Introduction
It is now just over four years since the last Zoochat Cup - a smaller scale affair initially planned by @CGSwans but eventually coordinated and operated by myself, focusing purely on Great Britain and Ireland and intended to test out some new mechanics for the Zoochat Cup concept - concluded in December 2020, and just shy of five years since the last full-scale Cup concluded in February 2020. The lack of any subsequent threads has been due, in large part, to both myself and CGSwans having found the pandemic years rather difficult when it comes to mental and physical energy, and hence the enthusiasm required to handle a project of this nature with the devotion and care which it would require.
However, as some reading this post may know, in early 2024 I became one of the custodians of the vast archive belonging to the Bartlett Society (an organisation focusing on the preservation of zoo history) and have been undertaking the sizeable task of cataloguing and sorting the archive on behalf of the Society ever since. A very welcome side-effect of this endeavour is that over the course of the past year, I have found my mental energy and enthusiasm for long-term projects has been gradually returning; as such, for a while now I have been considering the feasibility of resuming the Zoochat Cup, with the general hope of sparking the sort of in-depth discussion and debates which previous iterations encouraged, and which led to a massive increase in community morale and engagement.
By the start of December 2024, I had decided that the task of reviving the Zoochat Cup *was* one which I had both the enthusiasm and mental energy to undertake, and - after getting the blessing and go-ahead from @CGSwans - I have spent the last few weeks planning and working out the fine details
Focus and structure
To begin with, the 2025 Cup will focus on European collections only, with a similar structure to that devised by CGSwans for the two incarnations of the 2020 UK/Ireland Cup but on a larger scale; four initial divisions of six zoological collections each, where each zoo will play each other once. After this point, the top three collections in each division will move forward into a pair of semi-final divisions; within these divisions, each trio of collections will play only the three qualifiers from the other half of the draw and carry over the relevant results from their first-round matches with one another. The champion of each semi-final division will then finally go forward to the finals (the precise format of which I intend to reveal later) in order to face their counterpart and determine the final winner.
If anyone is confused about the above, I've quoted the full explanation of the original match structure concept from the 2020 threads below, although note that the collections cited do not indicate anything about the competitors this time round:
If all goes well and there is sufficient continued interest, enthusiasm and participation from the forum community for the task to feel worthwhile, I do have hopes to extend the Cup beyond Europe.... but we will focus on the task immediately ahead of us for the foreseeable!
Voting format
The issue of how best to strike a balance between allowing a fine degree of subtlety in voting and avoiding excessive complexity has been a recurrent issue in previous iterations of the Zoochat Cup; at various points CGSwans and/or myself have attempted a 3-vote system, a 3-vote system with optional bonus points, and a 5-vote system. I've given a lot of consideration to this point, and I have decided that we will once again be playing with a 5-vote system; it will be impossible to vote for a perfect tie, but it will allow more subtle judgements to be made and hopefully reflect a close-run match a lot more accurately.
In order to prevent the potential imbalance that overtly-biased votes represent, this all comes with one important caveat: if one gives a 5-0 vote, you MUST provide appropriate justification for this in-thread. Any such votes which are either unexplained, or break the rules of fair play in some fashion, will be void.
The other key point which should be made here is that you don’t need to have visited a zoo to vote - but naturally, if you *have* visited a collection and your vote is based on this experience, sharing your knowledge and insight within the relevant thread will be incredibly valuable, and provide a jumping-off point for those individuals who lack your experience to make their own minds up on the matter! As noted above, I very much hope that this thread and the various matches that will follow will form the hub of discussion, debate and above all the sharing of knowledge.
Participants
When drawing up a shortlist of zoological collections to take part in the Zoochat Cup, I was influenced by several considerations; naturally, I knew that I wanted to include a wide range of collections commonly held by members of this forum to be amongst the very best that Europe has to offer, but equally I also wanted to represent the diversity in history, design philosophy and culture which can be found throughout the zoological collections of the continent, and as such consciously limited the number of German collections I included. Perhaps just as importantly, my decision to limit the overall field to a total of 24 collections required some fairly brutal decisions - and I do not doubt that some of the omissions will be hotly contested!
One way in which I was able to somewhat mitigate this limitation is that I have once again incorporated the mechanic which @CGSwans devised for the last UK Cup regarding collections which fall under the aegis of a larger zoological organisation alongside a sister collection - this has allowed me to include a few extra collections which I felt needed to be included, although it should be noted that I have deliberately kept one such pair separate to prevent the risk of undue dominance in the overall competition.
As such the final shortlist of 24 competitors stands as follows:
The overall split of zoological collections across the four initial divisions will be randomised, but in order to keep things interesting and avoid the risk of one single division being overly-loaded with stronger competitors, I have elected to select four seeds which will each be specifically-placed within a different league; these are shown in bold above.
Match Categories
As with previous iterations of the Zoochat Cup, the categories used within the competition matches will be randomly assigned, and will fall under three overall "genres" - taxonomic, geographic, and biome. I'll keep the precise categories a surprise for now, although those of you who recall previous competitions will doubtless be able to predict some/all of them!
---
My plan is to announce the divisional splits tomorrow, with the first two matches following in the evening. Until then, let me know if there is anything further that requires clarification - this *is* the longest post I have written for a long time, so I might well have missed something or other!
Finally, I hope you all enjoy the matches to come
It is now just over four years since the last Zoochat Cup - a smaller scale affair initially planned by @CGSwans but eventually coordinated and operated by myself, focusing purely on Great Britain and Ireland and intended to test out some new mechanics for the Zoochat Cup concept - concluded in December 2020, and just shy of five years since the last full-scale Cup concluded in February 2020. The lack of any subsequent threads has been due, in large part, to both myself and CGSwans having found the pandemic years rather difficult when it comes to mental and physical energy, and hence the enthusiasm required to handle a project of this nature with the devotion and care which it would require.
However, as some reading this post may know, in early 2024 I became one of the custodians of the vast archive belonging to the Bartlett Society (an organisation focusing on the preservation of zoo history) and have been undertaking the sizeable task of cataloguing and sorting the archive on behalf of the Society ever since. A very welcome side-effect of this endeavour is that over the course of the past year, I have found my mental energy and enthusiasm for long-term projects has been gradually returning; as such, for a while now I have been considering the feasibility of resuming the Zoochat Cup, with the general hope of sparking the sort of in-depth discussion and debates which previous iterations encouraged, and which led to a massive increase in community morale and engagement.
By the start of December 2024, I had decided that the task of reviving the Zoochat Cup *was* one which I had both the enthusiasm and mental energy to undertake, and - after getting the blessing and go-ahead from @CGSwans - I have spent the last few weeks planning and working out the fine details
Focus and structure
To begin with, the 2025 Cup will focus on European collections only, with a similar structure to that devised by CGSwans for the two incarnations of the 2020 UK/Ireland Cup but on a larger scale; four initial divisions of six zoological collections each, where each zoo will play each other once. After this point, the top three collections in each division will move forward into a pair of semi-final divisions; within these divisions, each trio of collections will play only the three qualifiers from the other half of the draw and carry over the relevant results from their first-round matches with one another. The champion of each semi-final division will then finally go forward to the finals (the precise format of which I intend to reveal later) in order to face their counterpart and determine the final winner.
If anyone is confused about the above, I've quoted the full explanation of the original match structure concept from the 2020 threads below, although note that the collections cited do not indicate anything about the competitors this time round:
If all goes well and there is sufficient continued interest, enthusiasm and participation from the forum community for the task to feel worthwhile, I do have hopes to extend the Cup beyond Europe.... but we will focus on the task immediately ahead of us for the foreseeable!
Voting format
The issue of how best to strike a balance between allowing a fine degree of subtlety in voting and avoiding excessive complexity has been a recurrent issue in previous iterations of the Zoochat Cup; at various points CGSwans and/or myself have attempted a 3-vote system, a 3-vote system with optional bonus points, and a 5-vote system. I've given a lot of consideration to this point, and I have decided that we will once again be playing with a 5-vote system; it will be impossible to vote for a perfect tie, but it will allow more subtle judgements to be made and hopefully reflect a close-run match a lot more accurately.
In order to prevent the potential imbalance that overtly-biased votes represent, this all comes with one important caveat: if one gives a 5-0 vote, you MUST provide appropriate justification for this in-thread. Any such votes which are either unexplained, or break the rules of fair play in some fashion, will be void.
The other key point which should be made here is that you don’t need to have visited a zoo to vote - but naturally, if you *have* visited a collection and your vote is based on this experience, sharing your knowledge and insight within the relevant thread will be incredibly valuable, and provide a jumping-off point for those individuals who lack your experience to make their own minds up on the matter! As noted above, I very much hope that this thread and the various matches that will follow will form the hub of discussion, debate and above all the sharing of knowledge.
Participants
When drawing up a shortlist of zoological collections to take part in the Zoochat Cup, I was influenced by several considerations; naturally, I knew that I wanted to include a wide range of collections commonly held by members of this forum to be amongst the very best that Europe has to offer, but equally I also wanted to represent the diversity in history, design philosophy and culture which can be found throughout the zoological collections of the continent, and as such consciously limited the number of German collections I included. Perhaps just as importantly, my decision to limit the overall field to a total of 24 collections required some fairly brutal decisions - and I do not doubt that some of the omissions will be hotly contested!
One way in which I was able to somewhat mitigate this limitation is that I have once again incorporated the mechanic which @CGSwans devised for the last UK Cup regarding collections which fall under the aegis of a larger zoological organisation alongside a sister collection - this has allowed me to include a few extra collections which I felt needed to be included, although it should be noted that I have deliberately kept one such pair separate to prevent the risk of undue dominance in the overall competition.
As such the final shortlist of 24 competitors stands as follows:
- Zoo Berlin
- Tierpark Berlin
- Leipzig
- Cologne
- Frankfurt
- Wilhelma (Stuttgart)
- Wroclaw
- Zurich
- Tiergarten Schoenbrunn (Vienna)
- Zagreb
- Copenhagen
- Budapest
- Burgers' Zoo (Arnhem)
- Artis (Amsterdam)
- Paris Zoo and Menagerie des Plantes
- ZooParc Beauval
- Prague
- Plzen and Akva-Terra
- Pairi Daiza
- Antwerp Zoo and Planckendael
- Chester
- London and Whipsnade
- Nuremburg
- Basel
The overall split of zoological collections across the four initial divisions will be randomised, but in order to keep things interesting and avoid the risk of one single division being overly-loaded with stronger competitors, I have elected to select four seeds which will each be specifically-placed within a different league; these are shown in bold above.
Match Categories
As with previous iterations of the Zoochat Cup, the categories used within the competition matches will be randomly assigned, and will fall under three overall "genres" - taxonomic, geographic, and biome. I'll keep the precise categories a surprise for now, although those of you who recall previous competitions will doubtless be able to predict some/all of them!
---
My plan is to announce the divisional splits tomorrow, with the first two matches following in the evening. Until then, let me know if there is anything further that requires clarification - this *is* the longest post I have written for a long time, so I might well have missed something or other!
Finally, I hope you all enjoy the matches to come
. Going to be really interesting, looking forward to participating.
