Hi.
Yeah, basically everything Zoap said is correct. We have to give some weight to recent vs history, and when we have very few tournies to go on, the judgement becomes even harder against new people who prove themselves. We all know FTA's hella good, don't worry about some random number on some list. Additionally, wins/losses against crewmates or people you play a lot don't count for as much. For example if, for the sake of argument (not to assume this is actually the case necessarily), nobody could touch DM at Modesto tourneys, but Meep did better at regional tourneys, then we'd def give the nod to Meep.
The last 2 spots were really difficult to fill; we had like 8 people to choose from. DM, Lucien, NK, Kev$, choknater are people that ALL have strong arguments to take those spots.
When people ask "why X and not Y," there's really not much to say. We considered a number of factors (which have all been noted and mentioned in the thread before), each with some amount of weight, and came to a decision based on that. That general statement could answer practically any ranking question. If someone disagrees, that just means they disagree with the amounf of weight placed on one or more factors. The only real way to argue about it is by saying "I think X factor is worth more than Y," which comes down to a matter of opinion in the first place. And to add to that, the panel is not a single entity with a fixed point of view. The panel is made of multiple people, and its composition changes as well. So again, we try to represent the range of opinions in the community through having people from different perspectives on the panel.
Germ, I think you'd be a great addition to the panel, and in fact what you noticed was true, we spent a lot of time on ranks 1-10 and 11-13 and as a panel we feel very very good about those. After that, and especially after 18, it we a very tough decision.
Regarding Sac and San Joaquin Valley panelists: The panel position is, yes, one where you are able to represent your region better than anyone else, but the whole issue is that it has to be in the perspective of someone who has played everyone. Someone, regardless of their intelligence level, who sticks almost solely to an isolated community and rarely goes outside that is not someone that is suited to be on the panel. This has been why the Sac panel spot was in much controversy. The next ranking list that comes out, if there is someone that meets that criterion for Sac (or Stockton/Modesto etc, or perhaps a combined valley panelist), then I think everyone on the panel now would like to have that addition.
