2012-13 contest rules

Contents of this page #

• Introduction
• What are the goals of the contests?
• Who can participate?
• What does an entry in the contest contain?
• How can I enter the contest?
• How do teams work?
• What is the contest's schedule?
• How will proposals be judged?
• What are the prizes?
• How will the results of the contest have an impact in the world?
• Voting Rules

Introduction #

This page describes the rules for the 2012 and 2013 Climate CoLab contests. Please read these rules in full. You will be required to accept them when you enter a contest.

The rules may be supplemented or revised by posting supplements or revisions to this page and by email notification to members of teams entered in contests.

In Climate CoLab contests, people from all over the world are invited to work together in developing proposals for what humanity should do about global climate change.

What are the goals of the contest? #

The primary goals of the Climate CoLab contests are to:

• Harness the collective intelligence of large numbers of people around the world to create proposals for what humanity should do about global climate change. By helping scientists, policy makers, business people, and concerned citizens to think constructively together about this problem, we believe it may be possible to create better solutions than would have been developed otherwise.
• Help to educate the general public about the real issues involved in global climate change. By giving large numbers of people an opportunity to work together themselves on proposals to address climate change, based on the best current scientific knowledge, we believe they will come to understand the issues better and be better able to participate in political decision-making in their countries and communities.
• Provide a large-scale test of new collective intelligence approaches. Examples like Wikipedia and Linux show that it's now possible for large groups of people to work together on very complex problems in ways that would have been impossible even a decade ago. We believe the new approach to collaborative problem solving being used here may be useful for other large-scale problems in the future.

The goals of this contest are not to advocate any particular position or point of view about global climate change. Instead, we hope to provide a neutral forum where the best ideas and information can be shared.

Who can participate? #

The contest is open to anyone in the world, regardless of age, nationality, or political viewpoint.

This contest, however, is void where prohibited by law. It is your responsibility to check with your local laws to make sure that this contest does not violate any applicable law or ordinance, and to make sure that you are eligible to participate.

If you are under 18 years old, you will need your parent or legal guardian to register on the Climate CoLab website and submit your entry for you.

You may submit projects that you have previously published or exhibited so long as they conform to the entry guidelines and the rules of this contest.

What does an entry in the contest contain? #

Contest entries consist of proposals that are created and submitted online in the Climate CoLab https://www.climatecolab.org.

The focus of each contest is described in the materials accompanying it, and a complete entry includes all the elements of the proposal template for a contest.

It is okay to submit an idea to more than one contest, though it is recommended that proposal authors tailor their submissions to address the specific issues of greatest interest in each individual contest.

How can I enter the contest? #

To enter, go to the main page of the contest and click on the Create proposal button.

After filling out the fields of the proposal template, you must save the proposal. When you save the proposal for the first time, a pop up will ask if you accept the Contest Rules and Terms of use. To save the proposal and enter the contest, click on the Accept button.

By saving and submitting a Proposal, you are agreeing to these Rules and the Terms of Use.

If you created your Proposal with other individuals, all of the co-authors must sign up with the Climate CoLab website. All co-authors must be listed as members of your team, and all co-authors must understand and agree to the Terms of use and these Rules.

The individual who initiates a proposal will be listed as the owner of that proposal and will receive all official communications about the 2012 Contest. Team members can decide among themselves who will receive any prizes that may be designated for their team should they win the contest. In cases where team members cannot agree among themselves, any prizes will be allocated to the Owner of the proposal.

As set forth in the Terms of use, all Proposals will be made available to third parties under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

If you do not list any Co-Authors of the work, you are representing that you are the sole author. If you do list Co-Authors of the work, you represent that you are not violating any Co-Author's rights by entering the work, and that any Co-Authors have given you permission to submit the work.

How do teams work? #

Individuals may create proposals by themselves, but participants are encouraged to form teams. For instance, a team might include different people with expertise in quantitative modeling, political analysis, writing, and artistic creation.

Anyone who wants to join the team creating a specific proposal can request to join that team. Then the current team members decide whether they want that person to join.

If they wish, a team can restrict the right to edit its proposal to team members only. Alternatively, a team may also let anyone who is interested edit its proposals. If anyone can edit, teams can get input from lots of people without the overhead of requiring everyone to join the team. Team members can easily undo any changes they don't like.

What is the contest's schedule? #

The contest will have several stages. All phases will conclude at 11:59 PM Eastern time on the specified end date.

• Proposal creation (August 2012-June 15, 2013) In this phase, teams are invited to create proposals.
• Judging (June, 2013) Expert judges will review the completed proposals and select some as semi-finalists. For more on the judging criteria, see How will proposals be judged, below.
• Improvement of semi-finalists (July, 2013) Teams selected to participate in the semi-finals will be invited to improve their proposals.
• Voting and final judging (August, 2013) The judges will review the semi-finalists and select finalists. All registered users of the CoLab will then be invited to vote for the finalist proposal they prefer. The judges will also select the proposals they believe are best.

How will proposals be judged? #

Judges will be asked to evaluate proposals on the following criteria:

• Feasibility of the actions proposed in the proposal. Judges with different kinds of expertise will evaluate the technical, economic, social, and political feasibility of the proposals.
• Novelty of the proposal's ideas. Innovative thinking and originality in a proposal will be valued more than encyclopedic knowledge. In addition, instead of selecting a roster of finalists that are very similar, judges will try to select a group of proposals that represent a diverse range of approaches.
• Likely impact on climate change (for example, for mitigation actions, the amount of greenhouse gas emission reductions or for adaptation actions, the extent to which the actions counteract the effects of climate change) and desirability of other impacts (e.g. economic, social, lifestyle)
• Presentation quality. Proposals that are well-presented will be favored over those that aren't. Presentation quality includes how well written a proposal is, how well it uses graphics or other visual elements, and how compelling are its artistic representations of possible future worlds (if any).

Judging criteria may be elaborated in more detail in the future.

There are no explicit weightings for these criteria, but judges will be asked to use all of them to select proposals that are most likely to lead to useful outcomes of the contest overall. As a tie- breaker, judges may also use the popularity of a proposal, as indicated by the number of people who support it. For example, in cases where a number of proposals are similar, judges will try to pick one or two proposals to represent the whole group. In selecting these representative proposals, judges will take into account the quality of the proposal presentations and the number of people who support the proposals. To increase the diversity of ideas considered, judges may accept slightly lower levels of feasibility for proposals that include highly novel and interesting ideas.

In selecting proposals to move on to the voting round, judges will also be explicitly asked not to choose proposals based on their own personal preferences. In other words, judges are asked to use their expertise to judge the feasibility, novelty, and presentation quality of proposals, but not based on their perspective on what is desirable. For example, a judge should not reject a proposal that is technically, economically, and politically feasible, just because the judge feels that the proposal would lead to socially undesirable consequences.

In the final round, the judges will be asked to select the proposals they believe are most desirable. Thus, judgments of desirability are made only in the final stage of the contest, by the Climate CoLab community through popular vote and by the judges through their selection of the Judges' Choice winners.

What are the prizes? #

At least one Popular Choice and one Judges' Choice winner will be named in each contest, and if the quality of entries warrants, additional winners may be named.

The Popular Choice and Judges' Choice winners will be invited to present at an MIT event in 2013.

Winners who can travel to MIT will be able to present in person, and those who cannot travel can present virtually.

Members of the media, policy makers, business executives, investors, and NGO officials will be invited to the event and asked to provide to provide feedback on how the winning ideas can move toward implementation.

The winners invited to present at the MIT event will be eligible for a $10,000 Grand Prize, which will be selected by a panel of judges. Additional prize amounts and other awards may be announced before September.

Monetary prize recipients will be encouraged to use their prize money to advance the ideas in their winning proposals or to donate them to others who will do so.

Contest-specific prizes may also be awarded. In such cases, these prizes will be described on the Resource page for the contest.

How will the results of the contest have an impact in the world? #

In prior contests, the winning teams gave briefings about their proposals to policy makers at the United Nations in New York and the U.S. Congress in Washington, DC.

For this contest, the Climate CoLab staff will invite policy makers, business executives and investors, and representatives of NGOs to the MIT event where the winning teams will present their work.

In addition, for some contests, Advisors and Fellows will arrange briefings with relevant stakeholders. Information on topic-specific briefings will be included in the resource materials accompanying the relevant contests.

Voting Rules #

Voting starts on Thursday August 1, 2013 at 12:00:00 PM EDT, and completes on Saturday August 31, 2013 at 11:59:59 PM EDT. Votes will only be counted if cast within that time period.

Anyone (age 18+) can vote by registering on the Climate CoLab website and clicking "Vote for plan" on the proposal page. As always, registration is free. (If you are under 18 years old, you will need your parent or legal guardian to register on the Climate CoLab website and submit your vote for you.)

You can vote for one (1) proposal per contest, and can change your vote as many times as you wish before the voting period ends.

The number of people "supporting" a proposal in previous contest phases will not automatically be added to votes. People who have previously "supported" a proposal will also need to select "Vote for proposal" in order have their choice counted.

The one proposal with the highest number of votes in each contest will be granted the Popular Choice Award.

To prevent abuse, we require a valid email address in order to count your vote. Any votes made by accounts with invalid email addresses will be removed.

If the Climate Colab staff notices evidence of cheating (e.g. use of bots, third party voting services or payment for votes), they have the discretion to disqualify the entrant and cancel all votes received. If necessary, the Climate CoLab will determine the winning proposal in that contest based on non-suspect votes.