. One practical reason is the issue regarding the Minetest new name suggestion: https://github.com/minetest/minetest/issues/13510; where, despite the «names outside the "voxel" and "free/open" nature are encouraged (e.g. Krita, Godot)» disclaimer, many commenters suggested exactly that. Furthermore, the risk of having people voting for their friends is too high. On the contrary, if these people are deprived from the possibility to influence the result, they won't have any real incentive to write positive reviews for their friends and bad ones for other contestants - as such reviews won't matter anyway.

That being said, judges carry responsibilities. They're expected to be people skilled either in development or game design (preferably the latter), if not both. Also, if they make poor choices, they're easier to blame than a multitude of random people. For instance, I can criticise (with all due respect) celeron55 reviews in 2021 jam, as he appeared pretty detached from the engine development, in my humble opinion missing the point in many reviews. I can't do that in a system where everyone can vote (quantity over quality), because people will simply tell me "well, blame people". It's the same logic behind the Minetest name: we're not letting the comment with the majority of votes win.

About the weight of a person's core etc, I think it's overengineered. As someone who has reviewed every game in both the previous jams, I don't want the responsibility to influence the voting, as I fear it won't let me objectively review something, not truly at least. If I want to be a judge, I can simply ask. Otherwise, I'll trust the judges and be the "judges' judge" (as anyone else can be) if I think they're not fit for the job - as I did in the previous paragraph.

TL;DR: 2022 system. No prize for the community winner

EDIT: survey result is already showing what I mean. We're asking A, a huge group of people, if they prefer to vote or it should be on B: guess what A is voting