Informal Poll of Scripters

How many of you folk are planning to submit box offices to the Best Box Office Contest (deadline on March 25 Midnight for guaranteed entry, latecomers admitted prior to 9am March 26 as space and time allow)? Did you know that the prize pot is up to L$82,000+?
This is an informal poll to see if we're allowing for enough time for judging.

The best what contest? Can you post a link or some such please.

[edit]
Oh! I remember this! But a link would be good, for others who don't.

OMG thanks for reminding me ^_^

BTW here are the rules for said contest: Thread

Perhaps I on my own here, but I suspect I am not and that the bulk of Scriptors probably never say the initial contest announcement. Since it is very much script orientated, an initial announcement in the scripting forums probably would have garner more contestents.

I had not seen this, either. Not sure I'll have the time to make an attempt (though I doubt I am enough of a scripter yet to really be concerned about that!)

Baron

I see the original announcement of this was in the Products Wanted forum. Although I read the forums fairly regularly, I don't normally browse through that one and missed the post. It's a little annoying since the prize is worth it and I think I could do this if I had enough time. A post to General might not have been too off-topic.

I guess I'll have to pay more attention to what the FFRC is doing.

Hopefully a good build/script will come out of this anyway.

HP

Yeah, unfortunately there isn't a general scripting forum. I half suspected this thread would have been bumped just because it isn't really a scripting tip. Neither was the original notice. I do wish there was a general scripting forum and just kinda took my chances with this poll hoping to make sure to get folks' attention.



/54/39/86318/1.html

I did try to sneak this post in scripting tips (and it remained there) to make sure we got some notice in this particular forum, though. I also made sure (risking charges of spamming) that all of the members of scripters of second life got info packets, dragging the packets on to each and every one's profile (an afternoon's work) about 6 weeks ago. Anyone have other suggestions for how to have made sure people knew about this?

I'd have suggested posting it here - we're not that prone to flaming and drama in here and we're not necessarily that prone to reading the products wanted forum either!

Other than that, not sure. It's not really a wiki thing - but the wiki is almost definitely the place that every scripter goes. A one off like that, if you asked one of the owners first and as a temporary think wouldn't offend me and would probably be OK by most people I guess?

Would a Contests / Events page in the Wiki be completely out of place?

Perhaps with rules that things must be promptly removed after the event?

It could be done, they would have to be scripting related; no "come dance at our club, we got hot babes wearing next to nothing... and oh yeah get some free scripts." Probably better to have it hosted on the support wiki (tiki), badgeo has enough problems as it is.

Never even heard of the contest until this thread. Then again, I'm a scripter, I'm not interested in competing with others. That's why I script.


- Newfie

One scripter suggested that not everyone has had his or her spring break yet, and that we might do better to put the contest off by a week. On the basis of that and what seems to be a lower awareness level than I had hoped, I've put a vote in to reschedule the competition for April 2. I'll report back when the vote has completed in 2 days if the date is changed.

I think the reason we went with a contest rather than just paying a scripter directly is that we wanted to be fair in awarding the bid and to bring more attention to the imaginative hackers and scripters of SL. Scripters, this was our chance to put you in the spotlight while seeking something of tremendous value to the SL community (otherwise people wouldn't have contributed $82,000 to the prize pot).

Would anyone submit an entry on April 2 who wouldn't submit on this Sunday?

I had heard of the contest, some time ago, and also the prize money. I'm in general supportive of the FFRC as well so was considering it.

The major reason that I've not done anything in practice is that the actual task doesn't interest me very much, and unless I'm interested I'm not going to be inspired, and if I'm not inspired I'm very unlikely to win, so I'll have spent a load of time doing something that doesn't interest me very much.

I think that you'd get more takers and wider interest with a series of smaller prizes for a number of more varied projects.

As the sole contest entrant who indicated he's ready, my sense of fair play is yelling pretty loudly about the potential rescheduling the contest. I have passed on lots of chargeable script work and made sacrifices of "fun time" so that I could be done on the due date.

I feel that enough notice was given, and the content of those notices were superior with regard to the goals and rewards of the contest. The due date, as I was informed, was due mostly to the changes at Linden with the discontinuation of incentives at the end of March.

That said, I will step back and support a rescheduling with the hopes that more scripters will step up. I share the goal of having the best-available program available to event organizers (who will have their hands full finding desrirable content to draw customers when they don't offer L$ prizes just for attending).

I'll watch this thread to see if we reschedule. In the meantime, we'll do more testing and refinement in live clubs.

Would someone care to address the judging criteria at this time? Is it subjective (Oh I like llDialog boxes so I vote for this one) or scored against a standard criteria (Ability to Detect more than 16 users: 9/10).

I have no problem with people posting scripting bounties as was done with this one, rather like Ordinal I looked it and passed on the opportunity - a mix of being not actually that interested and not convinced it was 100% doable to meet all the specs without breaking the TOS.

Since Leonard is being gracious about postponing the submission and judging date I'll be churlish: If you'd had no people interested then extending dates is one thing. If you judge all the entries to be unfit for purpose then reissuing the challenge is one thing. Announcing a suitable period (say a month for a week long extention) in advance there will be an extention for reasons x, y and z is one thing. If there had been an earthquake, the colo caught fire or whatever that's one thing.

Announcing a couple of days before the deadline that "someone asked for an extention" isn't really a hugely professional way to do it - it's the kind of slack that academics cut students (speaking as a teacher) but when applying for grants, and in "real" work you don't see extentions without good cause, ESPECIALLY if one person/team has chosen to enter - they've abided by the rules you posted - they really deserve to win unless it's unfit for purpose.

That said, I'm pleased Leonard is being gracious about it - although I hope he's delivered a decent package and that he wins.

Looks interesting, but I didn't hear about this until today, so don't have sufficient time to develop a good entry. Unfortunately it was advertised in a forum that I don't tend to read with any regularity.

Um... it was mentioned on this forum too. I saw it. A few posts back in this thread, Persephone posted the link to the Script Tips thread where the Box Office contest was discussed.

If someone didn't read that thread, that's one thing. But it was definitely posted to this forum. Here's the link again, for good measure:

/54/39/86318/1.html

Date: Feb 3rd.

I put the vote forward to the group (decision isn't made yet) because of two reasons: It looked yesterday like we would have only one or two entries and that people were upset about not having heard about the competition. That was in addition to the consideration of one scripter asking for more time. One person asking for more time never moves me, personally. Having a bunch of people say "If I had heard of this earlier, I would have entered and will probably enter if I have more time " is a bit of a different matter. Because of this, and a desire to get really strong entries, I personally voted for a week's extention even though doing so will be problematic for me on a personal schedule level.

My sim's grand opening is the 31-2nd. This means I will be stressing my time and scheduling and support staff resources to the max to reschedule. I didn't lightly decide, therefore, that rescheduling would be a good thing. I was thinking of donors who put in $82,000 worth of linden to the prize and thinking, "what would they want?" I thought they would probably want to see a few entries so that we don't judge by default to give the award to the one person who entered. This is what caused me to make my own personal decision on the matter, despite problems it will cause my own scheduling. I feel a strong need to represent donors as best as we can.

That said, I totally hear the scripter who has said that his sense of fair play is suffering here. As with students who prepare for one test deadline who have the deadline moved, He will still have an advantage over folks who didn't prepare. As he stated, he will get more R & D time to test the product, IF the vote passes. It must pass with a majority.

The criteria are general ones and don't have metrics to them yet. I'll post those below. Essentially, they build on what was posted in the suggestions. (By the way, these were suggestions for a reason: we want the best thing we can get that is in keeping with the TOS. If a suggestion isn't 100% doable within the TOS, improvise around it by all means to stay within the TOS and provide a functional box office.)

Generally we are looking for an object that has
1. functionality (gives programs, takes money, works consistently, isn't laggy)
2. user friendliness (script is documented, users can make necessary changes like amount of money, users can intuitively or with clear instructions alter essential functions like price, handing out programs, etc.)
3. group capacity (object can be used not only by land owner but by event hosts also. If the box office can split profits, even better)
4. ticket buyer friendliness (while effectively encouraging payment for tickets and attendance, the box office has a friendly feel that will encourage the attendee to come back to more events)

I'll scour meeting notes to see if I missed anything, but these are the big ones.

I've made sure to answer every single IM I've gotten in world or in email on this contest. We first posted on it in January. I'm sure I could have done things better, but I did spend literally hours every single week on this contest for months now. I get nothing for this. I've given thousands of $L to it and at least 20 hours of my time. I'm doing it to better the world. If someone else can do it better, GREAT! come help out!

I think that this contest is a wonderful idea. I wish I HAD seen it earlier, as I might have had the time to learn what I need to know to do an entry of this magnitude. A couple days ago, I felt very ambitious and am one of the three who said I am working on an entry. I am afraid that reality is setting in. I have what I think are some really good ideas, but there are enough things that I do not know how to accomplish yet that a finished product is out of my reach for this weekend. I do not think that one extra week would be enough for me to realistically contribute a finished product, either.

I would be glad to share the extra ideas I have and some of what I have figured out for how to handle this project, if anyone else wants more stimulation or ideas.

I hope that this project brings out the best of scripters, and I will watch for another project in the future!

This and a project for work both are vying for all my time. Getting it done in 2 days would be a mirical. An extra week should be plenty of time.

For better or worse, the vote came back negative today which means that the scripting competition will go this weekend (Sunday, March 26, 9am). Please make sure that I have your entries by 9am this Sunday if you wish to participate (giving folks a few more hours than the original midnight deadline should be ok).