Hi Tony,
Thanks for the response. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very much ‘chilled out’ and I’m not trying to discredit this competition because I do think you guys have value as a platform for the exposure of new turntablists. I can’t hate on a competition that is the only provider of real insentives in terms of rewards (both exposure and prize based).
Last year I won the WTK scratch freestyle competition and the prizes and exposure I recieved from that amount to very little in comparison to what is available from participating in the qualifying heats of this event. You have sponsorship and media attention and this is something severely lacking in other competitions.
My issue though is centred on the judging system itself. The pro judges you have organised for this competition are of an amazing standard, and yet they have no power over who is ranked a place in the top 3 prize awarding positions in the qualifying rounds. These prizes are motivators for people like me, but when public vote is the only means of attaining these rewards, the process becomes more of an advertising campaign and the emphasis of a skill showcase loses its focus. If you allowed the judges to vote the top three places then I would accept the statement you made in the article:
‘The answer must be simply that CHILE, SINGAPORE, PORTUGAL, ITALY, SPAIN AND ECUADOR have thrilled the public and the pro judges more than DJs from the nations that normally lead the way.’
But when the pro judges have no say about the top 3 positions your statement is mistaken and it becomes clear examining the voting system that those countries won the top places from having more public support than nations that normally lead the way. I’m not trying to totally discredit the work of the top positions from the previous rounds by the way. I think some of those places were well deserved skill-wise and it makes me proud to see Chile and other countries that otherwise wouldn’t have this opportunity placing. This is another thing I like about your online competition, that you’re providing worldwide opportunity. I’d just like to see things done in a fairer way. I can’t speak for everyone of course, but many of my friends who entered in previous rounds and qualified in 4th-10th place feel somewhat cheated out of the prize positions. This system may get you more attention on the web, but it’s frustrating a lot of the competitors themselves… Vekked raised some good suggestions for system reform.. Anyway I hope you can see I’m not out to have a go at you guys for no reason, and I hope you can take the constructive aspects of what’s been discussed.
Regards,
chile

I agree mostly with chile.

I still think that there should be awards for public votes, but I don’t think it should be skewed towards that end of the spectrum quite as much. I think that the online promotion aspect is a good element and shouldn’t be eliminated entirely; it does encourage the DJs to promote themselves and get their names out there a bit and bring some attention to themselves and the DMC.

On the other hand it’s quite unfair that someone with more friends on facebook or twitter or better connections reap all of the benefits over DJs who clearly spent many more hours on their routines. DJs who are already more established have an inherent advantage that is almost impossible to overcome for the up and coming DJ who might have better skills when it comes to turntablism specifically.

I think having prizes in the heats is absolutely a good idea, and is more likely to bring out some better DJs, and more likely to yield a better overall quality for the final. BUT having all of those prizes allocated for those with the most votes as opposed to the highest ranked routine by the judges may deter some of the better DJs as well.

My suggestion would be to perhaps give a decent prize to the highest public voted set (but only the 1st highest) and then prizes to the top 2 by judges vote (and ideally the best prize for the top judged vote). This still encourages people to promote themselves in order to get the prize for the votes, but keeps the emphasis on DJs doing their best sets and bringing skills to the battle.

I do think that the current setup will still bring out roughly the correct top 3 entrants in the end, but having a bit more emphasis on quality of routines in the early rounds may bring out some higher quality entrants, and I believe that having better quality routines will yield more exposure for the DJs and the DMC overall anyways in the long run. Even though in the context of the first couple days of voting the current system might be ideal, it’s better to have routines that have potential to get 100k views over the course of a year because of it’s quality/replay value than routines which might get 5k views in the first week but never see 5k more after that.

Just my 2 cents, peace!

-Vekked/2011 Canadian DMC Champ

I’d argue that this system of voting places a huge advantage on those with high friend, follower and fan counts and awards DJs based on popularity rather than skill. The fact that the judges can only decide the 4th to 10th place means that the top three positions (which get all the prizes) are usually not as strong as the 4th, 5th and 6th positions skill wise. There are people much lower in public votes than me that I would be happy to have ahead of me at this moment because they demonstrated great all round skill in their routines. I don’t see this in the majority of those with the highest vote positions at the moment. DJ Falcon and Deejay Datflex’s submissions are examples of outstanding routines with very low public votes and will likely go through from the judge vote in 4th and 5th place, but won’t be recieving any prizes this round because this system is awarding based on popularity, not skill.