There's been a bit of discussion over at http://groups.google.ca/group/aus.sport.frisbee/topics?lnk=rgh&hl=en about the 'spirit guide' that was given to everyone at Nationals.
The idea of the guide was to give people, if not an objective base, a common basis for giving spirit scores. The view goes that, as we don't play everyone at a tournament, we can't rely on our own subjective standard, so we need something that's reasonably common to ease out the vagarities (for example, of a team in one pool giving spirit scores in the 8-10/10 range, while a team in another pool gives scores in the 4-6/10 range).
Using a spirit guide is a good idea, but I hope people don't forget you don't really need it at smaller events where each team plays against a majority of other teams - I reckon for those events the old 'give the first team you play against 7, and then rate every other game against that' approach works best (particularly if you have a range of players in your team - you all have the same first game to rank against).
The discussion back at aus.ultimate was prompted by the release of the overall spirit scores for Nationals.
Its pleasing on the one hand that this causes some angst. Spirit scores remain a useful tool for reminding people that their spirit is on display, and for most of us it can always be improved upon (at least in terms of the teams we play with).
But on the other hand, I tend to think that the overall rankings only really tell you about the top few teams (who had to have kept everyone happy) and the bottom few teams (who, if the distance between them and the top teams is large, had to have made at least a few opponents unhappy.
Everything in between doesn't say much in my mind - spiritwise I don't think the difference between 4th and 12th is much (compared to on-field placings).
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