Song of the Week - Chocobo's Happy Christmas precedent debate

PLEASE ONLY VOTE IF YOU PARTICIPATE IN SONG OF THE WEEK

This is a poll on official policy, so I'd appreciate it if only people who vote and/or nominate vote on this matter. If I don't recognize your name, I won't count your vote with the final tally. Thanks in advance.

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Okay, in case you haven't been following the firestorm of activity that is the Week 63 Voting/Week 64 Nominating thread, we're going to have a nice little debate and vote here on the Chocobo's Happy Christmas precedent.

What is the Chocobo's Happy Christmas precedent?
In Week 10, a track called "Chocobo's Happy Christmas" from the Chocobo no Fushigina Dungeon Original Soundtrack was allowed for voting. This track is an arrangement of the extremely unobscure Chocobo theme, which would (hopefully) never be found eligible for SotW. People seemed not to mind, and I've taken that to mean that, as long as the arrangement is obscure enough, it doesn't matter how blatantly familiar the source is.

So?
Well, is this a good idea?

Disregarding the source is the easiest way to manage this; even if a nominated track is an arranged version of One Winged Angel, let it in if the arrangement itself is enough to pass obscurity guidelines. But on the other hand, certainly the fact that the track is an arrangement of OWA means that, in some respects, it's already not obscure.

Then again, we could reject arrangements if the source is not obscure enough. But how do we decide what is "obscure enough"? Do we apply the same obscurity guidelines to the source, or something looser?

These are just some talking points to get everyone started.

Okay, we've talked for a while, and I'm ready to vote.
Here's a breakdown of the poll options:

• Yes
  You agree with the precedent, and think that the obscurity of the source should have no impact on the eligibility of the arranged track.
• No
  You believe that there should be some sort of obscurity test applied to the sources of arranged tracks. Presumably this will be hammered out at a later date, possibly with another poll.
• Other
  You have an alternate plan that you have posted somewhere in this thread, or you agree with someone who has posted an alternate plan somewhere in this thread.
• Abstain
  You really don't care what happens.

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Okay, that's all I've got on the matter. I've set the poll to close in a week; hopefully this is enough time for adequate debate and voting. GO

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Before I weigh in, I just want to clear some things up.

First, as Dr. Uzuki said, this poll is NOT about Squaresoft Variation. It is about the precedent as a whole. You can use SV as an example to explain your position, but do not weigh in here on whether or not you think it should be eligible.

Originally Posted by Dhsu

I guess one thing I'd like to know is why the "professional" fan-arrangements exception clause exists in the first place. Don't get me wrong, I'm as big a doujin fan as the next guy, and I'm all for getting them some extra exposure. But to me the clause seems like a fairly arbitrary loophole, designed to allow a few favorites from select arrangers like S.S.H. and MintJam to slip in.

I dunno, it just seems like roundabout way of nominating popular Square/Nintendo/etc. tracks, since the actual originals would never be eligible otherwise. I mean, is there any other real rationale behind saying that as long as somebody happened to work on a few commercial H-games later on, all their previous arrangements suddenly retroactively become fair game?

It's not really an "exception" or "loophole," as you put it; it's part of an enumeration of ALL tracks by professional composers. It was (contentiously) agreed upon many harvests ago that all such works should be eligible.

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It seems that a few of our no-voters agree with Dr. Uzuki's proposal of allowing the source to be one of the factors is deciding whether or not a track should be eligible. I think this is a good middle ground, and perhaps the solution most in keeping with the "spirit" of SotW, if you will.

Would anyone who's voted in favor of upholding the precedent be willing to accept this?

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by TCK

There was arrangement?

Well, there's an original solo at 1:50. That was enough arrangement to get Wicked Six onto OCR, recall.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Okay, we've got a majority of people in favor of the source of an arrangement factoring in some way. Now, the question is, how so?

The way I see it, there are three ways we can handle this. In order of increasing strictness:

1. allow the source to be taken into account while determining track obscurity without automatically disqualifying tracks (i.e., sufficiently obscure arrangements of One Winged Angel are fine)
2. bar arrangements of tracks above a certain level of obscurity, where that level is somewhere between One Winged Angel and Suikoden
3. put the source of an arrangement to the same obscurity test as the track itself

I'm greatly in favor of the first idea, and a few other people in this thread have shown support for it as well. What do the peoples want?

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