compo - NicheInterests/mistfunk GitHub Wiki

COMPO

1. n. A competition where one competes to be the best in whatever category the competition is in. ie "ANSI compo" or "demo compo".

from The Artscene Dictionary

Regardless of the elite drive to be the best, as with any Olympian venture, it can be an honour simply to place in a compo among the cream of your peers. Primarily the domain of these compos is demoparties, but there is also a subset that take place online (eg. IRC compos such as [The Blender].)

As some statisticians in the demoscene have noted, you don't have to be the best in a field in order to win a compo -- typically, you just have to have the best submission to your chosen category. If everyone stays in their lane and realises that they have no business competing in that category, refraining from sending in a submission, then your hastily thrown-together last-minute joke submission enjoys a very real risk of winning the compo. Elsewhere, these outcomes are avoided by having judges refrain from awarding prizes to unqualified competitors, if there are no qualified ones, or by demanding an entry fee, but these have not been standard practices in demoparty compos.

(Many demoparties limit compo eligibility to ticketed competitors who are physically present on the party grounds when the compo takes place, so to win a compo you don't necessarily have to be the best person in the world at something, just the best person in the room at that moment. Additionally, some demoparty compos are voted on by attendees rather than scored by qualified judges, so competitors with many friends on-site, often very drunk ones, may see their submissions rated higher than their submissions' quality actually warrants. This is not an honourable practice, but it is a strange quirk of demoparty culture.)