For you poetry slam experts, nerds and aficionados…
What is the fairest method of scoring a poetry slam without using the 0.0-10.0 scoring system that also has the least potential for manipulation?
I’m listening.
Been talking with Tony Brown about it. We got into too much math and my brain is now swiss cheese.
———
Word to the nerd.
This entry was written by , posted on 2 July, 2010 at 10:51 PM, filed under Poetry Slam Events and tagged Performance Poetry and Spoken Word, slam judging, slam scoring. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.
Take no volunteers
First thing is NEVER take anyone who come up to you and volunteers to be a judge.
That is the first path to bias.
Sean Shea
tell everyone to divide their board into one half art merit, one half performance, using 1-5 on each side, using one place decimals.have other-than host do the math.
I’m a fan of the haiku deathmatch head-to-head flag style. The second person in a match-up may have a slight advantage, but it practically eliminates score creep by using a this-or-that dichotomy.
i have been in a few slams that did this & i LOVE it! i think it works best when it is closed scoring, too… it builds the suspense & makes poets go by gut rather than pandering to the audience.
perhaps head-to-head, like a yay or nay. but the problem with that is that then you have two people go, one advances, two people go one advances and so on, and some of the folks that advance may not be anywhere near as good as some of the eliminated.
perhaps groups of four? or like eliminated poets go up against each other and then advance as well. like say have multiple bouts and like 2 or 3 wins puts you at the top for the last round while 1 or 2 wins follow, and then multiple losses excludes you.
i feel that in the normal scoring, it is of super importance for the judges (and audience) to truly understand the purpose of the sac poet. the sac is not there to just “warm up the crowd” or let them “practice.” yes to do those but of more importance is so they have gage–if they like a poem less than the sac’s poem, score it lower, if more than such score it higher. also letting them know that the scores should be working from 0 up to ten not ten up.
I think you are suggesting World Cup format!
Stop worrying about scoring them and instead focus on ranking them? Head-to-head is one example of that — the simplest/easiest one, really — but you could also just get judges to rank their top 5 poets of each round, in order. Assign points (5 for 1st, 4 for 2nd, etc.) and add up and you are done. This requires that the judges be able to keep multiple performances ‘in their head’ for purpose of comparison — and it’s precisely the fact that judges don’t do so that results in score creep — so you’d have to break it down into smaller groupings to make that easier.
Other than more specific criteria (dividing into poem/performance out of 5, as above, is just more specific criteria) for scoring I don’t see how a scoring system can be mathematically tricked into being ‘fairer’ — scoring over time is only as fair as the judges can make it. Poetry slam currently does very little to encourage the judges to be fair, and offers very little help to judges who are interested in being fair. And that seems to be totally by design.
It’s not even clear what fair means, really. The whole idea of slam scoring is giving absolute authority to a totally subjective judgement. What part of someone giving one poem a 10 and another a 2 would be unfair? I mean you are asking them to just kind of decide if a poem is awesome or not, according to them — it’s not obvious to me what sort of totally subjective elements of the experience count as fair and what count as unfair. Score creep? Too much noise in the cafe? Hates the colour yellow? Doesn’t like angry poems? Works at a gas station? Just broke up a crappy relationship recently? Hates cops? Score creep is the only one that seems really clear-cut.
Use a Scoring Rubric
I’ve been thinking about this topic for a while now, but I never have because it would seem like I’m totally overthinking it.(no doubt I am) Since you asked, though…
Rubrics.
As a school teacher, I use rubrics to grade my students’ work fairly across the board and keep my expectations of their performance from skewing my evaluation of their actual work. Even though teachers “don’t have favorites”, it is difficult to assign two dozen students’ term paper grades fairly without awarding pity points for the wallflowers with potential, detracting extra points from the hooligans, and giving an automatic A+ to the smarty-pants kids, even when they probably didn’t do their best work.
Rubrics outline in advance what you have to do to earn X amount of points on an element of the assignment, as well as what fraction of the total each is worth.
The 3-minute rule is, essentially, a rubric item that is very cut and dry. Judges don’t need to take this into consideration when scoring, however.
The few times I have judged a slam, I have had 5 rough categories, each worth up to 2 points. Two of the categories are about the performer/performance. Two categories are about the poem itself. The final category is for “wow factor” points. For each, I awarded 2 points if it was flawless – no room for improvement in that area. 0 was reserved for poems not done at all or done in a way that made them worthless as a poem. 1 was adequate/average. If we pulled a random literate person off the street and had them do a poem, they should be able to get about 1 out of 2 for each category, on average. Slam poets, like Olympic athletes, should generally be able to do better than the average Joe in at least some of these categories, but in trying for perfection in one area, some are bound to totally blow it in other areas.
My categories (descriptions off the top of my head):
1) Verbal Performance – Did they do the whole poem without messing up any lines or words or looking like they were scrounging for the next line? Did they know how to pronounce all of the words they used, and could I understand them? If so – award 2 points. One big or many small goofs would be about 1. Most poets who are prepared will earn 2 (or close to it) in this area.
2) Oration – Did the poet embody the poem? Did the inflection, cadence, and tempo facilitate expression of the poem in a meaningful way? If so, it’s 2 points, if it was just memorized and clearly recited, 1.
3) Poem lyric – Was there a clear, skilled quality to the poem lyric? Was it eloquent, beautiful, or clever? Did it define and accomplish its task, compelling the audience with some idea or emotion? This one is tough to define point-wise, because each poem uses different elements to reach its objective. Basically, can you tell by the way these words were used that they were crafted with intention by a master poet?
4) Poem content – Can the message or theme of the poem be identified? If so, it’s at least a 1. If it was very skillfully assembled, using all those double entendres and cunning tricks that make the audience let out a surprised little moan here and there (you know the noise I’m talking about) – that’s your 2 points.
5) Wow factor – This is where the biggest chunk of opinion and arbitrary point awarding comes in. If you have to pick up your jaw from the floor because you have never been so moved by a 3-minute poem, there’s your 2. If it had some “wow” moments in it that were moving and left you with a favorable impression, that’s a 1. A zero in this category would be the equivalent of standing in a fine art museum saying “Heck, my kid could do that!”
In order to come up with scores quickly as a judge, I generally stuck to giving scores for the first 4 categories in 0.5 increments (0.5, 1, 1.5,or 2) and then went with a more nuanced decimal score (0.8, 1.1, etc) for the Wow factor. This seems a little unfair, but the design of slam judging is for instantaneous reaction, which is what that last category is all about. There is no instant replay so judges can go back and count the number of syllables in the 18th line or the number of seconds the poet paused before recalling how a verse began.
May not work for everyone, but it worked for me.
-Christopher
Agreed!
Re: Take no volunteers
It’s funny, as much sense as that makes, I had never considered that notion. Thanks, Sean.
I have seen it work and not work in all the right and wrong venues. To be clearer, I am trying to avoid numbers. Thanks though!
As am I. Put it never elicits the same reaction from the audience as a 9.9 or a 10.0… I’m looking for that new thing. But this is a fun alternative, and a bit fairer to the performance, IMO.
Whoa.
I just wanted a system I may have never heard of and one that offers up the least possibility of being compromised by judges or poets. I’m not saying there IS one, I’m just querying folks.
“Stop worrying about scoring them and instead focus on ranking them?”
I thought that’s what I was posting. I want “a poetry slam without using the 0.0-10.0 scoring system.” I should have been clearer and pointed out that I couldn’t care less about scores. Period. I just want a selection process that picks the performing poet that a majority of the audience wanted to win. I am tired of a five judge system based around a maximum of 10. I’ve heard of a slam that got rid of the decimal point allowing judges to score from 0 to 100. Even though it’s the same system, judges immediately dropped average scores from 8.5 to 65, thus creating a truer median. I like that, but it’s not far enough away from the same-old-same-old.
“It’s not even clear what fair means, really. The whole idea of slam scoring is giving absolute authority to a totally subjective judgement.”
Hence, why I asked the question in the first place.
Re: Take no volunteers
I’m a big fan of grifters. So much that I’m a little pissed that Grifter isn’t in this spelling dictionary. I challenge anyone who really wants to put some thought into this, just watch a few seasons of Hu$tle, Leverage, read the Fletch books, see both Sting movies, and finish it off with Mamet’s House of Games and The Heist.
Then sit down and think of the slam as a million dollar prize that you have the backing to crack.
How would you do it?
That’s where a couple of attractive actors volunteering to be judges seems to be a cheap first option.
And if it’s a slam that only has three judges or doesn’t throw out the top and bottom scores…..you pretty much already HAVE a rigged slam by accident some nights, and the grifter only has to buy one actor.
I have personally witnessed the significant others of competing poets go up and volunteer to judge without any idea of its implications.
Everyone gets a few beads or chips or something when they come in. They vote for their favorite.
I love this idea. However, like a ballot system or something similar, people might give all their beads and then see someone they really like after they’re out of beads. The solution to that is to wait until the end of the show but then we’ve got a half-hour voting session that takes place and then counting of beads. I think the solution lies with something like this, though.
Megan, this isn’t Mardi Gras. Quit trying to show everyone your tits.
Choose the worst poet, either by judges voting or audience applause. Drop that poet, repeat.
Sorry, I came across way more aggressive than intended, there.
I thought that too.
i like this idea as something for slams to play with. i’m all for any slam to try different things, adn this one would be interesting.
It’s binary.. but…. judges with flags. (like red & white in hdh haiku matches) 2 out of 3 judges, or 3 out of 5.
Options:
1. They choose one person vs. another (head to head style)
2. They choose the person yes or no
3. Combining with the beads idea and then skonen’s modification on that, you could have it where at they end of the round, each judge is allowed only a certain number of yes’s, and they raise their flag for each yes.
Or instead of 3 or 5 judges, you could do it improv theatre sports style: Everyone in the audience has 2 coloured cards as their 2 flags, and they hold up their preferred colour.
how about a combination of single-elimination, seeded, head to head in the first round with a multiple-elimination “group” stage finished off by a single or multi-round head to head “finals” to pick the ultimate winner of the evening.
I thought about suggesting this but I think it would be vulnerable to the same problems that produce score creep — mostly that it is hard for one person to hold 8-12+ performances in mind and then compare them all simultaneously. I like the idea of distributing judging to the entire audience — just increasing the audience sample size (# of judges) would already help correct for individual judging bias.
I was at a slam once at Miami University, the one in Ohio, where the judges came up and pinned a dollar on the poet they felt won a head-to-head competition. I’ve also seen a variant where they put names in a bucket written on little slips of paper after each round.
Cage fights.
Judge not lest ye be judged
One tip, not so much on scoring but about slams in general, that seems very obvious to me, but I’ve seen some slams not really pay attention to it:
Make the judges either anonymous or place them in completely different parts of the room!
The last slam I went too had a panel of judges all sitting right next to each other. Some poets performed to the audience as they normally would, but the ones that performed to the judges got better scores. Plus, the judges are able to confer with each other, which just isn’t right!
Of course, you know this already. I was just shocked to see it done. Especially since the winner of that slam was a huge surprise to everyone [including the winner].
Bryce
There is no fair way–scoring poems is one of Marc Smith’s jokes.
Give the judges a list of the performing poets. Let them rank the poets using whatever system they’d like to evaluate the poetry. Ask for a top 5 list after each round. Then count the places for each poet. In this case, the lowest score wins. I think most people that judge on a regular basis would agree that it’s important to leave room in your scoring to allow for poets late in the round to score both higher and lower than the poets early in the round. This system would make that much simpler. And, you wouldn’t have to think at all about those poets that you do not think ought to move on to the next round. As for logistics, you could use a binder, booklet, or clipboard with six pockets: ranks 1 through 5, then 1 pocket for 6+.
have the judges draw pictures and have the audience interpret them. We did that at the last sc slam and it was awesome!