Finalists: Student Voting vs. Industry Professional Judging

[Kevin Thorp]

There's been some debate about student voting. Let's take a poll!

[Alex Golec]

As the question is currently phrased, I would prefer that the award be judged by industry professionals because they would have an eye for technical details that many of us may not notice (use of cable harness, adaptive parts, etc.)

However, that is not to say that this is the only answer. A few weeks ago I spotted an article on digg (tragically, I cannot find it right now) that computed an "overall" top-100 list of movies. It combined the data from IMDb (fan-based voting) and rottentomatoes (critic-based voting) to create a master list.

Perhaps a system such as this could be used - 50% students, 50% professionals. Perhaps the voting could be done like it is in the oscars, where only people with expertise vote for technical awards such as sound or costume design. Maybe each team could get one vote (hopefully decided by the student(s) who know Inventor) to contribute to the final decision.

These are but few of many possible solutions.

[rohit]

I like the 50-50 idea. I think that would work much better

[fireball3004]

How about 1 vote per team (because I feel that an entire team is likely to vote more for quality and teams that were mentors than popularity) acounts for 50%, and perfessionals count for 50%

[bduddy]

What's wrong with both? Reality TV does it, so why shouldn't FIRST?

...

...OK, bad reason. But saying that high school student voting automatically degrades into a "popularity contest" is somewhat demeaning. Sure, it can happen sometimes, but I think that for something like this, students (or anyone) should be able to separate quality from the team behind the design. Besides, I like to think that FIRSTers are better...

...just kidding...