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ASK A JUDGE: While we're busy NOT voting - your questions, we want 'em


Liontamer
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Okay, I'm already admitting that I haven't combed through this thread, so forgive me if this question has already been asked and answered (and if it has been answered, please add it to the Judges Pannel OCRWiki page, which is where I looked regarding this).

The YES judgements do seem to take quite a bit longer than NO, NO (RESUB), and direct post. I can definitely understand this, but I was wondering if you could further elaborate on the last part of this line, found in the Judges Pannel OCRWiki page:

"The speed of the judging process depends on a variety of factors including judge availability, familiarity with source material, and disputed votes requiring the attention of a greater number of judges."

There are a lot of mixes that get three No's and their threads are made public, but for many YES mixes they seem to need more than three, unless I'm just not stalking every judges pannel sub thread enough to see that is untrue. SO the bottom line is how many judges are needed to YES a mix: minimum, maximum, and what exactly dictates how many more judges are needed to give in a vote if the song is disputed (eg 2 yes/2 no, 4 yes/1 no, etc.)?

Thanks for your time.

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Okay, I'm already admitting that I haven't combed through this thread, so forgive me if this question has already been asked and answered (and if it has been answered, please add it to the Judges Pannel OCRWiki page, which is where I looked regarding this).

The YES judgements do seem to take quite a bit longer than NO, NO (RESUB), and direct post. I can definitely understand this, but I was wondering if you could further elaborate on the last part of this line, found in the Judges Pannel OCRWiki page:

"The speed of the judging process depends on a variety of factors including judge availability, familiarity with source material, and disputed votes requiring the attention of a greater number of judges."

There are a lot of mixes that get three No's and their threads are made public, but for many YES mixes they seem to need more than three, unless I'm just not stalking every judges pannel sub thread enough to see that is untrue. SO the bottom line is how many judges are needed to YES a mix: minimum, maximum, and what exactly dictates how many more judges are needed to give in a vote if the song is disputed (eg 2 yes/2 no, 4 yes/1 no, etc.)?

Thanks for your time.

3N = NO'd. 4Y = YES'd. Everything split would need a majority by two or three (I never remember) to pass/get rejected. In the case of a really close call where all judges have voted and it's still saaay 5Y/5N Dave casts the tiebreaker.

Pretty much, if I'm wrong Larry can come here and clear it out :tomatoface:

Also, many judges were at Jill and Andy's wedding, Larry just got a job and is moving back to Atlanta and only he's got access to the inbox.

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There are a lot of mixes that get three No's and their threads are made public, but for many YES mixes they seem to need more than three, unless I'm just not stalking every judges pannel sub thread enough to see that is untrue. SO the bottom line is how many judges are needed to YES a mix: minimum, maximum, and what exactly dictates how many more judges are needed to give in a vote if the song is disputed (eg 2 yes/2 no, 4 yes/1 no, etc.)?

Thanks for your time.

As far as I can tell:

3 more No's then Yes's

4 more Yes's then No's

Keep going until that happens OR ends with a majority or djp needs to break

Oddly enough no one ever explicitly told me this, just what I picked up.

EDIT: Swedishly sniped!

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  • 2 months later...

This has been said earlier by BGC that it took him an hour and a half.

But why does it take so much time to judge?

No, I don't mean how they have lives and stuff, but when they are actually listening to a remix, BGC said it took him such a long time to cast a vote.

Why?

When I ask Shariq for advice on MY music he immediately tells me if it's subworthy or not. In, like, less than a minute.

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Well, not EVERY vote takes that long, I'd even say that it's not really all that common for a vote to take that long. It's usually because of songs that are remixing a very obscure or unfamiliar source tune, especially if the submitter hasn't provided any assistance in exactly what the connections to their remix are. In those cases, one or more of us will usually just have to sit down and do the dirty work of finding out which parts of the remix are referencing which parts of the source, or if the section we're hearing is completely original material. This is also further complicated when a remix is in a different key, meter, genre, etc. We really want the music to pass, but we have to be fair first, and sometimes that just takes time. Try it sometime. Find a handful of remixes on here that are from a game or soundtrack that you are 100% unfamiliar with, and then download their soundtracks and see if you can figure out which remixes are of which themes.

You may notice that some are pretty obvious, while others don't really sound anything like the original songs, at least until you have listened to the original enough to become actively familiar with the theme and evaluated their remixes over a few listens. That's just how it is on the panel. It's just part of the deal. Even Shariq will tell you that some mixes are harder to analyze than others. If he tells you he can tell if every remix is OCR worthy on the first listen, he's lying :lol:

Lately, though, I've adopted a more "go with your gut, and err on the side of sympathy" approach. So if after a few good listens back and forth from remix to source it's just not at all obvious, I might be inclined to vote NO. But examples like this are precisely why we have a panel. There have been times where we all made mistakes and said we couldn't hear an arrangement clearly, only to have another Judge point out that we had merely overlooked it.

Moreover, if all we really needed to say was "YES" or "NO", then that would save a lot of time as well. But in some cases, there might be many things that we feel compelled to address in a remix so that the submitter can understand precisely why their remix was rejected and/or what they need to fix for the resub. And going back and relistening and timestamping just takes a little time, and it can add up.

Hope that helps you (or anyone else with the same question) understand. If I didn't want to give a mix a chance to prove it's adherence of the guidelines, I'd just NO it in 5 minutes and move on :)

It's also worth noting that voting generally moves much quicker when it's being done in real-time-chat with other judges, because you can both point out things to each other and come to conclusions much much quicker. Which is why I wish we would do it more.

Edited by big giant circles
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Well, not EVERY vote takes that long, I'd even say that it's not really all that common for a vote to take that long. It's usually because of songs that are remixing a very obscure or unfamiliar source tune, especially if the submitter hasn't provided any assistance in exactly what the connections to their remix are. In those cases, one or more of us will usually just have to sit down and do the dirty work of finding out which parts of the remix are referencing which parts of the source, or if the section we're hearing is completely original material. This is also further complicated when a remix is in a different key, meter, genre, etc. We really want the music to pass, but we have to be fair first, and sometimes that just takes time. Try it sometime. Find a handful of remixes on here that are from a game or soundtrack that you are 100% unfamiliar with, and then download their soundtracks and see if you can figure out which remixes are of which themes.

You may notice that some are pretty obvious, while others don't really sound anything like the original songs, at least until you have listened to the original enough to become actively familiar with the theme and evaluated their remixes over a few listens. That's just how it is on the panel. It's just part of the deal. Even Shariq will tell you that some mixes are harder to analyze than others. If he tells you he can tell if every remix is OCR worthy on the first listen, he's lying :lol:

Lately, though, I've adopted a more "go with your gut, and err on the side of sympathy" approach. So if after a few good listens back and forth from remix to source it's just not at all obvious, I might be inclined to vote NO. But examples like this are precisely why we have a panel. There have been times where we all made mistakes and said we couldn't hear an arrangement clearly, only to have another Judge point out that we had merely overlooked it.

Moreover, if all we really needed to say was "YES" or "NO", then that would save a lot of time as well. But in some cases, there might be many things that we feel compelled to address in a remix so that the submitter can understand precisely why their remix was rejected and/or what they need to fix for the resub. And going back and relistening and timestamping just takes a little time, and it can add up.

Hope that helps you (or anyone else with the same question) understand. If I didn't want to give a mix a chance to prove it's adherence of the guidelines, I'd just NO it in 5 minutes and move on :)

It's also worth noting that voting generally moves much quicker when it's being done in real-time-chat with other judges, because you can both point out things to each other and come to conclusions much much quicker. Which is why I wish we would do it more.

You guys should hold a voting session every weekend or something...

I mean not every one of you is out every saturday/sunday so just maybe a half hour to an hour voting session, can get voting done a lot faster.

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You guys should hold a voting session every weekend or something...

I mean not every one of you is out every saturday/sunday so just maybe a half hour to an hour voting session, can get voting done a lot faster.

Definitely not a bad idea and I've thought about it before. There's no time we'd all be able to make it, but maybe the US judges could. Also, I should mention Shariq is especially fast at voting. I seriously don't know how he does it sometimes.

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Definitely not a bad idea and I've thought about it before. There's no time we'd all be able to make it, but maybe the US judges could. Also, I should mention Shariq is especially fast at voting. I seriously don't know how he does it sometimes.

This has been brought up numerous times. I actually tried to plan stuff like this a while back, but you'd be surprised how difficult it is to make a reality unfortunately. Even for the state-side judges.

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It really depends on the source and how diluted the remix is. If its a fairly conservative mix from a game I know like any FF games or whatever, I can probably vote on that in about as long as the track is. There was a recent one where it took me almost two hours just to break down where parts of the song were used because it was so liberal.

It's different each time basically.

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Definitely not a bad idea and I've thought about it before. There's no time we'd all be able to make it, but maybe the US judges could. Also, I should mention Shariq is especially fast at voting. I seriously don't know how he does it sometimes.
It really depends on the source and how diluted the remix is. If its a fairly conservative mix from a game I know like any FF games or whatever, I can probably vote on that in about as long as the track is. There was a recent one where it took me almost two hours just to break down where parts of the song were used because it was so liberal.

It's different each time basically.

Well, I just wanted to throw the idea out there in case you've forgotten or you never thought about it before.

Thanks for the answer.

Edited by Neblix
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  • 1 month later...

Well i have one and you can probably see where this is goin lol. How long, after a mix has been ok'ed by the judges, does it take to get posted to OCR? Is it a random selection or based on themes happening at the time? This may have been asked before I may have even asked but I'm an absent minded mofo and I'm too lazy to search lol.

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Generally, we try to post songs in order (or at least fairly close to it) however, we have been known to deviate depending on certain circumstances. Like if a project is released, Dave usually floods the front page with songs from that project/game for a bit. Or say it's the anniversary of a particular game we have a remix waiting in line for, Dave might post that remix so he can blurb about it in his write up.

There's still a bit of work to getting a remix prepped for OCR, and Larry usually handles that, so every so often we make mistakes and post out of order because once that's taken care of, it's usually queued up for Dave to post.

Aside from all that, I'd say the simple answer is "Whenever Dave finds the time" :)

Also, I would like it to be noted that the title of this thread should now be changed to "Ask A Judge: While we're busy actually voting - your questions, we want 'em" because in case anyone has noticed, we've actually been clearing out the queue pretty faithfully the past couple months. :nicework:

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