Orchestral Shootout, Part 3: VOTING HAS ENDED

[1 SEP 2010: VOTING HAS ENDED]

The Orchestral Shootout is back on, and voting is now open! My sincere apologies to everyone who already voted in the previous poll. Unfortunately, due to cheating those votes had to be scrapped.

I hope you'll take the time to vote again. (And that you remember which ones you voted for the first time!) If you haven't voted yet, please join in. There are prizes at stake, so even if you didn't send in a submission you can still help to make sure that a deserving participant gets the prize!

In case you missed the prizes, we'll be giving away a grand prize consisting of the complete Garritan libraries. And how cool is that?!? Even if you already have GPO, you probably don't have the others. Runners-up will receive a single library, so even as a consolation that's a darn good prize, I think. Our thanks to Gary Garritan for stepping up and helping out like this.

The entries are still up and can be auditioned here. Only the old poll link has been removed. Here's how to vote:

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• Voting is by email. Send your votes to orchestralshootout@hotmail.com. (Just once, please!)
• List the numbers of up to three entries, with your top pick at the top of your list.
• Also include your real name and/or forum handle.

Identifying yourself is solely to discourage cheating. I promise no one will find themselves on any spam lists as a result of giving up their anonymity, and no one's name will be mentioned in any public follow-up conversations without their express permission.

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Have not participated in this for the simple reason I am rather tied up with other matters. I am sorry I am unable to do so because I would very much like to be involved. Hopefully if there is a next time I will be among the contestants.

However it is very troubling that anyone would cheat. What happen to personal honor?  How could a member ever face this forum after cheating?

What do know is the you both Randy and Bit put together a fun interesting thread that should have brought out the very best int the membership. Shame on any one that has subverted the noble and very fine efforts of both of you.

If at all possible it should be posted for all to see the person or persons that engaged in such nasty practice.

Nothing is worth the loss of ones honor. 

Awesome!  Glad you guys figured it out.

Will vote in a little bit since I can't remember one of the numbers I voted for, so I have to listen to some entries again.

Peace!

John and nprime - I appreciate the strength of feelings expressed in your posts.

Here's the practical problem with naming names and removing entries:

--As moderator of the previous poll, I saw the absolute proof of one person boosting his own entries.  But even though I strongly suspect a few other people, I don't have the same kind of proof in their cases.

--Since I'm not 100% sure about everyone involved, I couldn't possibly heap all the punishment on the one person I'm sure of.  It would be lame to penalize one person when others were guilty of the same thing.  I'm positive several people sat there pushing Vote Vote Vote on their entries, but it would be really dreadful if I mistakenly accused anyone.

It has nothing to do with how judgmental or not I am.  It's my own sense of fair play, my belief in fair justice for Everyone, that I didn't withdraw any entries or publish any names.  - I also don't believe in Capital Punishment.--

Now - Everyone who cast a legitimate vote before--Please please please take a few seconds and shoot that list to the email addy Bitflipper posted.  The success of the contest depends on you doing that.

Please!

Randy

Hi, Gordon - "...perhaps turning it into a competition and offering prizes has altered the values in play and undermined the original intent..."  No, it's people with altered values who undermined the original intent.

Glad you're taking the vote seriously.  So am I!  I still have to settle on my reeeeeeally for sure favorite 3.

Randy B.

Lindsay who?  Who's Lindsay?

Randy B.

Great job you guys have done with this project.  Its to bad that you had to go to all the additional work of coming up with a workaround because of some peoples need to try to beat the system.  This project was a real blast to work on.  I got my 2 sons to do the selections for me.  I narrowed it down to 19 entries and then they set up there top 5 list and then narrowed down to 3.  Amazingly, for the top 5 we had only 6 different entries between the 3 of us and 4 different ones for the top 3.  (They both had 10 years of organ lessons with me looking over their shoulders so I must have brainwashed them in the process). 

Thank you Randy and Bit for all the effort and time you have spent on this.  It was a good learning process working with a different type of project than I am normally used to.  Good luck to all the rest of the participants.  I am sure you all had as much fun with this as I did. 

Randy and Bit; I was not aware that there were possibly more cheating then the one. I do know you both have handled this very well indeed. I am struck by your patients and the grace you have both shown. I agree with your decision. It is still a shame that people would do that.  

bump it up.

Red Shirt Guy


Randy I'm not blaming you and bit at all; I agree that the rather leisurely moral growth of certain people predates and is independent of whether there are prizes.  :-)

I'm just lamenting that the delicious dessert has drawn ants to the picnic.  But I guess that's just the nature of picnics and (especially) desserts.

G.

I like your analogy, Gordon.  I was surprised to see those ants crawling out of the bushes, that's for sure.

But we're on track again, and feel confident the voting can now be done fairly as it should have been in the first place.  And even though it's apparently controversial, I'm glad that the full list of 72 entries is still intact.

Onwards!

Randy

lorneyb2


Great job you guys have done with this project.  Its to bad that you had to go to all the additional work of coming up with a workaround because of some peoples need to try to beat the system.  This project was a real blast to work on.  I got my 2 sons to do the selections for me.  I narrowed it down to 19 entries and then they set up there top 5 list and then narrowed down to 3.  Amazingly, for the top 5 we had only 6 different entries between the 3 of us and 4 different ones for the top 3.  (They both had 10 years of organ lessons with me looking over their shoulders so I must have brainwashed them in the process). 

Thank you Randy and Bit for all the effort and time you have spent on this.  It was a good learning process working with a different type of project than I am normally used to.  Good luck to all the rest of the participants.  I am sure you all had as much fun with this as I did. 

What a great post!  Thanks, Lorne - I really like the way you and your sons figured out together how you'd be voting.  And it's really something that you were individually zeroing in on basically the same group of top contenders.  When the voting is over, it'd be fun to know what those numbers were.

If everyone here would use even 1/2 the ingenuity and energy your family did on the voting, what a really spectacular contest this would end up being!

Randy B.

Story of my life, a day late and a dollar short!  I just got done voting.  I wasn't aware of the voter fraud debacle until after I voted and came here.  Kudos to rbowser and bitflipper for putting SO much into this!  It's been fantastic fun, even if I did have to bleed to get my choices down to 3.  Thanks again!

Phew! Listened to them all and listened to many 3 or 4 more times. I set a list of criteria that I was interested in and worked my way through the list one check mark at a time. Great Job, Everyone that took time to work this shootout into your busy schedule. I learned plenty by just listening to all the interpretations of this short 1 minute excerpt. WOW!!!!
 

rich936


Phew! Listened to them all and listened to many 3 or 4 more times. I set a list of criteria that I was interested in and worked my way through the list one check mark at a time. Great Job, Everyone that took time to work this shootout into your busy schedule. I learned plenty by just listening to all the interpretations of this short 1 minute excerpt. WOW!!!!

Superb, Rich - Another sterling example of taking time and care in choosing how to vote.  THANK YOU!

Randy B.

Hey Bit and Randy, as mentioned many time, you guys have done a great job with this.
 
I hadn't voted yet.  I did narrow it down to about 8 but got tired, and haven't had the chance to get back to it.
 
What I'm wondering is when the voteing ends?  I'd still like to pick the ones I think are best.
 
T.S.