I was also planning on posting my judgment rationales for each bracket I had after their results were up anyway. That being said, I'm not entirely sure that calling out judges to post what they thought is the best way to get them to give their opinions. I get it, you're pissed at a result. It's a game, we can all move on.
I speak from experience that no judge is out there looking to put over their "own" talent. I've had people accuse me of doing that with TEAM from WfWA when only one of their guys made the final four of a tournament that they thought should've cleaned up on. I had them DEMANDING I give my reasonings for voting their guys low, and then when I did, it wasn't good enough and they swore that there was some objective quality their writing had that had it over Nova, Tchu and anyone else who ended up placing over their vaunted guys. Hell, they even threw Christian Light under the bus, and he was their guy who placed 4th.
The best was the thread over at their site, where I tried to play peacemaker, got ripped apart, and then saw that they finally played nice when Lindz went over and said the same damn things I did. Because God forbid they offend a girl (no disrespect to Lindz, but do you ****ing imagine how I felt when that happened?).
So in short, I really have no sympathy for people who have wide-sweeping calls for judge transparency. I agree, it'd be nice if we were all open, but you attract more flies with honey. Sorry Billy.
Judge transparency isn't a bad idea because you had one bad experience with TEAM. On the other hand, I'm not suggesting it is needed because of ONE potential bad call. Again, the podcast discussion last night (which centered on Blaine/Zero) led to Chad saying that not all the judges were expected to provide reasoning for votes, something that surprised me and a few others, and now here we are. It's a
good thing that one small controversy has led to this discussion; that's how models improve.
I'm not sure why you felt the need to say "I get it, you're pissed at a result, it's a game, move on" when I clearly stated it wasn't about results. Judge transparency doesn't guarantee a good or bad result, but it lets people know that we have competent, critical-minded people reading over all the work people spend time writing. Some might spit up their soda at the thought that I don't automatically vest faith in anybody who signs up to be a judge, especially when most of those people are respected, but it wouldn't matter if me and all my good friends were calling this thing - it's an expectation that should be there in a big tournament like this.
If the goal is to avoid drama, that went out the door as soon as ULTRATITLE was announced. It's a tournament, people are going to be dissatisfied every round because we're picking winners and losers. So what? Let it happen. Let people vent, and when the judges make their reasoning, that's the end of it. If people start attacking judges personally for their subjective views, I dunno, it's a forum - the admins can use their discretion as to what's appropriate like they would do for anything else. This doesn't need to be complicated!
Drama is more likely to result from less openness than more, as has already been the case. It's nice that most of you have chosen to be open, but I really don't think it should be an option. You volunteer to judge, you should be expected to show that you're actually, you know...judging.
