GOF Awards 2012 Rules, Voter List, Award Drafts

[Mumbling]

At long last all preparations are done for the Award voting 2012. Since we fared well with the rules of the last years we are not going to change them this year. These are the rules for the vote for all to revise or to check out if you have not so far participated in an award voting:

The voting process will officially open on TUESDAY 11 September 2012 and will be kicked started by an opening speech from one of the members of staff of the GOF.
***DO NOT START VOTING BEFORE THEN!!!***
Voting for the initial 7 categories (listed below) will last for 2 weeks and will close at 12 (midnight) on 25th SEPTEMBER 2012 (forum standard time)

Please take time out to read these statements carefully so not to accidentally (or otherwise) breach any of the rules

***OFFICIAL RULES AND REGULATIONS FOR 2012 GANG OF FIVE MEMBERSHIP AWARDS***

- All selected GOF members listed are invited to participate in the GOF Awards. These candidates have been granted participation on clearing of the following conditions:
         1. Have a post count of at least 100 posts
         2. Have actively posted on the GOF within the past 3 months
         3. Have been a member of the GOF for at least 3 months
The list of eligible candidates for this year's awards can be found right below the post of these rules. If your name is NOT on that list, you are NOT eligible to receive an award in this year's nominations. If you find you fulfill the three criterias listed above and still are not on the list, please contact one of the admins about it. We do our very best, but mistakes are always possible.

- The main categories for this year's Awards are as follows:
~Fanart Award
~Feedback Award
~Friendly Member Award
~Helpful Member Award
~Philosopher Award
~Proactive Award
~Role Play Gamer Award

- The Appreciated Member Award will also be included but nominations for this award will be conducted AFTER the main 7 categories have been finalised and the awards distributed. DO NOT reveal your nomination for the Appreciated Member Award alongside your votes for the initial 7 categories because it won't be counted.

- You are to offer ONE (1) nomination per category highlighting the nominee's GOF username in underline and/or bold to aid with the tallying process. We strongly advise all participants to vote in ALL categories if they can. Understandably there may be some areas you are not too sure on if you haven't been involved directly (e.g. the RPG section) or are genuinely unable to select one candidate but we urge you try to offer a nomination if you can.

- No member participating in the GOF Awards 2012 is entitled to an award if they DID NOT vote in at least six (6) of the initial 7 categories. By NOT voting in at least 6 categories, you WILL NOT receive any awards you may be entitled to once the results are recorded and finalised. The award will instead go to which ever member gained the second highest amount of votes in that category provided that no other rulings have been breached.

- You are permitted to skip a maximum of two (2) of the 7 initial awards. By skipping no more than two votes, you will still be eligible for any awards you may have coming your way. Skipping more than two votes will see you being stripped of any award you may obtain once the results are recorded and finalised with the award going to which ever member gained the second highest amount of votes provided that no other rulings have been breached.

- If you DO skip two votes for the initial seven categories, in order to qualify for any awards you may have coming, you MUST place a vote in the Appreciated Member Award which will run AFTER the main voting has been done. This will bring your total number of votes up to meet the requirement necessary for you to collect your award(s). You will be informed when votes for the Appreciated Member Award are being accepted.

- All nominations MUST be accompanied with a few lines or a brief statement as to why you feel your choice deserves the stated award. It doesn't have to be an essay nor does it have to hail them as royalty but it will help enforce your choice and can be counted as vaild reasoning. Please feel free to express credit to those members you felt were close contenders for an award if you so wish. Nominations that DO NOT include these explanatory lines for your choice will be considered INVALID and WILL NOT COUNT towards that member's score tally. Furthermore, nominations without explanatory comments will COUNT AGAINST YOU AS A SKIPPED VOTE and may jeopardise your own chances of obtaining an award you may be entitled to.

- When casting your votes, if you DO NOT complete all of your nominations in one post, please submit the remainder of your nominations IN A SEPERATE POST. Please DO NOT UPDATE OR EDIT OLD/PREVIOUS POSTS as this can confuse record keeping of who has cast what votes in which category. The Admin team will keep a record of your voting progress which will be viewable once voting has started.

- We VERY STRONGLY DISCOURAGE voting for yourself in any given category for the GOF awards. If you genuinely feel that there are no other eligible candidates who deserve a specific award then you are permitted to vote for yourself in one (1) category ONLY. Voting for yourself in more than one category will INVALIDATE your nomination and will be counted as a SKIPPED VOTE. In the event of a tie in number of votes for a category, the candidate who DID NOT nominate themselves within the category will be granted the award as the overall winner.

- The eligible candidate who got MOST VOTES for a given award will be permitted to add one of the drafts of the said award to his or her signature. If the eligible candidate with the SECOND MOST VOTES for an award achieved at least A THIRD OF THE NUMBER OF VOTES OF THE WINNER he or she qualifies for a RUNNER UP AWARD. He or she may then add one of the drafts for the award in question THAT HAS NOT BEEN PICKED BY THE WINNER ALREADY to his or her signature.

- We VERY STRONGLY DISAPPROVE AND DISCOURAGE any kind of activity that deems as cheating, vote fixing, conspiring, bribing or any general misconduct of ensuring that any one GOF member will be guaranteed an award. If any admin or moderator suspects members conspiring to ensure that a pre-determined candidate receives an award by solely voting for them without a certifible reason for the nomination, those members involved will be: 1. Disqualified from the nominations. 2. Not be permitted to participate in the remainder of the event including being stripped of any awards they would potentially receive. 3. Face disciplinary measures outside of the awards which may lead to membership suspension or possibly permanant exclusion and banning from the Gang of Five forum. By any judgement, the word of the Administration Staff of the GOF is FINAL.

-The award vote is a public and democratic decision in which the voters have to state the reasons for their decisions. Individual members therefore DO NOT HAVE ANY "CLAIM" TO AN AWARD UNLESS ELECTED. Because whining and complaints of members who cannot accept the decisions of their fellow members KILL THE FUN for the other members and COMPROMISE THE CONTINUATION OF THE AWARD VOTING complaints and whining about not winning an award can result in A MEMBER'S EXCLUSION FROM THE AWARD VOTING AND DISCIPLINARY MEASURES OUTSIDE THE VOTING PROCESS

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

[Mumbling]

Here is a list of the 105 GOF members who are entitled to vote and be elected in the 2012 award votes. To be allowed to vote and to be voted for one has to meet the following criteria:
-The member must have posted at least a 100 times.
-The member must have actively posted on the GOF within the past 3 months.
-The member must have been a member for at least three months.

Mistakes can happen and we apologize in case there are any on the list below. If you meet the criteria described above but are not on the list below, please send a PM to one of the admins.

2007excalibur2007
Adder
Allicloud
Almaron
Animeboye
AvestheForumFox
babidikrakenguard
Belmont2500
Blais_13
Blitz
Bongo
brekclub85
Bruton the Iguanodon
buffypii
bushwacked
Campion1
Cancerian Tiger
Caustizer
ChaoticMistress
Chiletrek
Chomper4
Chomper98
Clawandfang
Coyote_A
crazedwriter
Cyberlizard
Daddytops2009
DarkHououmon
DarkWolf91
Dash The Longneck
Dima02
Dr. Curzon
Drake
EggStealerGirl
Explorer
F-14 Ace
f-22 "raptor" ace
Flathead770
FlipperBoidSkua
Fyn16
guidolover
jansenov
JBJB1029
jedi472
joshua1127
Jrd89
Justin1993
kanganix
Kor
Lain_EX
landbeforetimelover
lbt/cty_lover
LBTDiclonius
LBTFan13
LBTLover1
LettuceBacon&Tomato
Lillefot
Littlefoot Fan
Littlefoot1616
Littlefoot90
Littlelady15
Malte279
Mama's Girl
metadude1234
Mirumoto_Kenjiro
Mr Wonk
MrDrake
Mumbling
Myrkin
NeptuneNavigator2001
NewOrder
Nick22
Nimrod
Nintendoofah64
oogaboo
Over and Under
Pangaea
PanickyPetrie14
Petrie
Petrie85
Pikkutassu
pokeplayer984
Pterano
Ptyra
Rat_lady7
Redtooth101
Rocky
Salvatore Blackheart
Serris
Sky
Spartanguy88
Spyro
StarfallRaptor
Stitch
StrutEggStealer
Tails_155
The Chronicler
The Dark Patriot
The Friendly Sharptooth
The Great Valley Guardian
thebigdeal
Vilstrup
vonboy
Waluigifan
WeirdRaptor
Zenoah

[Mumbling]

Fanart Awards:
The Fanart Award is for the member whose fanart is particularly appreciated by the members of the GOF for their style, content, and / or simply subjective taste. The fanart award is meant for the kinds of art which is made by a single artist, rather than in a group effort, and which is primarily based on the artists own work rather than a new combination of the work of others. This includes drawings, paintings and LBT figures.







Feedback Awards:
The Feedback Award is meant to give credit to those who give credit to others by responding to their posts of fanart or projects. Getting reactions to fanart and projects may help artitsts to further improve their work and it can also be a strong motivator for the artists to create and to post their work in the first place. Both the kindness (flaming is neither helpful nor permited nor existend in the GOF) and the helpfulness (it is easy to tell somebody that all is perfect, but it is more helping to tell artists if you see room for improvement or be precise on what exactly it is that you like about their work) of feedback as to let the artist know what the author thinks about his or her fanart are to be taken into account.







Friendly Member Awards:
The Friendly Member Award is to be issued to the member whom the majority voted for being the most friendly and easygoing in general interaction. It is meant to be a reward to those who contribute to making the GOF a hospitable place through sheer kindness, for those who make people feel welcome around here. Because of the great abundance of generally friendly attitude in the GOF, which makes a decision very difficult, the vote for this award can also be based on individual acts of kindness you experienced from members of the GOF.

[Mumbling]

Helpful Member Awards:
The Helpful Member Award is meant to go to the one whom the majority considered most engaged whenever it comes to supporting others when it comes to providing materials (e.g. pictures, music, information) asked for by others.







Philosopher Awards:
The Philosopher Award is meant for those whose posts on LBT matters which are perceived as particularly well elaborated, thought through, convincing, triggering discussions etc.







Proactive Member Awards:
The Proactive Member Award is meant for those members who are most active if it comes to get new stuff started at the GOF. This includes for example those who make good suggestions for new board sections which have been carried into action or to those who managed to organize activities involving several members of the GOF, but also those who started new LBT webpages or any other LBT related projects which are not quite to be included in the term fanart.

[Mumbling]

Role Play Gamer Awards:
The Role Play Gamer Award is to be voted for by the participants of the RPG sections of this board. They are to vote for the one who is contributing by writing the most interesting contributions to the RPGs. The frequency of the contributions, and the sheer devotion to RPGs are other points to be rewarded with this award.









Appreciated Member Awards:
Without the constant input and value of our members here at the GOF, we never would have lasted so long, nor would we be as active and prosperous as we are today without their contribution. There are many of you who keep the GOF going every day through your input and you deserve to be recognized for this too. Therefore the "Appreciated Member" award is to be voted upon after the decision for all other awards has been made. Only those who were not elected for any of the other awards can be nominated for the Appreciated Member Award.

[Mumbling]

And for those who have been with us for 3 years, you may claim your 'joined in 2009' award from the following topic:

http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=11237

For those interested in Fanfiction, visit our fanfiction awards and vote on the featured fanfics:

http://gangoffive.net/index.php?showtopic=11269

Thanks for reading. Happy award time!  

[aabicus (LettuceBacon&Tomato)]

Woo hoo! Been waiting forever for these votes to start, I've got some people who I think deserve recognition!

[Pangaea]

Hoo boy…Choosing my votes is going to be even tougher than usual this time around, :unsure: what with me not visiting the forum as much over the better part of the past year and not being in touch with most other members. I'll still be participating, though.

I'm really glad to see that the GOF Awards are back, in any case. For want of a long and elaborately worded opinion, I think they're a good thing for the GOF to have.

By the way, I noticed a small error in one of the rules:

- You are permitted to skip a maximum of one (1) of the 7 initial awards. By skipping no more than two votes, you will still be eligible for any awards you may have coming your way. Skipping more than one vote will see you being stripped of any award you may obtain once the results are recorded and finalised with the award going to which ever member gained the second highest amount of votes provided that no other rulings have been breached.

That should say "one vote", right? (Reading the whole thing, it seems pretty clear to me that one vote is the maximum number you are allowed to skip, but there's a chance some people might find it confusing.)

I also see a misspelling of the word "permanent" further down in the list, but that's not as important.

[Mumbling]

Thanks for noticing that Pangaea, we're currently looking into it and the rule will be amended before the voting starts tomorrow

[Malte279]

The formulation of the rules contained one mistake there.

The mistake is that one may skip a maximum of 1 of the 7 initial votes to remain eligible for an award.

One may in fact skip 2 of the initial 7 votes and still remain eligible.
But to remain eligible after having skipped 2 of the initial votes already one may not skip the vote on the (not initial) appreciated member award and thereby skip more than 2 total.
Only if one skipped only 1 of the 7 initial votes one may skip the appreciated member award.

There are 8 awards total to be voted upon.
Of these 7 are voted upon immediately while 1 (appreciated member award) requires the nominees of the other 7 to know who may not be voted for on the final one.
At the end one must have voted for at least 6 total and thus having skipped no more than 2 votes to remain elligible for any award.
Anyone who was elected for any award but did not cast at least 6 votes him- or herself may not get the award. In that case the award is passed on to the one with the most votes who cast at least 6 votes him or herself.

I will now change the error in the original rules post.

[Pangaea]

Something I have been wondering regarding the Fanart Award: I imagine it would be preferable that members nominated for this award have created at least some artwork that was specifically LBT-related since the 2011 awards. Would they be outright ineligible, however, if none of the artwork they had shared on the GOF in that time was LBT related?

(For the record, the answer to this question will not affect my vote. I have already decided on the artist I will be nominating, and I know that this person has drawn LBT characters in the past year.)

[Mumbling]

Yes, I'm pretty sure it has to be LBT-related.

[Malte279]

^ I agree. Most of the fanart in the past year has been about fanfiction characters, but still in an LBT section. Art that is completely unrelated to LBT is not really referred to by the Fanart award.

[Kor]

What are the codes to boldface and underline text?  

I went to vote but my browser, Waterfox, won't let the buttons work that you normally use to boldface or underline text.  Guess I have to add the code in manually.

[Mumbling]

bold is [ b] [/ b]
And underline is [ u] [/ u]

Without the spaces of course

[Pangaea]

Just a humble suggestion from a member who loves the GOF Awards and would hate to see them not happen again next year: Do you think the voting period could be extended by another week or two?

I know GOF members are not obliged in any way to participate in the Awards, but it concerns me that we have practically reached the end of the voting period, and yet only twelve members have voted so far, meaning that twelve or fewer members will even be eligible to receive an award (some may even win their awards by default, since none of their fellow nominees in that category voted). By comparison, twenty-five members voted last year, and I believe that number was even greater in the years before. Many of the prominent GOF members who have not voted this year have shown themselves to be eager voters in previous years, which makes me suspect that the reason they have not participated in the 2012 Awards is not due to lack of interest, but lack of knowledge that the Awards are occurring. For one thing, many of the aforementioned members have much busier lives these days than they used to; they cannot visit the GOF as often, and thus may have either overlooked the new active threads in the Awards section, or possibly not even had a chance to visit the GOF in the two-week voting period. (They may not even have expected that the awards would be taking place at this time, since they have always been held in the spring before).

Just to be clear, I don't think we would get more participants by extending the duration of the voting period alone. Perhaps a thread could be put up in the "Announcements" section letting members know about the awards and the fact that they will be ending in, say, another week. (Let's face it; the Award threads are not the most conspicuous in the GOF, tucked away as they are in a sub-forum of "The Fridge".) Another optionówhich perhaps might be regarded as a little too invasiveówould be to send PMs to members who have been nominated for the awards, with politely and cheerfully worded messages along the lines of "Hey, someone thinks you deserve a chance for one of the GOF Member Awards! If you feel like it, go over to the 'Saurus Rock' section in 'The Fridge' and participate in the voting."

Just thought I'd share my thoughts (If I was to do it, perhaps I shouldn't have taken so long ). I apologize in advance if I have been naÔve, insensitive, or ignorant regarding the GOF's views and policy of the Awards, or contrary in any way to the spirit of the award voting itself. :unsure:

[Mumbling]

We (at least, Littlefoot1616 and I) have been thinking about extending the awards if the voting outcome is poor. If Malte and Nick think this is a good idea as well, I see no issue with doing so.

We will also take your idea for the pm system into consideration

[Malte279]

It is in fact a relief to see someone is concerned about the awards
The suggestions are being discussed in the staff room. Indeed participation has been extremely low so far.

[landbeforetimelover]

I'm sorry to say that GOF isn't what it used to be a year or two ago.  There aren't as many active members.  With the dismal failure of LBT 13, the unliklihood of future sequels, and recent board changes (Petrie temporarily stepping down and lots of members leaving), GOF has been severely affected.  Maybe it's just the time of year.  Maybe not.  I for one love GOF and will always keep coming here.  But we need to find more ways to attract attention to the board.  I don't believe an extension will do much to help these awards, but it certainly can't hurt.

[Nick22]

I think an extension is warranted this year and changed should be made to reflect the changing circumstances.  LBTlover is right, we dont have the activity we used to, of course when the board was founded in 2004, we never expected the board to last as long as it has, the fact that we are going on 8 years, is remarkable, i mean this isnt a sports board wheres theres always a game, event or scandal going on to keep things fresh. Given how bad LBT13 was, there will never be an LBt 14, and without fresh material the interest in the LBT decreases with each passing year. We have been fortunate to have as many active posters as we have.