Overview
The Madness! Poetry tournament pits 64 writers (known as "authletes") against each other over 6 rounds of head-to-head poetry matches. In each round, the two authletes in each match are prompted with a shared word, and must write a poem using that word in ~36 hours. Poems are then published and voted upon by other authletes, student groups, and community members, and the authlete whose poem earns the most votes in each pair moves on to the next round. The last authlete standing wins!
Contents
1. Authlete Instructions
2. Voter Guidelines
3. Scoring Rules
Authlete Instructions
Voter Guidelines
Scoring Rules
- There are three different voting categories: Authlete, Student, and Community.
- The Authlete Vote is worth 40% of the Total Score.
- The Student Vote is worth 40% of the Total Score. Each Student vote is based on the number of students in the group (some have as many as 36 kids in a group, others are small after school groups or homeschool groups) registered by a Group Leader.
- The minimum vote threshold needed to give the Student vote its normal category weight of 40% is 100 total Student votes.
- If the total number of Student votes in a match is >=100, then no weight adjustment is made; the Student vote will still be worth 40% of the overall vote.
- If the total number of Student votes in a match is <100, then the Student vote weight will be adjusted proportionately to the gap between the actual and minimum sample size. (For the math-inclined, it will take the total number of Student votes divided by 100, and then multiply that by 40% to get the new Student vote weight, and then gross up all three category weights by the inverse of that factor to keep the total score on a 100% scale.)
- The minimum vote threshold needed to give the Student vote its normal category weight of 40% is 100 total Student votes.
- The Community Vote is worth 20% of the Total Score.
- These three scores are combined into one Total Score, which can range from 0-100%.
- The poem with the highest Total Score wins the match.
- Tiebreaker Rules: In the event of a perfect tie in the Total Score, the matchup winner is determined as follows:
- Highest Student Vote wins the matchup.
- If still tied, then highest Authlete Vote wins the matchup.
- If still tied, then a 1-hour overtime period is opened. Winner is determined according to the above rules at the end of the overtime period. Additional overtime periods will be added until a winner is determined.
- Highest Student Vote wins the matchup.
- Late Poem Penalty: Any authlete who misses the deadline for submitting a poem incurs an escalating penalty for each hour their poem is late. The penalty after one hour is a 2% reduction in votes in all three voting categories; after two hours, the penalty doubles to 4%; after three hours, it becomes 8%; after four hours, 16%; after five hours, 32%; after six hours, 64%. After that point, the match is effectively forfeited.
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