Welcome to Gaia! ::

Both arguments hold weight.

But they are both equally irrelevant, given that Noata is only judging two fights. Meaning two judges are still giving their comments about why x defeated y and what x can do to be better next round.

TL biggrin R: Shut up faggots.

There's nothing about forgoing comments that suggests a lack of actual thought and judging. Unless you think - again - that Olympic judges just piss-off their duties and randomly choose a winner because, hey, they don't give the Olympic divers comments on their triple spin swan dive.

Or the same with wrestling. Anyone who has actually done freestyle wrestling knows that it's pretty complicated, and yet they defer to a simple number system - and believe me, it can get dizzingly complicated for the uninitiated. And if you think that a match without a pinfall is always cut and dry, you're wrong. It can come down to decimal points between competitors in some cases.

There's nothing about this being a roleplaying tournament that makes it require comments. And there never will be, because it's simply not a process that's needed for the tournament to run. If you remove comments, does it stop the gears of the tournament from turning? No. If you remove the ACTUAL judging process, aka the decision, does it stop the tournament in its tracks?

Yeah, we're seeing that right now. No decision = no tournament advancement = tournament bleeding itself dry. Which is more important, or more crucial? I'm pretty sure it's the one that moves a tournament forward, and comments don't. They're completely supplementary because they don't actually have anything to do with the continuance of the tournament. As much as I like them, I realize that getting the tournament back on track is more important than skipping 1/3rd of a round's comments for a single round.

Is it the Olympics? Or wrestling? No. Is it any different? Again, no, not really. If anything, a roleplaying tournament is the written-word parallel of a freestyle wrestling tournament. There's usually a bracket, a scoring system based on numbers, and the advancement of a player/competitor is based on win/loss. Therefore, the win/loss - not the comments that roleplayers have added into the judging process - are still the only required aspect.

Because it's not necessary to the actual running of the tournament, it can't be a core aspect of it unless the tournament REVOLVES around the betterment of its players. As awesome of an idea as that is, I don't think that's present in the GTB. Not yet, anyways. The tournament still revolves around roleplaying, and the roleplaying revolves around the atmosphere and workings of a tournament, which in this cased is based on a win/loss system. So only that mechanism (the actual decision) is required for judging. And comments sure as hell don't stop the complaining, and never have. Go back and read the HoH or DT OOC thread and see how much people bitched and complained and bickered.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the comments system present in most Gaian tournaments. It's awesome, and has a big impact; it does add the touch of "I'm giving you an indepth opinion." I agree with that, though I don't think the LACK of it implies the opposite, that a judge ISN'T doing their job. Because, again. GTB I. Wrestling tournaments. The Olympics. Dozens of tournaments in national-level sports everywhere. All judged by astoundingly qualified people, all without comments.

It doesn't matter how different you make one thing out to be from the other, none of them have or had comments. They don't imply any lack of work or judgment on the part of the staff. Some tournaments simply use the number system and provide no explanation. No one ever complained before, and they ran their course.

Comments are great, and I prefer that they be there than not, but if a tournament is a week and a half off schedule and NEEDS to get going or else risk losing the interest of its participants, I would prefer that they say "******** the comments for this round" and get the tournament going.

Again, I like the entire system of comments present in the recent batch of Gaia tournaments. It provides a very good feel, and helps people out, or makes them feel that their efforts are well noted. However, they aren't an important (read as: REQUIRED) part of the tournament's advancement or completion, and if they have to be chopped for a round to keep things on schedule, I don't see a problem with that. Gotta break a few eggs to make an omelet.

If I had to choose between a tournament continuing, and having 1/3rd of the judging comments cut for A SINGLE ROUND, I would choose having the tournament continue. A lack of comments doesn't bog the tournament down, a lack of CONTINUING THE TOURNAMENT FOR COMMENTS does that.

TL;DR: Comments are awsum. But they don't imply a greater or lesser amount of judging if they're present or removed, respectively. They only add another - much appreciated - dimension to judging. One that is, ultimately, not required for the tournament to continue to its inevitable completion.

...I'm sorry, what? D:

Pft.

*Crushes the horse with his buffalo herd.*

The major issue I have with your logic, Darth, is that in a 50 yard dash, we can see with our own two eyes who crossed that line first. In a video game competition, we see who gets to 75 kills first. In a game of baseball, when everything's said and done, there we have the team with the most points.

Our perspectives, trains of thought, etc. may be different - but if you and I both see a man in a boxing ring knock the other to the ground, and the other doesn't get up before the 10 count ends, we can both agree the man standing is the man given the victory.

That does not, unfortunately, translate as well or as easily to competitions like these. Sometimes, how one roleplayer sees the fight is radically different from how the other does. It's what we see and form thoughts of in our minds manifested into predominantly text. It's writing. Furthermore, the fight, regardless of whether it's gone to a "point of no return" or not, gets cut off at a certain time-limit; it's not like a boxing match where the bell's rung and the round's over, time is effectively froze and the ability for that fight's continuity to manifest itself [unless the fighters agree to continue it outside the match] ceases.

Take the end of my Round II fight. If all of that were to occur and we could actually sit down and watch it together with our own two eyes, we'd seen as of the moment of the last post, Benjamin being scolded to hell. That, or pulling an ingenious, ingenious clincher to get out of that; point being, presuming he couldn't escape which due to circumstances there, he couldn't - we'd say "Oh, he was burned half to death."

What instead occurred, was that he wasn't able to post before the thread was closed, and so he never got a chance to post to address the fact he received damage. Thus, Benjamin received points for dealing most damage despite having inflicted very little by that point, due to that lack of perspective from the opponent. To the contrary, in real life in a boxing ring for example, things don't go in a turn-based manner where the opponent has to react to a strike prior to the end of fight bell in order to have received it - it all happens in real time, with complete and utter empirical evidence proving (x) occurred. Interpretation doesn't go as far.

That, combined with silly things like spelling errors and typos, to larger things like "what direction your fist came from wasn't specified" and "that armor didn't exist" - part of the judging process is as much to shift through that to see as much as possible, the absolute version of the fight's results rather than the results from Fighter X or Fighter Y's perspective. That makes it a tremendously different process than say, an Olympic race, a chess tournament, a wrestling match - because in those, again, perspective doesn't have a practical purpose. What happens, happens.

That is why in deals like this, comments aren't just welcome, they're really important because it shows that judge is qualified. I don't doubt the judges are qualified. Not even a bit. But I know if I was a judge here, I'd never give someone the opportunity to question that fact; I'd prove I did the busy-work, theory-crafting, etc. necessary to say "I am qualified," rather than merely state I am. To that end, these supposedly unnecessary comments are equally important: they give that "proof" the judge did get a grasp of the situation that otherwise might be lacking.

Of course I understand the tournament needs to continue, and I'm rather eager to get Round IV going. [I know that sounds arrogant, but damn it, I was Pendulum Step'd. You wouldn't understand unless you've experienced Pendulum Step.] I've been eager to get goin'. But not at the cost of consistent quality. If the fights really are such landslides except two, I suppose that's fair enough; I'm just saying I'd really hate to see this go down hill because people want to get to the home stretch as fast as their a**-cheeks can handle it.

I usually hate TL;DR but now it seems so useful-

TL;DR: Pendulum Step.

That's...that's blasphemy!
Me, in a continous state of suffering?

Preposterous!

PREPOSTEROUS!

D8 Well it's true that there is that recent string of defeats and uncanny forms of bad luck in real life - like the extensive flooding, politics fail, extra 60 hours in three days to finish my internship, tuition payment, family DRAMA, hiking in a trail full of venomous spiders, not being paid, but! Surely it doesn't mean that -

...
.....
.......My gods, no! It's...it's too painful to look at and realize the truth!

eeeEAAGGH!

Dx

What four fabled heroes?!
No! I refuse to believe it!

No!
You bastards!

Dx

*Cue Darth Vader*

NOOOO~!