<VV> Worthless awards, was:Concours philosophy

[Ken Wildman]

My (few) comments interspersed....

At 07:29 PM 6/10/04 -0400, airvair wrote:
>That is a very interesting question. I've never been a fan of the "gold,
>silver, bronze" awards, and for a good reason. As you point out, instead
>of competing against the rest of your peers, you compete against a set
>scale. This puts undue pressure on the concours judging staff to be
>"perfect" in their scoring, and even more pressure on whomever draws the
>line between gold and silver, etc.

KNW - Well, the goal for any judge is to be "perfect", i.e., to be 
consistent in the application of the rules and the judging criteria.

>I call it a "feel good" award, as it
>proves only that your car can pull numbers within a certain score range,
>and that it makes you feel good. After all, even a second, third, or
>even lower ranked car could conceivably get a gold award. And this goes
>for everything down the line. So to me, the only thing a "gold" award
>proves is that it's a nice car. It DOESN'T prove that it's the best
>amongst its peers.

KNW -  Here is the real philosophic issue.  Who are you competing 
against?  The current rules make the competition between the presenter and 
the standard of excellence, the rules that Mark proposes makes the 
competition between one competitor and the rest of the competitors.

It seems to me that the more impressive "win" is against the standard of 
excellence; it remains constant.  Competing against other cars only tells 
us something about the quality of the other cars, not the car being 
presented.  In a poor field, a "decent" car wins.  Hardly cause for 
celebration.


>Conversely, a "first, second, third" award system automatically
>compensates for any varience in judging abilities due to us being human.
>It only requires consistancy, which, after judging for more years than I
>can count, I can attest to CORSA judges' consistancy between cars in any
>given class. (There is a rule that the same team of judges has to judge
>every car in a given class, if at all possible. This eliminates human
>differences between teams making a difference in cars' ranks.)

KNW - actually not true.  There is both inter-judge (between judges) 
consistency issues as well as intra-judge (within judges) consistency 
issues.  The evidence is overwhelming that people are seldom as consistent 
as they think they are in making perceptual judgements.  There is a huge 
difference between aiming for consistency and achieving it.

>Scores
>don't mean quite as much as rank, so when you DO get a first, it means
>you are the best among your peers. Which makes PROPER classification
>very important.

KNW - Again, I would disagree.  Scores imply a much more reliable 
difference than merely ranking.  Scores, at the least, suggest the 
measurable *differences* between those being judged while ranks only show 
the order of quality without indicating the distance between items.


>As it stands, you are right. In fact, we could eliminate classification
>altogether, thus saving all the time, effort, and even grief that goes
>along with classification. Trouble is, then concours would lose its most
>important function, that of encouraging the preservation of stock
>Corvairs. Without classes, there would be no need to make the effort to
>be in "factory stock" class, and no doubt few would expend the effort.

KNW - If the function of concours is to preserve "stock Corvairs" then you 
have your work cut out for you to prove that a car never manufactured is 
indeed stock.  I know a fellow whose wife wanted a Cadillac.  He bought a 
Chevrolet and changed the trim to Cadillac parts.  Was his car a Cad or Chevy?


>On the other hand, I would favor the return to the "first, second,
>third" award system. Sure, a lot of people would be unhappy when they
>didn't get first in their class. But what awards they DID get would mean
>something. And wouldn't you rather have an award that actually meant
>something?

KNW - Again, I would argue that it means "more" to be judged against a 
standard of excellence than against whoever happens to show up that day.

Obviously, your mileage varies.   :)

Regards,


Ken