Perhaps a good moment in time to offer my opinion and viewpoints and arguable subjects regarding contests lately.
What I am worried about personally is not the fact that contests are made but the contest are lately vague.
Contests on RikaNitori are forum-wide and should entail clarity and completion. We encourage the community members to come up with ideas, combine forces and then launch a contest having fun. The fun factor here will always outweigh any other opinion or judgement. We give the community freedom without the hassle of "asking permissions" and such. When a contest has gained popularity or enough interest, I slam it with a sticky so it becomes more visible. But sadly, as a moderator, I hold the responsibility to make contests also accessible to our entire forum. And not just a select group of people. With each contest, the hope is to expand the fanbase and make more people comfortable with toho-derived shmup games.
That is why I asked how you're exactly going to lead this contest. Being a host means you need to take responsibility for the contest entirely. Just because you're not a judge, doesn't mean things will be ok. You remain responsible for the entire contest. Can't just launch a contest and then move aside. Take a look at the previous contest for example and note how elaborate and extensive the description is. The background (idea), the rules and judgement is all explained in detail so there won't be surprises or misunderstanding. In my honest opinion, your current contest explanation is shallow, not proper elaborated and possibly not newbie friendly.
RikaNitori lately has lots of new people, and I am happy to see that. They've probably never joined a contest before and therefore might be worried or insecure to attend. Your job as a host is to make these people comfortable by making the contest as attractive as possible. Halloween is a lovely theme to get creative, so it is a highly valuable moment. Did you all thought this out? Hence I asked how you are fairly going to judge or hand out the judgement criteria to your judges.
Additionally, RikaNitori is more than just RikaNitori members you know? For one of my contest I asked people from Eirin to help out judging. Do you know that you can get interesting and more fair results from people who don't much pay attention to this section? Just saying.
Example thoughts:
A new member scripter will be unable to produce proper plurals, let alone stages. Minimum of 4 patterns is probably already quite the challenge. But let us say this person is keen with patterns and therefore produces great boss fight. However, due to lack of artist skills the sprites are zun/ctc based and nothing else.
How is the above going to reflected against full fledged with bells and whistle scripts who have equal interesting patterns or perhaps slightly less. From gameplay POV: the new member will definitely outscore the skilled and long-time member. How am I, as final responsible moderator, going to ensure new members are comfortable with our community?
Verdict
BLACK!!!!!! No, but on a serious note: I am going to request you to proper elaborate the contest description, rules + judgement. We still got time so it shouldn't be an issue.
Fun factor+++++++++. If you got the time, make it more fun and displaying. Not just boring text. Add a banner or a picture. Or draw something awesome in paint (See Youkai Exterminator Extermination). Make it look and sound fun. Contests are not for teaching. We're not in 101 Danmaku either. We're not judging people here on how great their math knowledge is for making that awesome pattern or how well their plural/stage is composed. A funny script with interesting danmaku can be more interesting then plain standard boss fight. Maybe take a look at the first Halloween contest entries, mainly the infamous spider script and other interesting ones.
Rules are for boundaries to avoid unwanted things and judgement criteria are set to reward the contestant, not to punish them. Judgement criteria should be rewarding to encourage and hopefully improve that fun factor. (Did I word this correctly? English is hard)
Also I am going to make a constraint that only the host/organiser will do the communicating, submission handling, presentation. Basically everything. If you think this is too much job, assign a co-host to help out with certain things. Judges are judges, not organiser or giving the shots. General questions can be handled by the entire community, but specific contest related questions are to be handled by the responsible person, aka you.
(Co-)Hosts and judges can be contestants but cannot be judged (their submission is for fun). To prevent unwanted biasm. Not saying it will, but just in case.
Not a constraint but encouragement: Assigned judges who are from outside the usual RikaNitori roamers will earn in my eye ++respect for their efforts and community relations. Keep this in mind for future contests.
Edit
The above post and my personal opinions is not to discourage contest creation in future but to encourage innovation and "Stay Freeeeeesh!" development. A short-term and inexperienced member is just as eligible to create a contest than a long-term member. All I ask is a careful and well thought out contest and +++++FUN factor for every one. Meet these simple requirements and suddenly you'll realise how easy it is to run a contest. And also how fun it can be too!
Damn, this has become a big ass post, I am sorry Ojousama!
