You raise a lot of good points.
I'm not in favour.
I've seen some fairly rude and dismissive criticism of some of the comics here and I don't think it would be helpful for creators to be exposed to that. Some are thick-skinned enough to brush it off, obviously, but there are a lot of sensitive people making comics and I do think some creators could be hurt.
Well, it has been mentioned that people would have the choice on whether or not they'd like to see them, so you wouldn't *have* to. :/ I personally think it's okay to be honest and blunt, but I hope that if there have been rude judges that they've been discouraged from using offensive language.
Secondly, the nice thing about the confidential nature of the categories is that judges are free to be very honest about the comics they're judging. If they felt their comments were going to be open to scrutiny at a later stage, they may be tempted to say less and simply opt for a ranking.
This I can't really argue with, but I think maybe some might already feel like that with the moderators watching, haha.
Thirdly, I believe there's also a risk that this could reduce the number of people volunteering in the future. Why judge a category if there's a possibility that your comments could be held against you (and/or your own comic!) at a later stage?
I don't know. Though it might be hard, I think this could be moderated to an extent. I think that people should at least be able to see what was said in the categories they were nominated for.
Finally, there have always been categories in which the final result is disputed. That's fine - decisions of this nature are largely subjective after all. In my experience, however, the more people there are who have access to the reasoning behind the decisions, the more people there are who will argue that the decision was flawed/biased/unfair.
Well, with anything, people will argue. Even this year, people wanted judging to be randomly assigned. People might also argue when they see that some judges (like me) have judged a certain category two years in a row. I think anyone who seriously argues a decision that's been made a year ago is being immature. >_>
I can understand why some of the creators here do want to see the discussions surrounding their own comics. On a personal level, I must admit I'm just as interested in what people have said about Shades. But, for all the reasons given above, I do think that opening up the discussions would be a very bad thing for the awards. I do hope you don't decide to go down this route. There's a reason why the jury's deliberations are always kept secret for the Oscars!
Haha, I don't think we're on the same caliber as the Oscars xD.
A lot of us are working on really long, on-going projects and it would be nice to know the good, bad, and ugly of what we're doing so we can make improvements and quit using some of the elements that are making our works fail to reach its potential. I understand why one would want to keep the forums closed, but I think it would be nice to have a little transparency in what we do here.
If people have a record of being overly-malicious in their judging style, I say good, let everyone see that it's them. Maybe next time they'll be more courteous and less juvenile in the way they present their opinions. Through judging here, I've read some comics that I really didn't enjoy, but there are many ways to express that other than "I hated it!". I'm not advocating a witch-hunt, I'm just saying that rude people should not be involved anyway. D:
I *hope* people are mature enough here to know what they can and can't take in terms of criticism, and I *hope* that maturity will aid them in deciding whether or not they'd like to see the decisions made in the category they were nominated for. But I won't lie; I advocate for this for heavily selfish reasons xD. I've been dyin' to know for a long while, haha.
