Contests

Punchline Contests

The engine that drives sev are the punchline contests where readers submit punchlines to cartoons missing the final speech bubble. The winning entry is eventually added into the cartoon. You need to be a registered Sevilian to enter (it's free to join).

What makes the contests especially cool is you can also rate other submitted punchlines via RATSY (Punchline RATing SYstem). You rate the punchlines based on your gut reaction (laugh, smile, neutral, frown, retch). There's also a new feature called Ratsy Faces - whereever punchline are displayed, you'll find the 5 Ratsy faces just below the punchline. Click on any of the faces to give that punchline a rating.

Ratsy is very much a web 2.0 concept of user driven content although it was developed years before the phrase web 2.0 was ever conceived. I developed the rating system not as a social experiment or entrepeneurial endeavour - it was an act of practical desperation as I could no longer handle the sole responsibility of reading and rating every single submitted punchline. Spread the load around, I figured!

Each contest goes for one to two weeks. The Sev Space Sunday contest starts (ideally) on Tuesday. The Miscsevlaneous and Sev Space contests start on Thursday (they alternate with each contest going for two weeks).

How the final punchline is chosen 

After a contest ends, I read through the top 150 punchlines and select a dozen or so "finalists". I choose the finalists based on funniness and brevity (long punchlines are too hard to fit into the speech bubble). I also choose punchlines that have more general appeal - as a rule of thumb, I imagine if the cartoon would make sense if someone picked up a newspaper and read the punchline. Lastly, I tend to choose liberally from the top rating punchlines - generally, I choose all or most of the top ten.

The winning punchline is then chosen at a weekly IRC judging session (every Saturday morning Australia EST time) by a handful of sevilians. Each judge votes cut or keep on each finalist. Usually most finalists are cut, leaving just a couple of kept punchlines. Then each judge casts a "vote4" vote - choosing their favourite punchline. If the consensus is clear, the winner is decided. If the vote is close, we ask Wendy (aka the Sev Queen) to make the final decision.

It's been a controversial process from day one. The finalists I choose are often criticised. The cartoons I draw are often said to be of poorer quality than those of the "good ol' days" leading to poorer punchlines. There are often barely enough judges to hold a judging session (5 is the minimum). The only part of the whole punchline process that I've never heard a word of criticism is the choices that Wendy makes in the case of Sev Queeners. Sevilians are a smart bunch!