tldr: NOMINATE 1, 2, or 3 categories that you would like to see in this year's special edition.
Introduction
Three years ago, when TMTs were usually scheduled for the results to coincide with GE results, we held a special edition (originally organised by Lüc) in order to fill the gap in a year with two elections. The idea was to have songs compete in 6 different specific categories. This was nice, because where regular editions are usually dominated by 70s/80s UK/US English-language guitar-driven rockbands fronted by white men (and I say this realising Im guilty for this as well), this allowed us to explore some different types of music without having hidden gems inevitably getting eliminated by losing to Queen or Dire Straits.
The real succes, however, came afterwards, as 6 winners (or runners up in case the winner had already been previously nominated) were automatically nominated for the regular TMT and since then these 6 songs have done amazingly well, with three of them making it to the final at some point, nearly all of them making it to round 3 several times, and most amazingly, all 6 of them surviving to this day.
So it seemed like a good idea to do another of these special editions (and today seemed like a good day to start as I'm lying in bed all day with covid, doing not much else. Don't worry, I'm not very ill.) I hope Ian won't mind I'm doing this. (I'm assuming he's ok with it based on his discord conversation with Lüc.)
Format
So basically the format will be the same as the 2019 special edition. There will be 6 categories. In each category there will be 25 nominations. These will be split into 5 groups. Best two per group go to the final. There will be a separate 10 song final for each of the categories.
There will be two changes in the category selection though:
* First of all one category won't be decided by the people, but will be dictatorially decided by me, which will be "songs released on or after October 30th, 2019". October 30th is the day nominations started for the songs released in 2018/19 category last time. I don't know if there will be any future special editions, but if we do stick with this format, it makes sense to always have one "recent songs" category.
* Secondly, the rules for categories will be a bit stricter. Categories may not already be well represented in the top 20 of regular edtions. Any category that would reasonably included 8 or more songs that made it to a top 20 (list here: http://wiki.talossa.com/Talossan_Music_Top_20) are banned. This includes super vague categories that could feasibly contain almost any song.
Category nominations open
So step 1 is to decide on the categories that songs will participate in.
For example, a category can be a genre, a time period, a geographic area, a type of instrumentation or vocals, a lyrical theme, etc
rules
- The following categories are banned (mostly because they were in the 2019 edition): german language, country, women lead vocals, songs released 2018 or later, movie themes, songs to overthrow the government*
- Not too common in TMT20. No more than 8 songs that would reasonably belong in that category can be in the main table on this page: http://wiki.talossa.com/Talossan_Music_Top_20
- Not too specific. Otherwise there wont be enough options to nominate from. (I don't really have an objective measurement for this. Just be reasonable here.)
NOMINATE 1, 2, or 3 categories that you would like to see in this year's special edition. Deadline: October 8th, 18:24 CET (so in exactly 7 days)
*this one would be banned anyway because of the second rule
Already selected categories (1/6)
- Songs released on or after October 30th, 2019
Categories nominated so far:
- A Capella music
- Christmas music
- Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth
- Comedy music
- Electronic Music
- Eurovision nominated songs
- French language songs
- Jazz
- Hip Hop / Rap
- Rhythm & Blues
- Ska or Reggae
- Songs which title and band name don't have the letter E on it
- World
@Glüc da Dhi S.H. I hope you will feel better soon. I am creating a quick "news announcement" video for the special edition for Fora Talossa. Excited to cover this.
First category nomination:
Hip hop / Rap
Instrumental music
Bluegrass music (would this be considered country?)
Electronic music
Comedy music (longtime Talossans will remember my failed attempt at a TMT20 spinoff called "wacky28")
Movie Scores/Soundtracks
World (too vague?)
Rhythm & Blues
Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on October 01, 2022, 12:16:16 PMBluegrass music (would this be considered country?)
It does feel like this category is a (less accessible) subset of country. To be completely honest, I'm not too fond of the idea of doing this when we already did country last time. Still, I don't think thats a good enough reason to disallow it. If people disagree with me, then we shall have this as a category.
Quote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on October 01, 2022, 12:33:34 PMWorld (too vague?)
Nah, this one is fine. It is rather broad, but I can't find 8 songs in the list that would qualify so it's not overrepresented.
QuoteMovie Scores/Soundtracks
This one is a problem though. Last time we did Movie themes, which was eventually interpreted as any song or piece of music that originally featured in a movie. Movie scores/soundtracks would basically be a repeat of that category, so I'm afraid I have to ask you to replace it.
Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on October 01, 2022, 12:52:03 PMQuote from: Breneir Tzaracomprada on October 01, 2022, 12:33:34 PMWorld (too vague?)
Nah, this one is fine. It is rather broad, but I can't find 8 songs in the list that would qualify so it's not overrepresented.
QuoteMovie Scores/Soundtracks
This one is a problem though. Last time we did Movie themes, which was eventually interpreted as any song or piece of music that originally featured in a movie. Movie scores/soundtracks would basically be a repeat of that category, so I'm afraid I have to ask you to replace it.
That's fair. Jazz, then.
Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on October 01, 2022, 12:44:38 PMQuote from: Ian Plätschisch on October 01, 2022, 12:16:16 PMBluegrass music (would this be considered country?)
It does feel like this category is a (less accessible) subset of country. To be completely honest, I'm not too fond of the idea of doing this when we already did country last time. Still, I don't think thats a good enough reason to disallow it. If people disagree with me, then we shall have this as a category.
Good point, I've replaced it.
Music from Liechtenstein
I propose Angry sounding music as a category.
Quote from: Bråneu Excelsio on October 01, 2022, 08:19:22 PMI propose Angry sounding music as a category.
I struggle a bit with this one, cause I feel like there would be more than seven songs in the list that would be accepted if this were the category (e.g. This Is How It Goes, Holiday in Cambodia, You Give love a Bad Name, Run Like Hell/Waiting for the Worms, Jesus of Suburbia, Territories, The Trooper, Bohemian Rhapsody). Maybe there is a way to amend or clarify to make it more specific?
Right, my first nomination is (surprise) Eurovision nominated songs.
Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on October 01, 2022, 12:16:16 PMComedy music (longtime Talossans will remember my failed attempt at a TMT20 spinoff called "wacky28")
I'm all for this since I deeply regret not taking part in wacky28 back then. Though I think I lost my list of potential nominees :(
second nom: Ska or Reggae
Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on October 02, 2022, 05:01:19 AMMaybe there is a way to amend or clarify to make it more specific?
I will take a drastic change in direction and propose the Category:
Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth.
3rd nom: songs about vehicles French language songs
I'm noticing that my nomination of "instrumental music" severely overlaps with some of the other nominations, so I'd like to withdraw it and replace it with the opposite: a cappella music.
Christmas music
Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on October 05, 2022, 08:16:45 PMI'm noticing that my nomination of "instrumental music" severely overlaps with some of the other nominations, so I'd like to withdraw it and replace it with the opposite: a cappella music.
I was thinking about that. My conclusion was that if something like that happens, the broadest category should probably get amended. So for example if instrumental and jazz both get selected as categories, maybe instrumental should be changed to instrumental songs that aren't jazz. In this case I guess that won't be necessary now.
So we have 12+1 potential categories so far. 1,5 day left to nominate categories.
Changed my final category proposal to French language
Quote from: Tric'hard Lenxheir on October 01, 2022, 08:13:45 PMMusic from Liechtenstein
So I'm afraid this isn't going to work because we need to be able to nominate 25 songs later and I expect nobody other than you knows any music from Liechtenstein (and to be honest, if you know 25 songs from Liechtenstein I'd be very impressed), but you do still have 2 categories left, so if you want to, maybe you could amend it to something like "
music from countries with fewer than a million people". Still challenging, but between Iceland and Barbados it might be doable. Or maybe
"music from landlocked countries", although in that case I suspect we're gonna have a lot of Falco again. Up to you of course.
Songs which title and band name don't have the letter E on it sounds like fun.
Right, nominations for categories are closed.
These are the nominations:
- A Capella music
- Christmas music
- Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth
- Comedy music
- Electronic Music
- Eurovision nominated songs
- French language songs
- Jazz
- Hip Hop / Rap
- Rhythm & Blues
- Ska or Reggae
- Songs which title and band name don't have the letter E on it
- World
We're gonna vote using STV*, but in order to make it a little more balanced, everyone who nominated gets two votes. One for their own noms and one for the other categories. This sounds (and probably is) needlessly complicated, but it's fair I think and the voting isn't that difficult.
Voting instructions:
a) If you nominated multiple categories:
- Rank your own nominated categories
- Rank at least five other categories
b) If you nominated one category:
- Cast a vote for your own nomination (optional)
- Rank at least five other categories
c) If you didn't nominate any category:
- Rank at least five categories
Deadline: exactly 4 days from now: 12 october 18:34 CET
* fractional transfers, random tiebreaker, quota = (valid votes/6)
My own vote:
Own nominations:
1. Ska/Reggae
2. Hiphop
3. French
Other nominations:
1. Eurovision
2. Comedy
3. World
4. Christmas
5. Electronic
6. No Letter E
1. World
2. Jazz
3. R&B
1. Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth
2. Comedy music
3. Electronic Music
4. French
5. Eurovision
1. Electronic
2. Comedy
3. A Capella
1. Christmas
2. Eurovision
3. No E
4. Hip Hop / Rap
5. World
6. French
7. Jazz
My humble opinion is that STV is not the greatest method when there are more options than voters.
My nominations:
1. Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth
2. Songs which title and band name don't have the letter E on it
---
1. Electronic Music
2. Comedy music
3. Rhythm & Blues
4. Ska or Reggae
5. Christmas music
My own nomination
Christmas
Others
R&B/Blues
Jazz
A Capella
Final days
Letter E
Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on October 08, 2022, 03:31:19 PMMy humble opinion is that STV is not the greatest method when there are more options than voters.
Well you're not wrong, which is partly why I included the double vote thing. My main reasoning is that stv reduces wasted votes, also I kinda wanted to try it as an experiment.
Anyway, I did a mock stv run and I came to the conclusion that the rules need a bit of patching up to fix some of the imbalances.
So three rule changes/clarifications with regards to the counting (THIS DOES NOT AFFECT THE VOTING OR THE VOTES CAST SO FAR)
1. For tiebreaker, before we get to random chances we go down the list of preferences for the second, third etc preferences among the tied categories (so just the order of the tied categories. The nominal preference value doesnt matter), weighted by the transfer value of the vote (so the weight of the votes are the same as for the first preference)
2. To get selected a category needs to exceed the quotum. So 1/6th exactly is not enough.
3. For each combination of votes the second vote gets added to the bottom of the first and vice versa, in order to prevent too many votes from being exhausted.
This all sounds way too complicated, but as said it doesnt affect the voting, so you can all free feel to ignore it. I will post the calculation once the voting is done.
Specifically, my concern is that comedy music currently would not qualify despite getting a second place vote from all but one voter, because seven genres already have at least one first place vote.
Quote from: Ian Plätschisch on October 09, 2022, 08:13:59 AMSpecifically, my concern is that comedy music currently would not qualify despite getting a second place vote from all but one voter, because seven genres already have at least one first place vote.
I feel that's overstating it a bit. Either you consider the votes as separate, in which case 4 out 10 votes had comedy in second place, or you don't, in which case it's realistically only most peoples 3rd, 4th or 5th preference. And it's not like a single first place for a category is gonna be enough either.
Already everyone gets two first choices. I feel like we should prioritise selecting at least a significant proportion of those.
I neglected to nominate any, but here are 5 choices
1. Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth (easy choice if you read the novel Seveneves by Stephenson)
2. Comedy music
3. Ska or Reggae
4. a Capella music
5. Jazz
Quote from: Glüc da Dhi S.H. on October 09, 2022, 01:09:07 PMQuote from: Ian Plätschisch on October 09, 2022, 08:13:59 AMSpecifically, my concern is that comedy music currently would not qualify despite getting a second place vote from all but one voter, because seven genres already have at least one first place vote.
I feel that's overstating it a bit. Either you consider the votes as separate, in which case 4 out 10 votes had comedy in second place, or you don't, in which case it's realistically only most peoples 3rd, 4th or 5th preference. And it's not like a single first place for a category is gonna be enough either.
Already everyone gets two first choices. I feel like we should prioritise selecting at least a significant proportion of those.
You are correct that STV is the best method for prioritizing first preferences. I don't want it to come off that I'm just trying to advance my own nominations :P
Own:
1. Eurovision
Others's:
1. Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth (I swear if someone nominates Wagner...)
2. Songs which title and band name don't have the letter E on it
3. Ska or Reggae
4. Comedy music
5. World
6. A Capella music
7. Jazz
8. Electronic Music
9. French language songs
10. Rhythm & Blues
11. Hip Hop / Rap
12. Christmas music
Category vote is closed.
I will post the full calculation here, but I think the following categories are through:
- Christmas music
- Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth
- Comedy music
- Electronic Music
- Eurovision nominated songs
So yeah, Comedy music appears to have made it even without any first preferences.
We will start with Classical music to have dinner to in the last day of Earth. I will make a separate thread for nominations.
I have to eat crow on this one; I did not realize that one feature of STV (as opposed to vanilla IRV) is the transfer of surplus votes.