There are two polls happening right now - The main competition -
https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1033913.html and the Second Chance -
https://therealljidol.dreamwidth.org/1033408.html***
I was thinking about a couple things last night. Just a couple, I try not to let my brain loose "thinking about things" too often. It just encourages it to get into trouble.
One of those was the origin of the "bye" in Idol. I'm sure I've told this story. But I don't think it's been in awhile. At least a season or two. Which means most of you have heard it, but most of you have also forgotten it because it's not important in your life and/or trauma.
It actually ties into why I vote for everyone. Because in the first two seasons, neither of those concepts existed.
There were no byes and I cast my vote for the entries I liked.
People weren't immediately eliminated, because there wasn't any set number of polls you could miss. In fact, if you got an entry in, you were guaranteed to survive. The poll was only for those who had *missed* getting something in. It was essentially a "Does this person deserve another shot?" and people would eliminate the one(s) that they thought didn't. There weren't many of those - it was usually in the first few weeks of the season and eventually you weeded out the people who weren't submitting things and started the real game between those who were. But it was frustrating. To players. To readers. To me.
But there wasn't a "fix" I could think of in Reality TV, which, after all, was the inspiration behind LJ Idol. People didn't just suddenly get a break in the middle of a season. It took me part of Season 2 to figure out, that there *was* a precedent in my other favorite sport - football! Teams got bye weeks, where they would rest and prepare for the remainder of their season. Not every team had the same bye week, so they were staggered. It wasn't a perfect analogy, but it at least had the terminology and general idea of what I needed. So I planned it's release for Season 3!
The other thing that I had planned for that season was taking away my own individual vote.
It was something that I had gone back and forth with. After all- as the creator, shouldn't I get some sort of say in how the game turned out, at least as much as a random person off the street?
On the other hand, as the game was growing beyond my personal friends (which is was for Season 1 and then Season 2 was my friends plus some of their friends) I felt like there was a danger of my vote carrying *too* much influence. That my liking or not liking something might be seen as an endorsement rather than my personal taste.
So I took away my vote - and solved something that had been bugging me for awhile of seeing people without votes. I would just vote for everyone. That way every contestant would click on the link and see that at least one person was supporting them.
(Keep in mind that this was back when my assistant was putting together the polls. I wouldn't start doing that myself until partway through Season 4. So my vote wasn't always the first one)
Which brings me to that second thought. I started thinking of "What would MY criteria be for someone to get my vote." I was specifically thinking of Second Chance, where I was voting something into the game.
I think it would be different in different scenarios. As a reader/viewer - I'd want the best going against the best. Head to head showdown setting up massive confrontations. As a contestant? I don't know. I've never been in that situation, but the strategist in me thinks that I might be tempted to vote in the ones that I *didn't* think could beat me. (If they could or not, that's anyone's guess. I think that strategy might end up backfiring though if that person you think could be beaten ends up pulling out the stops and amazing everybody with their entries)
But since I'll never be in that situation where that has to be tested, how about YOU? When you consider your Second Chance vote (or any other vote, but this one seems more topical) do you consider just this one piece from them , the rest of their work in Second Chance (what you know they are capable of)? Do you factor in "Who has the best chance to go far/win?" and vote with that in mind to get the best "long term" match ups? A little bit of everything?
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clauderainsrm
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