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ZooChat Cup Group C: Plzen vs Singapore

Discussion in 'ZooChat Cup' started by CGSwans, 20 Sep 2019.

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Plzen vs Singapore

Poll closed 21 Sep 2019.
  1. Plzen 3-0 Singapore

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Plzen 2-1 Singapore

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  3. Singapore 2-1 Plzen

    100.0%
  4. Singapore 3-0 Plzen

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  1. CGSwans

    CGSwans Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    The topic? Carnivores. Remember that Singapore encompasses the Zoo, Night Safari and River Safari for Cup purposes.

    The rules:
    • You have three votes to award. If you think it's a tight match, award 2 votes to the stronger zoo and 1 to the weaker one. But if you think it's a wider margin than that, award all 3 votes to the winner.
    • Your criteria for how you make your decision is entirely up to you, *except* that you must stay only within the given category. That includes ignoring the results of the other match: no strategic voting.
    • All votes are public, and all votes can be changed. The purpose of the game is to provoke debate, so make your case for why people should vote the same way as you do. Be open to reconsidering your vote.
     
  2. lintworm

    lintworm Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Both zoos have large collections, with quite some rarities, in some good and several not so good to atrocious enclosures. I am going with Singapore for now, basically because it can offer the more memorable experiences. Seeing Leopard at night, hearing Spotted hyena calling at night and seeing their Giant otters from the underwater tunnel are all unique experiences. I cannot think of anything similar that Plzen can offer and the first thing Plzen reminds me of are stereotypic Slender mongooses and Vontsira.
     
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  3. amur leopard

    amur leopard Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    I am going for 2-1 Singapore, but I might change to 3-0 because I really don't think Plzen has anything to offer that Singapore doesn't, whereas Singapore combines world-class exhibitry and a fantastic collection.
     
  4. lintworm

    lintworm Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    I am struggling with thinking of a Singapore carnivore enclosure that is world class... World bottom for worst new Jaguar enclosure is something they should easily win though...
     
  5. CGSwans

    CGSwans Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Nothing world class, no, but Plzen’s only exhibit in that category is the brown bear enclosure. Overall I’d give Singapore the edge on exhibitry.
     
  6. amur leopard

    amur leopard Well-Known Member 5+ year member

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    White tigers..
     
  7. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    I really like Singapore for this round, but I'm going to need someone to go through the Plzen carnivores for me to compare.

    For Singapore, the Night Safari has excellent outdoor enclosures for their small carnivores, which include Hog Badgers and various civets. The enclosures are large, and the animals really are better off in outdoor enclosures being viewed at night rather than in fully-indoors nocturnal exhibits. Unfortunately the enclosures for large carnivores are generally small. I think the species are fairly standard zoo carnivores (Striped and Spotted Hyaenas, Sloth Bear, etc)

    The River Safari has a great Giant Panda house (although with what appears to be a very small Red Panda enclosure), a Giant Otter enclosure with a very deep pool with underwater viewing (but a rather average-sized land area), and poor enclosures on the boat ride for Maned Wolves and Jaguar. I think the Jaguarundi are gone now.

    It's been quite a while since I've been to the zoo, and for carnivores I mostly remember the small White Tiger enclosure.

    Singapore's enclosures are a real mix of very good for smaller species, and poor (at best, average) for large species; but overall I think I'll be voting in favour of Singapore.
     
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  8. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Are you saying that the White Tiger enclosure at Singapore is world-class??
     
  9. CGSwans

    CGSwans Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    It could be the best enclosure structure in the world for tigers and it still wouldn’t be a world-class tiger exhibit, because it has white tigers.
     
  10. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    But it could still be a world-class White Tiger exhibit. (It isn't though; I believe I may have even described it as "tiny" at one point).

    Edit: I found what I wrote in my review many years ago: "the white tiger island is a joke".
     
    Last edited: 20 Sep 2019
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  11. lintworm

    lintworm Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    Now I am thinking of it, the Fossa enclosure (formerly Puma) is probably by far th best I have seen for that species.

    Plzen has a great wooded valley for Brown bears. Enclosures for Cheetah (Northern subspecies), Wolf, Canadian lynx and bobcat are also pretty good as are some of the mongoose enclosures. A hillside enclosure for Snow leopards is pretty, but could be bigger. Black-backed jackal, Bat-eared fox, Lion and others have standard enclosures. But Binturong, Slender mongoose (though that will change soon), Malagasy carnivores, Palawan leopard and Haussa genet have tiny housing, completely indoors....
     
  12. Chlidonias

    Chlidonias Moderator Staff Member 15+ year member

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    Sounds like in general large carnivores have relatively better enclosures at Plzen, but small carnivores have better enclosures in Singapore?
     
  13. lintworm

    lintworm Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    That sounds about right to me.
     
  14. ThylacineAlive

    ThylacineAlive Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Why was voting only open for a day for this round of matches? That's way too short of a time for proper discussion and contemplation.

    ~Thylo
     
  15. CGSwans

    CGSwans Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    That’s a bit of a quirk from my attempts to fairly accommodate a range of time zones (including my own).

    Matches are timed to be roughly 48 hours in duration, and to have a mix finishing in peak online time in either London or Chicago (as a rough midpoint between the US time zones). They also need to work for me and the hours I keep. I can’t promise to always be online at the exact right time, hence the durations fluctuate just a little. In this case it was 45 hours.

    In this case in New York you would have had Thursday evening, all of Friday and the first half of Saturday to mull over your choice - I acknowledge that’s a more constrained period than normal, but I also track engagement fairly closely and when I’ve allowed a third day pretty much nothing happens (little happens on the second day, to be frank). I’d absolutely *love* to see more people advocating for their choices and trying to convince others, but I can’t force it to happen and the game will lose momentum if I leave matches open for days in the hope that it will.

    Happy to hear people’s input: if I go up to a third day again, will people actually use it?
     
  16. ThylacineAlive

    ThylacineAlive Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    Well I can only speak for myself and my schedule but it's not uncommon for me to be offline for roughly 48 hours at a time. I'm sure you've taken note of the levels of engagement a lot more than I have but to me it seems the actual discussion for the these two matches were significantly shorter than in the past when people had more time. Here only three people were able to participate and most of the discussion was "I know more about one side than the other so I'm voting this way for now but I want to hear other arguments".

    EDIT: And just out of curiosity (from a logistical standpoint), why do you need to be online when they close?

    ~Thylo
     
  17. CGSwans

    CGSwans Well-Known Member 15+ year member

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    I don’t, I meant in order to have precisely 48 hour matches while also sticking to the target closing times.

    I recognise not everybody can be online within a given period, but there isn’t much I can do about that: there does have to be a time limit, it won’t always line up for everybody, and at the moment two days seems like the best balance between providing time for people to engage and keeping the game moving. If there was plenty of discussion going on during the second day I’d agree that I should extend by a day - I obviously have no interest in curtailing debate. As I said, I would be thrilled if people dug into debates a bit more and built arguments for one or the other zoo.
     
  18. snowleopard

    snowleopard Well-Known Member 15+ year member Premium Member

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    I personally think that the 48-hour time-slot is perfect, especially considering the fact that recent match-ups have been tremendously one-sided. Rotterdam over Columbus and Singapore over Plzen were done and dusted on the first day, as 100% of participants were in total agreement and the conversation went dead early.

    The only possibility of extending a match to a third day would probably be if there was an extremely close tie occurring, and then zoo nerds might need an extra day to assess all the options.
     
  19. ThylacineAlive

    ThylacineAlive Well-Known Member 10+ year member

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    No you cannot help that but clearly 45 hours was clearly too short a time. As I said, only three other people got to discuss other than yourself and nearly half of their posts were asking for further information. Usually these matches have at least a couple pages of discussion, this one had 12 replies, only 10 of which were from members other than yourself. Plzen and Singapore are huge names, that's a shockingly low amount of engagement for them. I just checked, and the last Plzen match had 30 votes and 44 replies over 3 pages. Many of said replies were after the 48 hour mark and several people changed their votes in that time. The last Singapore match had 27 votes and 31 replies over 2 pages, with the entire second page of discussion all taking place within the last day of the match. During that time debates were held, more information was added, and several more people changed their votes (including myself). Compare that to this thread which had only 12 replies and 18 votes, which is missing several people who normally participate besides myself. Even if every once in a while engagement drops off in the last day due to a particular match not needing further conversation, clearly the 72 hours as a rule works better than 48 or less. The shortened time span only rushes the matches and ensures that last minute information, arguments, and vote changes all get dropped, as well as ensuring that those of us busy with school and work won't get our opinions in. Seeing as you can't shorten/expand the time allowed after the match has started, if you guess incorrectly how long a debate will last for you're only frustrating those of us who are in the middle of a conversation who thought we had more time but were suddenly silenced prematurely without even having finalized our votes.

    ~Thylo
     
  20. FunkyGibbon

    FunkyGibbon Well-Known Member

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    Over the past eighteen months CGSwans has put in a huge amount of time and effort to generate, develop and run the ZooCups. It's fair nor reasonable to characterise his contribution to this thread as silencing or frustrating debate or indeed those who engage in it.

    Personally I initially voted 2-1 to Plzen on the strength of collection, because I felt that Singapore's poor big cat enclosures balanced out Plzen's poor all-indoor exhibits. After the debate in this thread I was reminded both of the excellent exhibits in Night Safari as well as a few rarities that had slipped my mind and so I switched to 2-1 Singapore. With eighteen people placing their vote in this category the win for Singapore feels like a landslide rather than the 18-9 victory it actually is.

    Plzen also has a history of underperforming in juicy match-ups. I seem to recall that it had Berlin Zoo on carnivores last year, a potentially titanic battle, and yet barely any discussion was had with people just casting their votes. Presumably you either love the collection, in which case nothing can stand against it, or you hate the substandard enclosures, in which case almost anything can. Especially with the 1-2 voting option it seems more and more people feel able to vote against Plzen, and that is their prerogative.

    I had Singapore down as a bit of an also ran in this cup, but the addition of the River and Night Safaris have turned into a sleeper pick which is fast waking up to become a real contender.
     
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