Special Edition #90 + #100 Themes

Quite some interesting questions here... Let me say what I think about each one of those.

1. A "challenging theme" for me is a theme that requires research. Just like in the latest Themed edition we asked people for songs including (cities/sights from) foreign countries in their titles, the majority of people saw this as a rather difficult theme and spent quite some time looking for entries that'd be eligible. Of course this specific example also happens to have the "restrictions" you're referring to, as obviously all songs that didn't have any foreign country/city in their titles were immediately ineligible. I'd personally be fond of something like a theme restricting people to less, yet still quite some options.

2. Just ban worldwide hits tbh. I guess that there will always be worldwide hits or so every once in a while, whether we like it or not. Ideally I'd make sure the theme doesn't allow their players to submit them but there will almost always be some people searching for "loopholes" or anyway for reasons to submit such songs just in order to do well.

3. I don't think the restrictions should be on top of a theme but rather the theme should be a rather restrictive one on its own.

4. Restrictions could be about artist age, year of release, genre, type of artist (solo/duet/band), views on YouTube or whatsoever, although some might be tricky, especially "genre" as that might be rather subjective.

5. Ideally it would have to be something that has never been used before or something that basically "obliges" us to send our "biggest potential". However, the latter could obviously imply that some countries could go for worldwide hits so that contradicts some of the stuff I mentioned above, therefore I'd rather go for something completely new and rather challenging. Something like the "Parents Edition" would be great for me, as it requires quite some research and I guess it's challenging and special enough for the 100th edition.

6. Not sure how those could be in fact implemented but surely some countries might be a bit more advantageous there. I guess I'd still be in for that though.

7. The only thing that comes to my mind at the moment is something like the "Theme jury" that was used once in Themed WWWSC, rewarding the oldest participant in the "Senior edition" - I guess you could possibly go for something like that as well (obviously adapted based on the chosen theme).

I agree with Mimis and Nijat with what they've said, although I would like to comment a few things.

Even though youtube views seems like a great restriction, as we've experienced, you can still find loopholes, like Thailand did with Chanee. I mean we all know that this song was a lot more popular than just 8000 views, but because all older videos of the song had been removed, it was eligible, despite us knowing, that the song is quite popular. And in the end it got 3rd place, if I remember correctly... so this restriction is a tricky one... If we ever use it again, then it has to come together with another rule about how popular the song can be, so that there's no way for you to use popular song due to the fact, that it found a loophole in the rules...

As for the parents edition - the idea itself is great, but it also has loopholes in it... because no one really knows, which years our parents were born in... plus, I think it would give advantage to those, who have younger parents... for example, parents, that were born in late 70's or early 80's definitely give a lot more option than those, that have been born in 50's or 60's... so I'd say a certain decade in this case would be a better restriction for a theme than just simply parents year of birth...

I actually like both ideas for a theme Nijat has provided, because I also think that the 100th edition should be about positivity... though the first theme maybe might need a few more restrictions to it, because it basically allows you to pick any song you want (I mean anyone can think of a plausible story to say, why they chose this song, just to be able to use the song they want and think might do very well)

I don't think that a criteria based on a number of views would be appropriate for a retro contest, because many videos are fanmade so you might have a well known song with a low number of views (and a more popular one with a much higher number of views that could have been deleted). And about the second criteria, I have no idea how I can be sure that a song that is not very known - and therefore has no dedicated Wiki page - has never been charted in Belgium or Switzerland (or even exotic countries)... Moreover how to use this criteria for songs that were released before charts existed?

Sounds like a very interesting concept