The elements vote:

1. You don't have to vote on every element set.
2. Think before you vote! Do not give votes based on how you like the words (they're all pretty) but think first for some minutes whether the set's elements all fulfill the "good element" specification.

EDIT:

Tesseract, you are correct. But the contest will not be delayed. Everything is set in place. Here's the timeline:

October 21st End of Element Set Voting
October 21st-October 26th Element Set Voting Results Analysis, Site Preparation
- The website will give me average votes for all element sets. Using my "best knowledge and skills" and the suggestions you send me over PM, I will choose 1 element set of the best scored. I will create the Elements page on my computer along with specifications for each elements and the first part of UFEC's story.
October 30th I will press the button "Upload" and post message in here to say that the contest started.
October 31st, November 1st - 30th I will answer all questions like "Does this qualify as sufficient presence" and I will hear all the comments how bad the element set is :D. The submission system should be ready November 1st. Or even before the contest starts.
March, about 17th, the contest period ends. All entries have to be submitted by this date.
April, about 17th, the judging period ends. The contest site will display all feedback and results. Sponsors will be given emails of winners.

Quote: Original post by Lesan
Of course we can separate contestant-judges and dedicated-judges. Then we will have two different ratings. But, who decides who can become a dedicated-judge? Me as the Organiser? Or some kind of non-subjective fact, like the number of post or something like that? We would have lots of trouble getting the good judges since we have nothing to offer them.

Well, the first way to dissuade wannabe judges is effort on their part - each judge would be committing at a minimum to play each game extensively, and providing a several paragraph written review per entry.

Re the general community voting (i.e. non-contestants), I am very opposed to the idea that they not be separated out into a 'community choice' category, just because GameDev's 10,000+ forum lurkers could seriously skew any vote.

For non-contestants or judges I think the only voting choice should be a radio-button 1-10, rating the game. Comments on the games can be left in a thread here on Gamedev, as most people seem to usually start a thread about their game.

Contest judging should preferably be done by a few number of judges.

Quote: This contest is mainly about getting feedback and working with a community on the same goal. If there are prizes, they will not have so great a value to need qualified judges.

As I wrote before this makes it perhaps even more relevant with qualified judges, as their review is the only real prize.

If no such judges can be found, then of course there's nothing to discuss, but an attempt should be made, at least by making a post with a request for interested people. It's not that hard to see from previous history whether a person is somewhat qualified, and if someone is willing to put the time necessary into doing it, they will most probably try to do it well too. It's not like we will have people trying to convince us they are serious just to mess things up.
If a contestant is a judge then another contestant or the organizer could judge his particular entry to his best ability.

Here some element sets I would like to see:

perpetual motion - rodents - meteor - city
maze - physics - winter - panic
forest - rain - accident - balance

It is somewhat unclear what the website for the contest will be. After scrolling for about 5 minutes through this topic I found out this:

http://ufec.zymichost.com/

Is the website we use.
However there is also another website mentioned in this topic.

Perhaps it still would be a good idea to start a new topic with all relevant info (such as website) in the topic start?

Ok. I'll do that.

Quote: Original post by Lesan
Ok. I'll do that.

Great, however, if we keep using this topic, that other topic will dissappear soon because it is to old and never used. I think it would be a better idea to move the discussion to the new topic, or ask a moderator whether they can merge the two (not sure whether moderators here have such possibilities).

It could be stickied by a moderator.

It has this advantage: Whenever I make a change, I will add a post and all will know immediatelly that something's changed.

Yes, if a mod can sticky that topic it would work well indeed.

I think all of the elements should be related to each other. That's what made them great in the past, in my opinion. The original elements were natural elements (earth, wind, fire, and water). It was easy to incorporate them into one game because they worked well with each other. When Four Elements IV came around, the elements were changed. They were still related though (they could all be represented by humanoids), and that's what made working with those elements easy enough that creativity wasn't too limited, yet still challenging enough to be fun. A lot of the elements I've seen listed for the unofficial contest aren't related at all. Individually a lot of them are great, but I think the element sets could be improved if each of the elements in a set were in the same category.

I think 4EVI wasn't that great because the elements broke away from the tradition of being pulled out of one category. Ponies, accountants, crystals, and explosions are too totally unrelated to work well together without some serious planning. 4EVII stayed with the tradition of having its elements share a common trait (they all started with the letter E), but I think having the elements relate to each other by their spelling wasn't the greatest idea. The contest was still ok though.