Arts and Sciences

[Collette de Harcourt (Collette de Harcourt)]

I think that A&S Crown would be extremely difficult due to the huge variety of A&S and the difficulty of comparisons. A&S are a wonderful and rich part of the Society, but using it to select Crown would, I think, be the wrong use.

[Eva Von Danzig (Eva Von Danzig)]

I have a lot of concerns with the potential of an A&S Crown selection format and it comes from observing A&S competitions and work in an academic feild.

As mentioned previously, Crown selection by arts competitions may be flawed and problematic, as art is subjective and administratively it would be extremely difficult to run. It could also be personally taxing for those tasked with judging.

In addition, if we use the current format and system of judging we have for A&S competitions, you often have judges who are not always knowledgeable in the items they are assessing, which could affect the fairness of the competition. Another consern is the time it will take for the number of entries to be judged. Additionally, due to the prestige of the reward, we should also take care to check references in documentation for academic integrity, which also takes time and effort.

Depending on how it was administered, there is an element of financial elitism inherent in this model, as those with more finances to buy better materials, or those with the luxury of having more time to spend on entries will probably do better than those that do not have the recourses or time to dedicate to their projects. (E.g. someone shelling out $1000 for Sartor reproduction fabrics will likely get more attention and points the  someone who uses cotton/linen blend from Spotlight.)

If we did use the A&S bottle tournament idea, you are still left with the burden of finding judges that want this level of pressure and potential fallout after the tournament.
I just feel that this model isn't viable or sustainable.

[KaraKirriemuir (Kara)]

"Documentation requirements don't help, IMO, as producing high quality, well presented documentation is a separate skill from crafting that is almost orthogonal to the the actual crafting itself - requiring high quality doco just changes the comp to being a doco comp, without solving the fundamental problem."

This is very true across all levels of A&S competitions in Lochac. Some participants understand documentation and some don't, leading to different levels supplied for each entry.
This also affects the judging of entries. Some judges understand documentation and some do not. This leads to judges ignoring the documenation (or lack thereof) and judging entries based on their own knowledge and as such entries can end up with higher or lower scores than they should according to the supplied rubric.

This issue would magnify when the stakes become more "important".

[Safflington (Safiya bint Abd al-Shahid)]

You've also got limited chance of anonymity (if we hope to avoid bias by making entries anonymous) because fields of expertise can be so specialised. There may be only one or two people practicing in the same field as you, and chances are you are well known in that field if you are contesting Crown.

Also to what standard would we be expecting the judging? If the only expert in the subject is the entrant, how do you get someone else to judge them fairly?

It's a secondary concern, but I'd also worry about inadvertently creating a culture of academic elitism when the stakes are as high as Crown (not to suggest that it's more or less fraught then elitism in any other aspect of our game). As someone mentioned earlier, documentation is a skill in and of itself.

[Gwen verch David (Gwen verch David)]

Having judged A&S competitions and managed A&S competitions, I do not support this approach.

The Arts and Sciences are incredibly diverse. What's more, our approaches to them are incredibly diverse. Some people wish to make close copies of extant items. Some people want to make something fit for purpose. Some people want to improve their technique and don't care about the outcome of specific projects. Some people just want to research, and the made objects are a side effect. These are all valid approaches, but 'success' looks different in each of them.

Any method for selecting a Crown MUST be decisive. It must be clear which person won and which person lost, and everyone looking on must be able to agree with that. A&S just isn't like that. PARTICIPATION in A&S could, possibly, be an eligibility criterion, but PROWESS in A&S would not produce reliable, decisive outcomes.