As already discussed, the finalists only brought forward those scores from the qualification round which were earned against fellow finalists - this, it turned out, made a fair bit of a difference where final rankings were concerned. I have calculated both the "official" final scores and rankings, and the "unofficial" score and rankings - the latter taking all scores from the first round into consideration, just for the sake of curiosity.
OFFICIAL FINAL RANKINGS
- RZSS (Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park) - 5/5 matches won - 66.620%
- Bristol Zoo Society (Bristol Zoo and Wildplace) - 4/5 matches won - 54.532%
- ZSL (London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo) - 3/5 matches won - 49.112%
- Whitley (Paignton, Living Coasts and Newquay) - 2/5 matches won - 48.048%
- Dublin/Fota - 1/5 matches won - 45.818%
- Cotswold Wildlife Park - 0/5 matches won - 35.870%
UNOFFICIAL FINAL RANKINGS
- RZSS (Edinburgh Zoo and Highland Wildlife Park) - 7/8 matches won - 66.961%
- Whitley (Paignton, Living Coasts and Newquay) - 5/8 matches won - 61.975%
- ZSL (London Zoo and Whipsnade Zoo) - 6/8 matches won - 55.270%
- Bristol Zoo Society (Bristol Zoo and Wildplace) - 6/8 matches won - 54.290%
- Dublin/Fota - 4/8 matches won - 52.911%
- Colchester Zoo - 2/5 matches won - 50.13%
- Cotswold Wildlife Park - 2/8 matches won - 49.903%
- Marwell Zoo - 2/5 matches won - 43.29%
- ZSEA (Banham and Africa Alive) - 2/5 matches won - 39.44%
- Aspinall Foundation (Howletts and Port Lympne) - 1/5 matches won - 34.36%
- Jersey Zoo - 1/5 matches won - 34.33%
- Twycross Zoo - 0/5 matches won - 32.27%
One will note that the upper echelons of this scoreboard comprise rather different - and closer - rankings!
Of course, even these unofficial rankings do not give an ideal picture of how the collections compare - firstly, those organisations which did not progress are scored on fewer matches. Secondly, those matches they *were* scored on comprised the 3-vote system which (as previously observed) did not allow for the same subtlety of voting that the 5-vote system does. As such, I suspect most if not all of the lower-scoring competitors would have achieved higher overall scores had the 5-vote system been in play from the off.... and might have even progressed further than they did.
The other factor (other than a scoring system which was not ideal for the purpose at hand) which somewhat stymied this UK Zoo Cup was the relatively low level of participation; other than the very start of the Cup, and during a handful of particularly heated matches, there were markedly fewer members of the forum taking part in these threads than has been the case in prior Zoo Cup challenges. Some portion of this is doubtless due to the provincial nature of this particular Cup, but this cannot be entirely the case given the fact that the abortive first attempt at these threads by
@CGSwans at the start of this year were attracting
significantly higher numbers of participants.
The main reason this low level of participation presented a problem - and almost certainly skewed the results on a number of occasions - is that it meant that outlying votes (either in favour of the eventual winner or not) had a much heavier weight on the eventual result of a given match than would otherwise have been the case. For instance, I have worked out that in the penultimate round, where one individual voted 4/1 in favour of ZSL and six individuals voted 3/2 in favour of ZSL, only two additional 3/2 votes for ZSL or a single 3/2 vote in favour of Whitley (either of which would have reduced the impact of the single 4/1 vote on the final score for that match) would have switched these two collections in the final Zoo Cup rankings.
of course, a voting system such as this will mean that overtly biased votes will represent even more of a potential imbalance than before - especially if participation levels remain low - and therefore this all comes with one important caveat:
