ENnies V - and beyond...

[Lela]

I merely meant I wouldn't drop the fan awards. I haden't considered doing both (wow, I was tired when I read most of this thread).

That, I think, might appease both crowds. The smaller business has far more of a chance among the judges, while the massive number of masses can make their vote count with minimum worry of cheating/manufacturing. The consumer, of course, can decide which one to give more weight too.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Well, now that The Shadow has retired, I guess someone has to take over...

Now that I've what? :\

 

[Lela]

There was an actual EN-ID "The Shadow" He wrote the Story Hour, "The Shadow Knows" but retired when he started to use the character as too much an extension of parts of himself he didn't like. Sounds odd, I realize, but it was somewhat valid.

In any case, I highly recomend the story hour, unfinished as it may be. It was filled with some of the realest* characters I've ever seen.

*Yes, it's a word now.

 

[Ed Cha]

I'm confused because people are saying it's the ENnies, so the judges should be from EN World (which I totally agree with), but at the same time, voting is open to the public as it is the Gen Con ENnies. That doesn't make sense. Which one is it? I still think people should register to vote. Throw out suspect voting, too.

 

[Crothian]

I'm confused because people are saying it's the ENnies, so the judges should be from EN World (which I totally agree with), but at the same time, voting is open to the public as it is the Gen Con ENnies. That doesn't make sense. Which one is it? I still think people should register to vote. Throw out suspect voting, too.

Its both. Leaving the voting for everyone is more inclusive to the fans of other games that don't want to register here. It's more friendly that way, plus there is no reason that people not registered are voting and more suspect then the people that are registered.

 

[Ed Cha]

Its both. Leaving the voting for everyone is more inclusive to the fans of other games that don't want to register here. It's more friendly that way, plus there is no reason that people not registered are voting and more suspect then the people that are registered.

But you have to register to be eligible as a judge.

 

[Crothian]

But you have to register to be eligible as a judge.

Voting for the winners of the awards and being a judge are two different things though. The ENnies are from EN Word so the judge process is kept here. But voting for all the winners is open to everyone.

 

[nikolai]

Hi all;

I'm a bit disappointed no-one has responded to my post on page 9. Let me try to rephrase it.

The reason people are unhappy with the current voting system (done by calculating the mean of the votes), is that is favours people on the extremes. If there are seven votes of:

1, 6, 6, 7, 7, 8, 8

for a product. The person who has the most say in the outcome is the person who rates it as 1. The system rewards people with extreme opinions, and rewards then more the more extreme their opinions are. All votes aren't equal in deciding the outcome; some people's have more weight than others. If you change this to a system which take the median, then it becomes fair. At the median the number of votes that say the value is too high are exactly balanced by the number of votes that say it is too low.

If you don't want to go for some approval voting system (that would favour products with a high coverage), but don't want a system which encourages tactical voting (like the current system); then this might be a good alternative.

 

[Old Fezziwig]

Morrus had said something earlier (one page 8) about the votes being normalized, which means that it's not quite just the mean of the votes that determines the awards. Conaill suggested what that could mean here.

best,
Nick

 

[Umbran]

What are the "rules" that define how its right or wrong to dislike a product?

There are no hard and fast rules, for a simple reason - they would be impossible to enforce. The idea is to pick a voting system that least needs rules while still allowing the flexibility we like.

As for your Avalanche example - personally, I think one should vote for the individual product, not the company (unless you are voting on a "Best Company" category). If a particular Avalanche product did not have the offensive cover, the covers of other products they put out should not influence your vote on it.

I put the blame on the choice of voting systems.. if the people running the awards did not want people to vote politically against companies they dislike, they should not use that system of voting, period.

That's why we're discussing it. But it isn't quite that simple. The voting system currently in place has flaws. But every system does. We're just considering what other options are available, and what their flaws are. No point in patching one hole to open another we like less.

Plus, there are statiscial methods one can use to minimize the effects of political voting, which mitigate the problem in our current system somewhat.

Otherwise, its implicit in the voting system that any way you can legitimately vote is an appropriate way to vote.

Well, as a practical matter, yes, because there is no method of enforcement. But that's rather like saying that stealing a lollipop from a 4 year old is okay, because nobody will catch you.

What's wrong with that?

What's wrong with that? Simple - market penetration is not directly correlated with product quality. And we'd like the prize to be for quality.

As an extreme example - WotC has the greatest market penetration of all RPG companies. But much of that penetration is built upon the past financial success of the Pokemon CCG, which has little to do with the RPGs WotC produces. A huge advantage due to unrelated business just isn't right for a "best of" award, IMHO. So, we try for a voting system that mitigates such advantages.