Proposal: Procedural remarks on contests
Abstract
This document sets out a basic set of rules for the participation and evaluation of contests held by the Analytics and Support Sub-governance.
These rules apply to all new contests starting from the date of adoption of this document by SG Analytics & Support members. All subsequent contests must contain a reference to this document or be considered invalid.
Violation of any of the remarks may lead to disqualification of the submission.
Contest specification
The contest specification shall be described in a common English language and contain at least the following sections:
- Abstract - a short summary of the specification including the objective of the contest and desired results
- Dates of submissions acceptance and voting
- General contest requirements - what key elements we expect to see in the submission and which criteria the work shall meet
- Evaluation criteria and winning conditions
- Reward for winners: mechanics, prizes, amounts or percentages of the prize pool
- Jury rewards
- Procedural remarks for contestants
- Procedural remarks for jurors
Some parts of the specification are described in this document and should be referenced accordingly in the contest specification, e.g.: “As per Procedural remarks on contests”.
Procedural remarks for contestants
General submission requirements
Your work and the proposed solution (if any) must be:
- Original. It should not include more than 10% of other contestants’ works;
- Implementable. Keep in mind the peculiarities and goals of FreeTON;
- Consistent. Its elements should not contradict each other and the FreeTON Declaration of Decentralization;
- Safe. It must ensure a due level of funds security;
- Modern. Inspire by the leading market solutions.
- Open-sourced. All the results of your efforts should be accessible in an open way, without password protection, and licensed under an open-source license, preferably Apache 2.0 or GPL 3.0. If your submission includes code, all dependencies source code should also be available openly.
Keep in mind these simple principles to make sure your submission is well-formed:
- Accessibility. All submissions must be accessible for the Jury to open and view without a password, so please double-check your submission. If the submission is inaccessible or does not fit the criteria described, jurors have the right to reject the submission.
- Timing. Contestants must submit their work before the closing of the filing of applications. If not submitted on time, the submission will not count.
- Contact information. All submissions must contain the contestant’s contact information, preferably a Telegram username by which jurors can verify that the submission belongs to the individual who submitted it. If not, jurors have the right to reject your submission.
- Content. The content published in the forum and the provided PDF file should not differ, except for formatting. Otherwise, jurors have the right to reject the submission.
- Well-formed links. If your submission has links to the work performed, the content of those links must have the contestant’s contact details, preferably a Telegram username, or backlink to your submission at the FreeTON forum, so jurors can match it and verify to whom the work belongs. If not, jurors have the right to reject your submission.
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Multiple submissions.
- Each contestant has the right to provide several submissions if they contain different approaches to the contest problem’s solving. However, if works are not unique enough or differ just in insignificant details, jurors have the right to reject such repeating submissions.
- If the contestant wants to make an additional submission that overrides the one previously published, he must inform the Jury about this fact and indicate the correct revision to assess. In this case, only the indicated work will count. If the contestant hasn’t indicated the updated submission as the correct one, only the first one will count, the Jury will reject all the others.
Fair play
To enjoy the fruits of success, it is not enough to win. Triumph must be measured by absolute fair means, honesty and just play.
As a contestant, you agree to follow these simple rules to ensure fair play among contestants.
- Respect. Fair play requires unconditional respect for opponents, jurors, governance and community members.
- Friendship. Rivalry in the contest does not exclude friendship. On the contrary, friendship could grow from noble rivalries.
- Solidarity. It is important to support each other and share feelings, aims and dreams. Mutual support brings mutual success on and off the field.
- Tolerance. The willingness to accept behavior or decisions you may not agree with develops your self-control. Ultimately, that could be the deciding factor when it comes to winning or losing.
- Plagiarism-free. Your work should be the product of your own mind and contain at least 90% of the original content. If some part of your work is taken from another source or submission, you must clearly cite the source.
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Public domain.
- The work you submit for the contest enters the public domain immediately after publication, even if it doesn’t win any of the prize places.
- If your work has been made partly or in full by someone else, it is your responsibility to get and publish the proper waivers from this person. If it is discovered that the submission violates the rights of the original author, it gets immediately disqualified.
- Free TON, Analytics & Support Subgovernance, or any of its members shall in no case be liable for any possible claims from the original content owner(s), public authorities, or any other person or body.
Procedural remarks for jurors
Jurors play an extremely important and vital role for the entire Free TON community. You and only you affect the quality and the perception of Free TON, in whole and in parts.
Analytics & Support Subgovernance plays an important role in the ecosystem that requires a deep understanding of the contest subject from your side.
Voting process
As a juror, you agree to follow these simple rules at the moment of judging:
- Technology understanding. Jury members who vote in the contest must have a solid understanding of the technology. Those jurors who don’t should choose “Abstain.”
- Contest participation. Jurors whose team(s), relatives or friends intend to participate in the contest by providing submissions lose their right to vote in the contest and should choose “Abstain” for all works. They shall also clearly and publicly indicate this to other jurors.
- Feedback. To get the best result and achieve the objectives of the competition, jurors must provide valuable feedback using the evaluation criteria specified in the competition. Justify your decision on each application.
- Criteria. The jury should contact the contestant using the contacts specified in the application if the jury has a problem or cannot find the obvious criteria from the contest PDF file in the contestant’s work.
- Quality filter. The Jury will reject duplicate, sub-par, incomplete, or inappropriate submissions.
Submissions assessment
- Quorum.
- Assessing the submissions is considered legitimate if at least 50%+1 of jurors have cast their votes, be it “Accept”, “Reject” or “Abstain”, to the submission with the least number of votes.
For example, if a group consists of 16 jurors, then at least 9 of them must assess the submissions.
- However, if the number of jurors who have voted “Accept” or “Reject” (altogether) will not exceed 3 (three), the contest submissions assessment is not considered legitimate and must be repeated from scratch.
I.e., one poorly voted submission may fail the whole contest and you will need to re-vote again.
- Scale. A juror shall assess a submission on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 is the highest score, 1 is the lowest score) or vote to “abstain” or “reject”.
- The “Abstain” vote means that the juror is not qualified or eligible to assess the submission. Such a vote is not taken into account when a rating score is calculated.
Example. If a submission was assessed by 3 jurors as follows: “10”, “2” and “Abstain”, then the resulting score will be equal to (10 + 2) / 2 = 6.
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A “Reject” vote means that the Submission does not meet at least one of the conditions of the contest and must be disqualified.
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If a juror considers a submission useless, although it formally meets contest requirements, he/she must notify its author and clearly state in feedback a reason for a low rating.
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Average score. The average score of the submission is calculated in accordance with the following formula: Sum(Score) / Sum(NAccept+NReject), where:
- Score - the number of points assigned by a juror when casting the “Accept” vote
- NAccept - the number of “Accept” votes
- NReject - the number of “Reject” votes
This means that “Reject” votes count as a zero score and lowers the average score.
Example. A submission got the following votes: 5 (Accept), 3 (Accept), 4 (Accept), Reject, Reject. It means its average score will be (5 + 3 + 4)/(3 + 2)=2.4.
- Threshold. The submission shall be eligible for participation in contest ranking and competing for prizes only if it meets the following criteria:
- Soft majority acceptance. The total number of “Accept” votes exceeds the total number of “Reject” votes.
For the avoidance of doubts, in the case of an equal number of “Accept” and “Reject” votes, the submission is considered rejected.
- Hard threshold. The average score of the submission is at least 3 points.
These statements can be clarified in relation to a specific contest.
Rewards
Jury rewards
The amount, as a percentage of the prize pool, will be fairly divided among all the jurors who will vote “Accept” and/or” Reject " and provide feedback based on the number and quality of their votes. Both voting and feedback are required to receive this award.