Judges please...

Thank you, Lucero.

Larry has offered some raw data so I'll wait until I get it, and look into it.

But for the time being, what is everyone's definition of a popular poet? Someone who wins a lot? Someone who has a platinum F award? or a combination of a gold/platnium f/c award?

That's a good question, Mark. I would imagine in an ideal world it would simply be someone who wrote well, consistently. Realistically, especially on a site like this, it probably is a darn site more complex. Other factors like commenting, interacting and friendliness almost certainly come into it as well.

*edit - do the above things affect the weekly sometimes? Maybe, or maybe not; we'll never know how individuals judge. On a personal note, I genuinely hope that whenever I have won, it has been because the judges have enjoyed what I've written and I wouldn't want it any other way.

Mark you have inspired me . I love data gathering... so I figured I should do my little bit too :)

In the last six months on P& Q there have been 86 people who have received either a WIN or HM or both for at least one or more of their poems. Which is amazing since most poetry / writing competitions only allow for the top three winners to get any credit.

The following data pertains to the last six months...

Each of these people have received one or more HMs in the last six months (27 weeks)

Abed / Abram Turner / Adreamer / Aegis / Anna Banasiak / Ben Pickard / BOB GALLO / Brenda / Brittany Ottmo /Byul / C.J Maleney / Chatterbox 909 Sphynx /Chenoa / CRAFTY KEN / Dagmar Wilson / Dancing Rivers / Daniel /Danny /DarknDangerous /Darren /Dayo /Em Marmite / Everlasting /Guilty by Design /Hellon / IdTakeABulletForYou / Indigo /Jack David / Jiminize /John Lock /Kittycat Lady /Larry Chamberlin / [M(/)U] / M.U. / Maher / Maple Tree / Mark /Meena Krish / Megan Chapman /Michael /Milly Hayward /Mr Darcy /Naaz /Nameless /Nani / Obscure /Paul Hirst /Poet on the Piano /Purple /Rhinehalt /Rosy Cheeks and Irony /Rusty Soul / S.T.A.R /Satish Verma / Scott Cole /Scrittore /Silvershoes /Solus /Soulful Ensemble /Spanish Star /Tanya Southey /The Monster you trust /The poet behind the poem / The Prince / Thomas /Vince Gullaci / Wafaa / YaNa /Zia Mikaela

Each one of these people have had at least one poem win the weekly competition....

Abed / Acousic Odyssey / Adreamer / Aegis / Anne Moore / Ben Pickard / BOB GALLO / CJ Maleney / Daniel / Everlasting / IdTakeABulletForYou / Jamie / Larry Chamberlin / Linda Leavers / Maple Tree / Mark / Meena Krish / Megan Chapman / Michael / Milly Hayward / Mr Darcy / MU / Nourayasmine / Obscure / Poet on the Piano / Rania Moallem / S.T.A.R. / Scott Cole / She of the Stars / Shruti / Silvershoes / Someone Invisible / Stormdance / Tanya Southey / Walter / Yakori bint Muhammed / YaNa and Zia Mikaela

A wide range of different skill levels, ages, longevity on the site and all worthy of their wins and HMs. I believe that the more poetry you read and write and the more time you take to try and understand the different styles and meaning behind what is written by other poets. Then the better you become as a writer. Which is exactly what is demonstrated by your study.

Thank you for sharing your hard work it was really interesting to read. Milly x

Mark
I don't think that the badges have any impact whatsoever on how popular a poet is. Nor does the winning. It is down to basic bottom line do you like reading that persons poetry? When more than one person decides they enjoy reading that poets work then gradually that poet becomes more and more popular just in the same way as you go to buy a book from the book shop by a popular author - you trust that whatever they write will keep you entertained.

If you don't like a writing style or the way someone puts their words together then you are not going to want to read it and if more than one person feels the same way then that poet I guess will be unpopular

If I find a writer that I know I am going to enjoy reading then I look forward to reading whatever it is they write next. It doesn't have to be perfect it just has to touch me in some way be it emotionally, visually or just in a thought provoking way. Milly x

Ben, congratulations to you and your family on your upcoming arrival! Very excited for you all! Name picked out yet?

My goodness, if I had known this site was so mathematically based, I would have 'plied my trade' elsewhere, lol. Numbers were never my strong suit...
Seriously, there are some fascinating figures there that I, personally, can make little of - but Mark and Milly, thank you anyway!

Brenda - thank you

Congrats. Ben. Boys are almost as terrifying to raise as girls.

With Larry's data:

A Total of 1,420 poems have reached the front page with 317 unique poets.

156 of them have won more than once (49.21%)
77 of them have won at least five times (24.29%)
41 of them have won at least ten times (12.93%)
14 of them have won at least twenty times (4.41%)
7 of them have won at least thirty times (2.21%)
4 of them have won at least fourty times (1.26%)
1 of them have won at least fifty times (0.31%)

To put things into perspective:

Andrea has 52 wins, which has a overall win rate of 3.66%, POTP's win rate is 3.17%, Larry's win rate is 3.03%, Ben's win rate is 2.89%.

Now looking closer at those who have won the contest at least four times. (Why four? Because I got lazy looking up the user ids to get more information)

Who wins a lot relative to their own poems? *

1. Sincuna (10/14 = 71.43%)
2. Adreamer (6/9 = 66.67%)
3. The Princess (10/22 = 45.45%)
4. Abed (8/19 = 42.11%)
5. Ben Pickard (41/115 = 35.65%)
6. Sai (4/16 = 25%)
7. Melpomene (38/153 = 24.84%)
8. slighte (9/37 = 24.32%)
9. Daniel (8/33 =24.24%)
10. Colm (15/63 = 23.81)
11. nourayasmine (25/118 = 21.19%)
12. Poetess (6/29 = 20.69%)
13. Tanya Southey (7/35 = 20%)
14. silvershoes (34/176 = 19.32%)
15. Sarelune (28/162 = 17.28%)

Note some of these users have had more than one account, and thus may have an inflated overall winrate since the historical data larry provides is keeping track of the wins, but I'm using their current poem total on their current account which will skew things.

Now looking at the the top 20:

Maple Tree, POTP, Larry, Ben Pickard, Melpomene, silvershoes, Meena Krish, Saerelune, Rania, Melissa, Micheal, nourayasmine, Karla, Yakari, sibyllene, Hellon, Mr. Darcy, The Queen, Colm, Lu

Have an impressive 569 wins amongst them, which amounts to 40% overall.

Looking at their favourite badges we have:

4 blue, 9 gold, 7 platinum

Looking at their poem badges we have:

7 blue, 8 gold, 5 platinum

Looking at their comment badges we have:

2 red, 3 blue, 4 gold, 11 platinum.

Why are we looking at their badges? To gauge their activity level on the website. As you can see they are active, these top 20 poets have written at least 100 poems each, most of them have at least 20+ praised comments, and are favourited by at least 50+ members.

The main take away here is that, active members tend to win more often. Why is that?

Is it because they're writing more often?

Of the members, we're looking at (members with 4+ wins):

the top 10 poets ranked by most poems written with respect to the contest

1. Baby Rainbow (1862 poems written, won 5 times) 0.35% overall win rate (5/1420 poems that won the contest)
2. Satish Verma (1826 poems written won 4 times ) 0.28% overall win rate (5/1420 poems that won the contest)
3. POTP (1739 poems written, won 45 times) 3.17% overall win rate (45/1420 poems that won the contest)
4. Micheal D Nalley (1316 poems written, won 5 times) 0.38% overall win rate (5/1420 poems that won the contest)
5. Maple Tree (1169 poems written, won 52 times) 3.66% overall win rate (52/1420 poems that won the contest)
6. Larry (870 poems written, won 43 times) 3.03% overall win rate (43/1420 poems that won the contest)
7. Beautiful Chaos (727 poems written, won 12 times) 0.85% overall win rate (12/1420 poems that won the contest)
8. Yakari (572 poems written, won 24 times) 1.69% overall win rate (24/1420 poems that won the contest)
9. Everlasting (532 poems written, won 13 times) 0.92% overall win rate (13/1420 poems that won the contest)
10. Chelsey (417 poems written, won 13 times) 0.92% overall win rate (13/1420 poems that won the contest)

A majority of then are under a 2% win rate, so no writing more often doesn't help as much as one might think.

I don't have access to the judges comments nor do I really want to compile them so I could go through them since the last time I did that, to answer Hellon's question about whether bias could have affected a person from winning was tedious enough, lol (was a long while back)

So getting back on topic, given the contest-history, I don't think judges are voting on poems because of poems because the poet is popular, but rather "popular" poets are winning because they're more active and contributing more often than others.

Since Feb 2017 till now, a total of 2,084 members have joined.

From Feb 2012 to Jun 2014, a total of 13,571 members have joined.

The site's been attracting less people, and retaining less and less people. I don't have any numbers for how many active people remain of those that joined.

So add up a small active user-base + not a lot of growth and you'd get the feeling that 'popular' poets are winning more so than others. Now admittedly, I've been gone for a while and haven't been keeping up with who's been nominated and what the ratios are like (lesser known poets vs more known poets) and how many poems are nominated on a weekly basis, but I think it's genuinely worth discussing on how to make the contest more accessible to new poets so we could attempt to retain members and grow the community.

O_o ah, i shouldn’t have deleted my previous account. I would have had more poems and wins lol jk

That’s an impressive list

I might have missed it but Mark your account wasn’t there. You had several wins. Wait? Did you delete your account?

Edit : I think some of the percentages are off. Did you divided the number of wins over the total number of written poems?

I did delete my previous account. According to Larry's data, I was tied with you, abracadabra, Thomas, Chelsey, Mahal Ko Kuya Ko for 13 wins, I omitted myself since I couldn't get information like overall poems written, badge information etc.

the first stats, i'm dividing by 317 to represent it as a portion of the population of the poets to win.

win rates are calculated by # of times won / # of all poems in data (1420)

Who wins a lot relative to their own poems? (I probably could've worded this beter)

it's being divided by the number of wins a poet has, and the number of poems they've wrote, to show who writes 'winningly' or sort of predict (poorly) who is more consistent to win the contest.

The last bit of stats were divided by overall poems written 1420.

I'll upload the data I worked with soon.

Edit: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1jOKzDEOCkOCRoQIefU_qDfWoh2mQ-YiPchM1NedHM5A/edit?usp=sharing

Mark? You are flippin' fantastic. This data is amazing to look at! I stumble with numbers constantly so this is quite amazing to see the different percentages (and what they mean lol)

Also, Ben. My sincerest congratulations to you and your wife! Sending all the good vibes your way.

Thanks! Now it makes sense.

Mark that is amazing thank you - it really interesting to see all the fact laid out is such an easy way to follow.

With regards to attracting new poets I don't think that the competition has much bearing for attracting new users because when I joined in 2016 I didn't even know there was a competition or about the forums. (First I knew about it was when someone congratulated me on being nominated and I had to ask them what did they mean) It probably does help retain members once they have joined as its nice to challenge oneself against other writers.

What drew me initially to P&Q over other sites was the simple layout of the home page with everything to hand and I loved the idea that every single poem that is published appears ready to read on the front page - meaning that every poem has the same opportunity to be read regardless of writer or subject and you don't have to drill down into categories unless you really want to. As a reader reading through all of the newly published poetry you get to read a much wider range of subjects and styles that you might never normally read if you only read specific categories regardless of who the writer is.

Certainly whether we like it or not the quality of the winning poems are what help promote this site. Showcasing to the world the best poems of the week to existing members and any passing trade and more importantly to the thousands of people on the mailing list who subscribe so that they get to read the best poetry from the site on a weekly basis (at least fifteen thousand of them ) - Which is why absolutely the judges must continue to vote for the poem's quality and not the poet.

Although we are no longer attracting large numbers of new members we do have an amazing opportunity to get to the real crux of the matter of why we are not retaining members or attracting new ones. I don't know how many people are members of P&Q but if fifteen thousand people joined since 2012 then we have a huge potential resource already to hand.

Every member who signed up for membership did so for a reason. So why not send to every member an automated anonymous questionnaire. Ask them..
What attracted you to the site initially? / What made you sign up to become a member? / Are you still an active member? / If not what made you leave? / What do you like most about this site? / What do you dislike most about the site? / What do you like to do most on the site - a) read , b)Post poems , c) interact, e) all or most of the above / What would you like to see more of?/ What would you like to see less of? /What would make you want to interact more on the site? /What is the most important thing for you about the site? / What encourages you to stay and if you have left what if anything would attract you back ? / Any other recommendations?

If only 20% send back answer it will give a better idea of why people are really not staying and possibly provide solid solutions to attract more people and promote more interaction?
Best wishes Milly x

Firstly, congratulations Ben! That’s wonderful news :)

Secondly, wow, so many numbers! Thank you Mark for sharing. It does highlight a point many were trying to make...active poets will always win more, especially when the content is so consistent.

I understand Hellon’s point to a certain point. It is cool to see new poets win, and join the site, but there’s no reason why any judge should ignore a great poem, no matter who it’s by. The front page is about the poems, not the poets. Sometimes the standard is so high. In essence, it’s a judge’s job to choose the best poems that week. That’s it. If a judge chooses a poem or doesn’t choose a poem because of who it’s written by, it’s a disservice to the other poets.

I agree, it would be awesome to see new members, and older ones like Norhan, Abby, Colm posting poetry too.

It’s our, active members’ jobs to keep the site going, and hope new members see how many interesting and diverse poets there are, and stick around.

Boys are almost as terrifying to raise as girls.

^^

Almost, Larry...
Thank you and thank you MA and Daniel

OMG Mark you are amazing!!! You have taken number crunching to another level so I really thank you for the time you have taken here (I couldn't open your spread sheet link but I probably would not have understood it anyway:) What I did think I understood was that Andrea joined in 2011 so her 52 wins are spread over 8 years (I've taken it back to 7 years because she joined at the end of 2011) so that averages at just over 7 wins per year right? On the other hand we have Ben who, on my count has 29 wins over a 16 month period to be fair I will take his score back to one year and deduct 3 wins so by my calculations, if Ben continues on this path by the time he has been on here for 7 years he will have more that 3 times what Andrea has right now???

Why do you always end up making these threads all about you?

^^

but when I look at Ben Pickard who has only been here (rejoined I know) since Feb 2018 with 115 poems posted and 28 wins that percentage changes.

On the other hand we have Ben who, on my count has 29 wins over a 16 month period to be fair I will take his score back to one year and deduct 3 wins so by my calculations, if Ben continues on this path by the time he has been on here for 7 years he will have more that 3 times what Andrea has right now???

^^

Hellon, maybe you have answered your own question. Please be clear and honest. One, why do you keep singling me out? And two, what exactly is your issue with my win rate? If 'popularity' as you call it wins competitions, then I am ceratinly not the most popular on site, so what is it you want Mark to say? You've done the equation yourself, so your question to him must be rhetorical. So why ask?

I'm genuinely not after a row, but I am confused as to where all this is going.

I am not singling you out...I'm stating facts...I think that answers both questions right?

Hellon, please start focusing on the poems not the poet.

It seriously looks to me that you focus so much on Ben rather than on his poems. If you don’t like the way he writes (I am just assuming), other poets do.

It doesn’t matter if he ends up winning triple the time the other poets, his poems deserve it. I’m surprised he hasn’t won more than he already has.

Hellon, let me put this another way.

I come onto this site to read/write and comment on poetry - all three of which I believe I do as much as anyone. I also am one of the few who use all three of their nominations weekly, and I nominate poems I believe deserve it. However, this thread is beginning to feel uncomfortable to me and not a little spiky.
I don't believe you have answered either question. You are singling me out by repeatedly mentioning my name, which I do not want. And secondly, you didn't really explain where you were going with asking Mark a question you clearly know the answer to. If it was to make a point, what is it and why are you making it?
If you believe I win unfairly, I am genuinely sorry for that, but I cannot do a thing about it. Leaving comments and being active is not something I will sacrifice - nor is saying thank you. All those things are up to me. If you believe I have ever left a thank you on the off chance that I might win a tie break because of it, well, that really is absurd. If I was that concerned with winning, I could make my life a whole lot easier by 1) never nominating and 2) never judging.
Please don't make out that this is me making the issue about me - I am writing in response to a couple of posts that you have made relating to me pointedly. And, although this isn't quite for me to say, have you ever thought that the poems I have won with were actually liked by the judges? I hope they were, because as I said above, I would hate to win any other way.

For my part, if I can help with Hellon's concerns in any way, I will say this (for myself at least) to the judges, now and in the future. Please only ever vote on one of my poems if you genuinely feel it is worthy of the attention. If you do, thank you, and if you don't, I am sure it is beacause there are better poems than mine that week.

Again, Hellon, as above, this isn't me focusing on me, but you have mentioned my name a few times now and I cannot answer for others but I hope this at least answers for myself and you can understand that this is a pointless discussion to continue.

Hellon,

First of all, quit trying to kid yourself. You are not kidding anyone else. Your focus is and has been Ben.

Perhaps Ben does not write to your taste. Perhaps you are mistaking talent for popularity. I remember when Ben first started he was unsure of his poetry. We PMd occasionally due to his lack of familiarity with forms. He took to it like the proverbial duck to water.

The plain fact is that Ben is as awesome a writer as this site has seen in the 11+ years I have been here, with the possible exception of Melpomene. If you cannot accept that then I question your own bias.

This thread has already exceeded the 100 post limit so I will close it. If you want to continue start another one.