ENnie Nominations!

[Crothian]

A Big Thank You to the judges for the nomination of From Stone to Steel. I'd just made the decision to go and promote my book, and now you've given me a second reason to be there. This means a lot to an industry newcomer who put a year, not to mention his heart and soul, into this book.

To truely thank us you need to come up with something just as good for next year!!

 

[Teflon Billy]

A Big Thank You to the judges for the nomination of From Stone to Steel. I'd just made the decision to go and promote my book, and now you've given me a second reason to be there. This means a lot to an industry newcomer who put a year, not to mention his heart and soul, into this book.

Well, I can tell you now that myself and another judge were positively frothing over it (I still am).

I think it is a wonderful book, packed to the gills with both crunch and fluff. It's the example that should be held up to folks who think a supplement can only successfully be one or the other.

Again, congrats.

 

[Krug]

It's going to work differently this year. People will be "rating" each product out of 10 in each category, and selecting "Don't Know" for a product they are not familiar with.

THere's a flaw in this method. Advocates of one product will rate the other nominees 0 just so their product can win.

 

[Morrus]

THere's a flaw in this method. Advocates of one product will rate the other nominees 0 just so their product can win.

There's a flaw in every method. However, I don't imagine that people doing that will be particularly widespread, and security is pretty tight to prevent multiple votes.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Saying that every method has a flaw is no excuse for choosing a method with the worst flaw.

This system is much more likely to produce skewed results and encourages people to vote "0" on products that they have not read so that those they have read will win. At the top end, the people that end up deciding things will choose one "10" and rate all others below that, which does not affect the final outcome against people that merely rate all their favored products 10 (and all others "0" in the process).

Was there such a problem with voting for a single product that it had to be changed?

 

[EricNoah]

Isn't the old "vote for a single product" just as bad -- it's the equivalent of giving one product a 10 and all other products a 0, right? And to me there's nothing wrong with someone thinking one product is the strongest and the others aren't strong at all, so a 10-0-0-0-0 vote seems like a legit vote to me.

At least with the weighted vote there are more options for voters to "vote up" multiple entries or say "I don't know" if they don't know. To the untrained eye (mine) the 0-10 scale thing seems like it would be better.

 

[d20Dwarf]

You can vote down a product in this system, while in the other you can only make a positive assertion. Voting 10-10-10-10-0 effectively is a negative vote against one product. There are other strangenesses that I don't have time to go into. It just seems weird, unwieldy, and unnecessary.

Edit: Was there a real reason for the change? Or is it merely a whim?

 

[Psion]

You can vote down a product in this system, while in the other you can only make a positive assertion. Voting 10-10-10-10-0 effectively is a negative vote against one product.

And the problem with that is? What if you happen to think four products are great and one really doesn't deserve the praise.

I don't think we do anyone any favors by second guessing the motives of the voter. The point of the vote is, to be sure, to enumerate the perceptions of the public. All this method really does is provide an opt-out for products you aren't familiar with.

Edit: Was there a real reason for the change? Or is it merely a whim?

I imagine the tantamount reason was, as explained in the last page, to provide a method of voting that minimizes self-competition.

 

[d20Dwarf]

The best method to minimize (eliminate) self-competition would have been to limit the nominations to one per company in any category.

What this does is encourage people to vote for companies rather than products. ("Well, I really want Book of Taverns to win, but I'd better vote for Necropolis too so I don't screw Necromancer out of the award.")

Should be an interesting experiment, anyway.

 

[Psion]

The best method to minimize (eliminate) self-competition would have been to limit the nominations to one per company in any category.

Yes, well, I personally tried to avoid pulling too strongly for more than one company's product in a category, but in the two cases that it did happen, the judges felt that the companies in question had better products that the competition, and that this is more a vote about products than companies.

What this does is encourage people to vote for companies rather than products. ("Well, I really want Book of Taverns to win, but I'd better vote for Necropolis too so I don't screw Necromancer out of the award.")

I don't see that. Perhaps company-specific fans might think that way, but those who do that will vote for "their favorite company no matter the product" anyways. But I think/hope that the norm will be more that they will rate the one of the two products that they like better anyways.

Should be an interesting experiment, anyway.

Yes it shall. It seems a bit strange, but as the colonel's sig says, a good solution now is better than a perfect one next week. We shall see how it turns out.