The Gang of Five
Beyond the Mysterious Beyond => The Fridge => Topic started by: Malte279 on April 20, 2008, 10:44:42 AM
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Hi!
This years award voting has shown a couple of problems with the system. The GOF has grown so much that the few awards we have are not sufficient to give credit to everyone who deserves it. Moreover there are many cases in which it is almost impossible to make up your mind between two very well deserving candidates.
There have been many suggestions for new awards, but perhaps the problem can be solved easier if, instead of coming up with new awards, we issue the awards we already have more than once in the election of a year.
The idea is that everybody may cast two rather than one vote per award. Casting more than one vote per award would not be a requirement, but whenever people feel that there is more than one worthy candidate, they are welcome to cast a second vote (but it is impossible to vote twice for the same person on the same award). When the tally of the vote is done the one who has the most votes obviously wins the award, but the one with the second highest number of votes (provided that he or she got at least five votes total for an award) will get the award too.
There won't be a "silver" or "second best" award, but the one with the most votes may pick his or her favorite draft of an award while the winner with the second highest number of votes may pick his or her award among the remaining drafts.
What is your opinion on this possible reform of the award voting system?
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This doesn't sound like what we've discussed before.
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It was mentioned in staff room discussion on April 7th. Nobody had objected the plan there while support for it was expressed by one staff member other than myself. There was further discussion on it on MSN, but I must admit that I don't recall for sure which members of the staff were present during those discussions.
Do you prefer a different plan Adam?
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I like this idea, i think it'd be a great new improvement for the Voting System.
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You'll have to fill me in. This is not what I remember discussing.
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Oh dear. I sense dissension.
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This sounds like a very fair and simple idea. I say go for it. It certainly would make deciding between two people easier than just having one.
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Oh dear. I sense dissension.
Nah, they are both mature enough to have a mature civilized discussion and debate. Especially in an open and visible to all normal members. I'm sure they save the juicy stuff for pm, im or the staff area.
It's us normal members who resort to hair pulling :p
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This idea sounds like a good one to me, but I find it a little complicated. But it's still a good idea that's worth trying.
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I don't see why not. Maybe next year we'll try Malte's voting system.
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Well, I don't like the idea of having the same award for 2 different people, but I think it's necessary. I mean, more than 1% of GOF has to win an award. This will give more people the chance to win something. I am curious however how you are going to change the award titles so they can be applied to more than one person.
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The idea I remember was far different from this, and that one I liked. This one doesn't seem to be much different from what we have now, save awarding two people instead of one.
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Why not post some information on what you are talking about Petrie, then folks can see both ideas.
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If I had a written record of it I could.
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The idea I remember was far different from this, and that one I liked. This one doesn't seem to be much different from what we have now, save awarding two people instead of one.
If I had a written record of it I could.
Hmm, now I'm not quite sure which system you're thinking of, Petrie. We do have a written record of my suggestion, which is the one I thought you were referring to. I'm a little bit lost, now. :p
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I found it. It was Tim's suggestion which I thought had some merit.
Perhaps it comes time to use a "less is more" strategy.
I'm just throwing this idea out there...it's probably far from ideal
Develop an award along the lines of "Exceptional Contributor" and award it to 1 or 2 members who have done outstanding things for the community (come up with innovative ways to develop the community and bring genuine quality projects (fanart, etc.) to our community'
Simply put - a generic award to recognize those outstanding members, handed out annually
Perhaps we could keep a couple of other awards. "fanart" comes to mind as one I'd like to keep but I'd like to alter it somewhat:
The admins list all of the members who had created LBT fanart in the past year into a post. All of these members will receive an award at awards time.
As for gamer, feedback, helpful, etc....I'd say scrap them.
Scrap the individual singing awards, too. Change it into an award "Singing Participation" or something
So the member has a single award for the singing projects.
as opposed to half-dozen
That being said, it's another approach we could take. The downside is that it does cut out the members from the voting process, with the exception of the "Exceptional Contributor" award.
Maybe on top of that: we could implement fun awards for members to enjoy:
"Funniest quote award" etc.
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Yeah...that's the one. B)
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Now folks can debate the 2 different ideas, or maybe suggest their own now.
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I never meant to pass you over when I posted this message Adam. The suggestion which I brought up here is indeed mentioned rather briefly in the staff room, where it didn't provoke and opposition though. The suggestion was discussed in much more detail (resulting in the suggestion above) in an MSN chat at which you weren't present. I apologize for this one as the results should have been laid out in the staff room.
As for the previous suggestion, I have serious doubts about its suitability for the GOF for several reasons.
One of them is the extreme cutting down of member involvement in the whole awarding process. I think that one of the important points about the whole awarding is that we all think about what everyone did for the GOF and in making up our minds about a particular award we think about everyone's contributions and grow more aware of what everyone is doing on the GOF (not just the ones who ultimately receive an award). The whole voting is almost a kind of GOF project while with the "Exceptional Contributor" it may easily become a popularity contest not suited to credit the individual performances of members in the many different fields currently credited with different awards.
I'm quite certain that the GOF members are a friendly and helpful group no matter whether there is an award for it or not, but I don't think that this is a reason not to give credit anymore to those whom the community feels stood out by being especially helpful or friendly.
While on the one hand the suggestion cuts down many individual awards it pours them out on another end. Of course I see where the thought is coming from that everyone who creates art and takes the trouble to share it with the GOF should be credited for it. But if indeed everyone who posts anything gets an award I don't know if it will still be perceived as credit. If 20, 30, or even 40 or more art awards are issued every year to anyone who posted any kind of art I'm not sure if it would still be perceived as special enough. If dozens of people have the same award in their signature the credit one feels from receiving that award may feel somewhat hollow.
In a different case, namely the singing awards, the very same problem is actually addressed in that suggestion. It is suggested to give up all the individual awards for one single award to credit participation in song projects. When we created those awards, they were partly meant to encourage people to join our singing projects and I think these awards served that purpose very well. You (you're not wearing yours anyway) and I and others too would get rid of the individual singing awards in their signatures if there is really the need to give up on them, but I think many would not like the thought of giving up on the awards for the songs to which they contributed and who would blame any of them?
And finally a funniest quote award is suggested, something I don't oppose generally, but which seems once again to work in the other direction as some of the other suggestions.
We want to get rid of all the individual awards in favor of an Exceptional Performance award because we have too many awards.
But we want to give everyone an award who contributes any kind of art whatsoever to the GOF because we don't have enough awards to give due credit to every artist.
But we want to get rid of the individual singing performance awards because we have too many awards.
But we want to have a funniest quote award because it is no fun to have too few awards?
The suggestions don't work in the same direction so to speak. There is one "advantage" of the suggestion over the one I brought up, namely that this suggestion means much less work for both, the staff and the members, while the suggestion I brought up means more work for the staff and to the members too if they want to cast more than one vote on a particular award (while on the other hand decision making may be easier because of that option). But is the voting really so much of a chore that we want to cut down the work by all means?
Personally I don't think so. I prefer the suggestion I brought up as a compromise between allowing more people to get credit but not flood the GOF with so many awards that they are not perceived as credit anymore.
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Why not have awards for different categories like now? Awards are nice to get and some enjoy voting on them.