Request for feedback/suggestions on MPCC

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Now that the competition has finished I would like a bit of feedback on how it was, and how you would see it run in the future.

1. In the past competitions there was a 1 on 1 round from each category each week.
The pros for this format are:
  • You get to see different coins from different categories each week
  • There weren't as many big rounds, each one was 1 on 1

The cons for this format are:
  • It took a long time to get through the rounds and by the end of the competition there was a bit of apathy from people having just too much to vote on.
  • There were different amounts of coins from each categories, so some categories finished early and other categories dragged on for ages.

2. The way I ran the competition this year we had a big clean-out from two categories at a time in the first week, then a straight 1 on 1 quarter, semi, and final in the following 3 weeks.

The pros for this are:
  • Entries for later categories could still be entered until their turn came up
  • It made the competition shorter
  • The categories were all the same length (all categories lasted 4 weeks)

The cons for this format are:
  • Some of the early rounds for bigger categories were quite cluttered (5 coins in some rounds in Europe)
  • It was the same coins for 4 weeks in a row

So do the rest of you have suggestions about how the competition could be run in future, do you like either of these two formats? Or can you suggest something different?

Was 1 week long enough for voting? Too long? I found that 90% of the votes came in the first 4 days so in future I could possibly make the rounds shorter to make the competition go quicker.

Did you like the divisions that we had for categories? Can you suggest any way the coins could be divided up better?

Any feedback is appreciated.
I really enjoyed this years format. I think the "crowded" first rounds was just fine. As my grandfather used to say "Get's the kids off the street." Jeez, I couldn't even vote for my own entry in Round 1.

This shortened format was over 4 months of commitment for you Neil. As I said before, you deserve a BIG round of applause!!
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble.  It's what you know for sure, that just ain't so.  Mark Twain
I'm looking for suggestions not back patting ;)

One idea I had was to have the same format, but instead of one big week at the beginning, to have two 4-day rounds with half the coins in each round.

that way we wouldn't have as many coins in each round, but we could still cut down the coins substantially by the second week.

The other was to have only 4 day rounds, that way we could have 5 rounds in 4 weeks rather than 4 rounds
I just kinda voted without understanding the categories. Simply which of the coins I liked the most regardless. Often I felt I was voting for the same coin which made me check if I had already cast a vote.

Its easier Ier to make a vote button so that at the top I could have seen whether I already voted (it would be greyed out for me)

i have disabled notifications from numista, so I couldn't make out just have glancing through the threads whether I'm in time to vote. Perhaps ad the deadline in the heading?

shoildnt there be some sort of rule to disallow the same coin from multiple categories. At some point I kinda got bored looking at the same thing

otherwise, it was a marvellous organizational feat you did there !
Outings administrator
I agree that the contests should probably by shorter, maybe 5 days. I did not like that some coins went up against 4 coins, and others 2. I don't know how to fix it, but I think it should be changed. Other than, those two things, I thought it was great overall.
Maybe we should do it like a poll, but that's not easy writing in html...
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Quote: "ashlobo"​Its easier Ier to make a vote button so that at the top I could have seen whether I already voted (it would be greyed out for me)

​I would love to have this, but sadly it's out of my hands. The feature is not available at the moment so we'd have to wait for Xavier to add it.
Each entry should be absolutely anonymous to quell unfair advantage. No posting outside of the MPCC forum casually showing one's entry.
Quote: "JWDiaz"​Each entry should be absolutely anonymous to quell unfair advantage. No posting outside of the MPCC forum casually showing one's entry.
​Again that's out of my control, The only time I announced the owner of a coin in the competition was the winners of each category.
I wish I'd entered although I hope you understand why not. Actually it's probably just as well, the coin I would have entered for the European section was the same one as the eventual winner.

First thing - great job. I can't imagine how much work you've put into making it a success. It's such a nice change to not have the organiser vanish half way through!

In terms of organization I'm sure it can be tweaked a little here and there but as it was an overall success I would suggest that you have it about right. I'm in two minds about the time limit for voting. A shorter period would make it easier to manage but I like the idea of a long drawn out contest. I wouldn't get excited about Cricket season every year if it was all over in a weekend.

I was very disappointed by the seeming lukewarm reaction towards those who saw fit to try to game the vote with accounts created just for that purpose. It's great that such people are being caught that's true and it may act as a deterrent in future years. Although it would have been a more effective deterrent to name and shame them. I'm guessing that they won't be permitted to enter ever again?

I'm not too concerned about people dropping hints as to their entries. It should be discouraged but it's forgivable. If I owned one of those coins you can be damn sure I'd be bragging about it too.

I would like to suggest a category to be considered for future years - mint sets. Not Poorboy Mint stuff, I mean sets issued by official mints. All the modern proof sets would be eliminated very quickly but I really like to see an old Maundy Set vs the 1887 Jubilee set wouldn't you? The drawback is that it would be pitting several coins against just one from the other categories and it would take one hell of a single coin to beat a top quality antique set.

You fully deserve the back patting so it's something you'll have to get used to old chap.
Non illegitimis carborundum est.  Excellent advice for all coins.
Make Numismatics Great Again!  
Perhaps we could have a mini competition in between MPCC competitions for mint sets and proofs and things.
Have you considered using something like Google Forms to run the contest?

Each round could be structured as a separate survey. Each page of the survey could show two coins and ask the user to pick one. Doing so would advance you to the next pair of coins.

This would remove my greatest frustration with the contest (having to go into the correct section of the forum, click on the correct topic, scroll through all the previous comments/votes before I can add my own comment/vote, click approve, click another link to return to the forum, find the next topic, repeat).

I have only a passing knowledge of Google Forms, but it seems easy to use, is free, it would tally votes for you, and it would allow you to easily track participation (if you required Numista handle and associated email address be entered as part of the "survey").

Thanks for running the last competition and starting to think about the next one!
Yes, a mini contest would also allow us to test different ideas, like the one above.

I wonder if anyone here has a complete vintage Maundy set or even one of those Victorian commemorative sets still in the original case. I'd sure like to see one, owning one would be the pinnacle of my numismatic life. I actually held one in my eager hands many years ago at the Manchester Corn Exchange and I really didn't want to give it back - it was love at first sight. (Does anyone know the approximate value of a middle aged female kidney and where to buy chloroform?)

A short, fun competition with a single category.... it would be like a numismatic T20 eh?
Non illegitimis carborundum est.  Excellent advice for all coins.
Make Numismatics Great Again!  
I must admit that I don't know much about the Google forums either so I'd have to have a good look at it. I definitely like the idea of having an auto tally of votes, because it took a while to count up the votes, especially in week 1 of the competition when there were 16 rounds up.

I also like the idea of having the closing date on the title, I did that for the champions rounds because I had altered the length of them, and as you can see from the rounds, there was not a large dropping off in the number of votes from a 4 day round and a 7 day round.

I'm not thinking of reducing the time of the rounds to have a faster competition, but to allow me to have more rounds in the same amount of time (so more like a 6-innings test match rather a t20).

This means that I wouldn't have to have 5 coins in each round, which a few people have complained about, stating that it was unfair that some of the bigger sections like Europe had 5 coins per round in week 1, but smaller ones like Australasia/Pacific had only 2 or 3.
A problem I saw was depending on the browser and computer it is displayed on, sometimes you only see the first 2 coins. You have to scroll to see the rest. Depending on the round you are in some coins had only 2, while others had 3. If you voted quick you might not scroll to see the third coin.
First of all I would like to thank Neil for doing an amazing job. Well done! What an interesting contest this has been!

My suggestions:
1.) I see it as a contest with constant number of contestants. Depending on the number of entries, it can be extended from 8 to 16 or 32. Then the random draw should be made to make further rounds less predictable.
2.) In each round there should be only two coins against each other. Placing 3 or even 4 coins in the same round makes no sense.
3.) In my opinion, rounds should last shorter - we don't need the whole week for voting since 80% of the votes come during the first three days. So, 3 days (72 hours) would be a perfect time range.
4.) Geographical division must be clear - I hated seeing my Colombian coin losing against Panama in South America section! Panama is not South America. We have North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia (together with Oceania). This is it. Ancients and exonumia should be split into different sections. Altogether it gives 8 different sections.
ROMAE AETERNAE
The system was pretty good, Neil. Though, as said by you and the others, I would consider in next competition having the number of rounds for each category based on the number of entries, so the situation of having 4 or 5 coins in one round won't happen again.

Perhaps it would be good to have a week long rounds for Australia and Oceania (4 rounds, 4 weeks), for Asia, Africa and Americas 5 days long (5 rounds, 4 weeks) and for Europe 4 days long (6 or 7 rounds, 4 weeks). I think that would eliminate the problem.

One more thing to consider. As they were so many entries mainly in Europe it won't be bad to have something like medal system instead of only crowning the champion. There were many nice coins and I think it would make it more positively appealing.
Quote: "druzhynets"​First of all I would like to thank Neil for doing an amazing job. Well done! What an interesting contest this has been!

​My suggestions:
​1.) I see it as a contest with constant number of contestants. Depending on the number of entries, it can be extended from 8 to 16 or 32. Then the random draw should be made to make further rounds less predictable.
​2.) In each round there should be only two coins against each other. Placing 3 or even 4 coins in the same round makes no sense.
​3.) In my opinion, rounds should last shorter - we don't need the whole week for voting since 80% of the votes come during the first three days. So, 3 days (72 hours) would be a perfect time range.
​4.) Geographical division must be clear - I hated seeing my Colombian coin losing against Panama in South America section! Panama is not South America. We have North America, South America, Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia (together with Oceania). This is it. Ancients and exonumia should be split into different sections. Altogether it gives 8 different sections.

​1. It's a bit hard considering there was such a wide number of entries. having every category of 32 coins is just not feasible because we only had 17 or 18 coins entered for some competition, and restricting it to only 16 coins means that I'd have to turn away dozens of entries. If I'd had that this year then 4 of the winners would not have even been in the competition. Also I want to give everyone the opportunity to enter the competition, so I don't think this is something I would implement

2. I think this is probably the feedback most widely received, it seems to be what the majority want. Since I'm on a desktop I didn't even think about how the forums would show up on a mobile

3. The rounds do need to be shorter I think 3 days is too short, both for a voting time period...but also for my workload. It took a long time put up rounds as I had to write up the description for each coin, find the correct page to link to, then uploading both pictures (some took up to a minute to load when the pictures were really high resolution) it may not sound like much, but when you've got to do it for up to 60 coins it takes a long time. the sweet spot seems to be 4 days so I'll likely go with that unless there's any real objection against it.

4. I thought I was pretty clear. I put up the map and I did say that there was no political discussions, that it was merely a device for dividing up the coins. Since we had no Central America section and we viewed America as just two separate continents then Panama is the perfect cutoff because the Panama Canal literally divides the continent of America in half.
Oh, I love to see a separate category for Central America. It's only a small number of countries but they almost all punch above their weight when it comes to coin design. Everyone loves those Panama series with the conquistador on them and, in my opinion, Mexican coins pre Neuvo Peso are almost on a par with those from Great Britain.

It's just my personal preference and not a demand for a change. I understand the need for boundaries which might not be strictly accurate. But if you ever need to carve out a new category, it's the obvious choice.
Non illegitimis carborundum est.  Excellent advice for all coins.
Make Numismatics Great Again!  
I agree on the design front, Panama was my second love behind Fiji when I started collecting. However, going by the number of coin entries, the only division we could possibly do would be Eastern/Western Europe. But I think it works well with 8 categories. The divisions we could do are endless but would lead to a very long competition

North America, South America, Central America, Caribbean, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Scandinavia, Mediterranean, Continental Asia, South East Asia, etc
Quote: "pnightingale"​Oh, I love to see a separate category for Central America.
​I think some people might have an advantage in that area. ;)
Make people love ancient doplhins more. :°
Catalogue administrator
Hello,

I think you did a great job in organising that MPCC session. Yes, maybe some way of shortening a bit at the beginning.

The only thing I disliked, and it was the same for the previous MPCCs, is the geographical categories.
I would think of some types of categories that go beyond borders, and that avoid to see a 21st century current design compete against a 200 year silver coin).
E.g. circulating - non circulating, commemos,
Current coin, older coins, ancient coins,
Silver, gold or CuNi, copper and bronze, alu etc.
By design: culturally speaking: Asian, "muslim" (sorry for this one but I don't know how to name a category that would go from Afghanistan to Morocco), "european" (I was a bit puzzled this time to see how Asian categories were dominated by colonial coins! yes yes, George III was an interesting guy but ...).
Or design like subject (animal, transports, allegories, etc)
Etc. I know the definition of the categories would be a bit complicated but interesting. And we could let the participants decide in which category their coins run.

Then I did no like the final champion things. No point for me to make such comparisons.

Just an idea :)
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I still can belive Mark's Rixdollar didn't win.
Non illegitimis carborundum est.  Excellent advice for all coins.
Make Numismatics Great Again!  
Quote: "Ecapoe"​Hello,

​I think you did a great job in organising that MPCC session. Yes, maybe some way of shortening a bit at the beginning.

​The only thing I disliked, and it was the same for the previous MPCCs, is the geographical categories.
​I would think of some types of categories that go beyond borders, and that avoid to see a 21st century current design compete against a 200 year silver coin).
​E.g. circulating - non circulating, commemos,
​Current coin, older coins, ancient coins,
​Silver, gold or CuNi, copper and bronze, alu etc.
​By design: culturally speaking: Asian, "muslim" (sorry for this one but I don't know how to name a category that would go from Afghanistan to Morocco), "european" (I was a bit puzzled this time to see how Asian categories were dominated by colonial coins! yes yes, George III was an interesting guy but ...).
​Or design like subject (animal, transports, allegories, etc)
​Etc. I know the definition of the categories would be a bit complicated but interesting. And we could let the participants decide in which category their coins run.

​Then I did no like the final champion things. No point for me to make such comparisons.

​Just an idea :)
​the whole point of the competition is to find which coin that was entered was the most popular. It's about comparing coins and saying which one you like better. If you had unlimited money, which of the coins would you buy. That is why you can compare a 2,000 year old coin to a modern commemorative, and why you can compare the winners of the various categories. It's what the competition is designed to do.

As to the colonial coins...the coins that were entered were what people collect. If more people collect colonial coins, then there are going to be more entered in the competition. It's as simple as that

I do like the idea of dividing by other than area division, but there are issues with all the possible divisions:
  • Firstly, with dividing by metal, not everyone can afford gold or even silver coins, I think we only had something like 4-5 gold coins entered in this years competition. If you divide by metal then were going to get a handful of gold coins, more silver, then a huge competition for copper/bronze and cu-ni
  • Dividing up by circulating, non circulating and commemoratives only gives you 3 categories not nearly enough for a decent competition
  • Same for modern, older and ancient, that will only give you 3 categories. Also where do you put the definition? I have a swap that I'm currently organising and the guy said he only collects "modern coins" I offered some coins from the 1970s and he wrote back that he considered modern coins to be anything produced after his birth year of 1998, to me modern is anything after world war 2.
  • As fur culture, what about areas that have multiple cultures. Like Malaysia, they have European from their colonial time, but they also have Muslim and Chinese cultures represented there, so do they go in Asia or Muslim? New Zealand has both European and pacific Island cultures, so do we go in European or pacific?
  • To me It would be a bit boring if every single coin you vote for has the same theme and design.

Overall I think dividing by continents is the best way as you get a decent amount of categories (7), each category has a variety of designs, metals, ages and cultures.
The only annoyance I had was that the number of coins in the initial rounds was inconsistent. I don't mind having 3 or 4 or even 5 coins go head to head, but it's not exactly fair if round 1A has 4 coins and round 1B has only 3.

Other than that, I really enjoyed seeing everyone's coins and it was something I looked forward to every Monday.
- I don't have any problem with a coin from Panama being in the same categorie as one from Colombia. The categories were clearly defined beforehand, so as long as these guidelines were respected I 'm fine with it (although there were some errors there), plus splitting Central & South Americas would make small categories.
- I would suggest splitting Europe (on an east/west axis for instance) as there were too many coins there.
- The problem I have is with the random number of coins battling a round. It's not fair to have in the same category a round between 2 coins and another between 5. To avoid that I would suggest a first phase, in wich all coins are split in 4 pools (which allows for a more even distribution) and the 2 coins with the most votes in each pool proceed to the next tournament phase (making sure the coins from the same pool can't meet again before the finals).
- I also think a week may be too long, as participation dropped in the last few days. 4-day rounds would make a more dynamic contest.
- I would suggest using the previous rules concerning participation, i.e. restrict voting rights to members who've been here a while and are forum participants. That would lower the number of fake accounts used to skew the votes. I also would suggest that Xavier design some tool to automatically match the voters' IP addresses to the contestants', if I thought there was a chance of that happening before I have great-great-great-grandchildren.
- You should request that every submission include a title and a link to the coin sheet. That would take each contestant only a few seconds but would save you a lot of time and effort.
We could have champions saved and then being tested by new champions.
Catalogue administrator
Quote: "Jarcek"​We could have champions saved and then being tested by new champions.
​What do you mean? Do you want the champions from next year to be put up against the champions from this year's competition?
Yes, with no prize, just prestige. To see if new one can unseat the current champion.
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