In that case I would not compete again. I am definitely not a beginner, but also I am definitely not worth the "Advanced" section. You are seeing black and white in two categories, while I believe myself to be a mid-grey. In that case, in my humble opinion, joining Intermediate to Advanced section will push away those modelers who are more capable than beginners, but do not have the experience/skills/courage to face up Advanced. Just looking through Advanced category I sometimes think "Wow, will I ever going to be able to do that?".

I also firmly believe that having a Beginner/Intermediate section is unfair to real beginners, as this time the mid-level people dominate this area, scaring away the beginners.

Maybe we could have a system where the jury determines the class of the models (too much workload on the jury?) or maybe we can have another section just for intermediate (too much load on the sponsor?), I don't know. It is a fact that more and more people are complaining -rightfully- that we are being unfair to beginners.

I just wanted to share my opinions from a different perspective, I hope it is OK by everyone.

I was one of the people who requested that there was more than one category to enter, I feel the powers that be have done the best they can with what they have available to them at this time and I am also sure they would love to have limitless offerings to have a multitude of classes for us to enter but that’s life. Perhaps if the number of people who entered and the number that voted were higher more manufacturers would be willing to sponsor this or create categories of their own.

I'm not sure if this has been suggested before but here goes..... Maybe it would be more fair to all by having three seperate classes. ie begginer, intermediate and advance with only one prize per catagory. It may help to eliminate any confusion as to which catagory an individual may have in entering their model. I for one suffer from this. I feel like I am definately not a begginer but I also am not advanced. If this approach or something like it cannot be adopted then I would have to agree that the intermediate and advanced catagory should probably be combined. The only other solution I can think of would be for the individual voter to decide if a particular entry has been mis-entered and simply ignore that entry when placing the vote.

Voted. As others have said, hard to tell the difference between the Beginners and the Advanced. Speaks well to the abundance of talent out there these days.


Mike

Well perhaps I am over simplifiying the solution here, but what if it was (as some have suggested)...

1. Intermediate/Advanced
2. Junior/Beginner

I think this would address the major issues brought up here as most of the entries we are talking about would be competing in the tier 1 category and the tier 2 category would attract more true beginners or people coming back into the hobby.

Cheers,
Jim

Voted as well, some nice looking models again this month.

Votes set

hard decisions to make

too bad theres only one vote available ^^

good work everyone

Greetings Alex

10 days left for the voting!

7 days remaining for the voting period.

5 days left for voting.

votes are cast today.
It's being harder and harder to vote for only one.

4 days left to vote.

Voted--all models looked great!

3 days left for voting

1 day left on the voting, last chance to get your votes in!

I like Jim's suggestion very much, simple yet effective:




....and @ Emre, I've looked at you photos in your member gallery and I think you're underestimating yourself. You have more talent than you may think and your models are excellent, They are definitely worthy of entry into the advanced group in my opinion.



Bob

Bob,

Some changes have been made to the rules for the October contest, please see the thread titled "October Rules Change" that's stickied at the top of the forum.

Voting has now ended for the September DMoM. Results will be announced later today.