Re: STC Letter to the Editor
Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>, who is no longer an STC member, nevertheless says, in effect, that the various chapter publications competitions are fixed:
I'm sure that I can be accused of all sorts of things. However, before you do so, would you please do me the courtesy of responding to what I actually say, rather than to some imagined version of what I said?
In the first place, I was not talking about STC competitions in particular, but writing awards of all kinds.
In the second place, there is a world of difference between saying that blind judging is difficult and saying that judges are consciously corrupt.
Besides, if I were making an accusation of corruption, then I would have to include myself, since, as I mentioned, I've been a judge on a couple of award committees (not with the STC).
All I'm saying is that they're human.
Judges are certainly aware of which company provided an entry; the company names are on the covers. However, it is rarely known who created an entry. I'm as well connected as anyone: I've been in the business for over 25 years, I'm an officer in the Boston chapter, and I've been judging for ten years or more. Yet only twice have I known the creators of an entry.
Come on now. If you know the company, the chances are you have some idea of who works there. Not always, but some of the time.
Also, while perhaps I am unusually conscious of style, but I find that I have a high degree of reliability in matching people's verbal habits with their written work. Often, people write and talk very differently, but enough similarities remain for me to detect. When I was a university instructor, I regularly had marking lots of over 120 papers. Even though I had students submit them in such a way that I could mark them blind, after the first paper, I almost always knew whose work I was marking.
We (I) train judges not to let personal biases influence their judgments;
I suspect that what you mean is that you urge judges to be objective. However, from my own experiences judging awards, there's a constant temptation to make decisions on such criteria as who has won before or who deserves a break.
Obviously, a conscientious judge tries to resist that sort of decision-making. But it strikes me as disingenuous to pretend that it doesn't happen, if only as a way of breaking a tie.
That's why I no longer act as a judge for any sort of award. I like to think that I'd be fair, but I'm too uncomfortably aware of unconscious biases to be sure. And from what I've heard from other judges (and let me stress again that I am not just talking about STC awards, or even primarily), I have no confidence whatsoever that the average person is any more above temptation than I am. If anything, most people are even more susceptible than I am.
But I can assure everyone that the competitions--in Boston/NNE at>least--are unbiased and meaningful.
I have no doubt that you and everyone else who organizes the awards that your group gives out tries to make them so. In fact, I'm sure that many of your judges try hard to do their job. However, please excuse me if I say (how shall I put it?) that your statement shows far more optimism about human nature than my experience justifies.
--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177
http://members.axion.net/~bbyfield
"I can see lights in the distance
Trembling in the dark cloak of night
Candles and lanterns are dancing, dancing
A waltz on All Souls Night. "
- Loreena McKennitt, "All Souls Night"
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Re: STC Letter to the Editor: From: SteveFJong
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