ENnies V - and beyond...

Kajamba Lion said:
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.

Yeah, I caught that, but I just ignored it. As I understand it; the scores are normalized - to iron out differences between ratings. And then the means are calculated to rank the products. You could still normalize the scores, but then use the median. My point was that the median is superior to the mean, I don't think normalization effects that argument.
 

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Umbran said:
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.

I think that, if anything, the opposite problem is what more frequently occurs in these kinds of awards.. the bigger companies have the deck stacked against them, because of excessive concerns for "fairness". I mean really, should R. Bumquist Unknowndesigner's "Fantasy Rol System", which all of 7 people have played and enjoyed, end up getting equal consideration as, say, WoTC's Eberron, just because 3 of the 7 people who've played it happen to be 3 of the 5 Ennies judges? Or should the fact that a given product has had an impact on thousands of gamers give it somewhat more consideration than an rpg that has only had an impact on hundreds or dozens of players?

Nisarg
 

nikolai said:
Yeah, I caught that, but I just ignored it. As I understand it; the scores are normalized - to iron out differences between ratings. And then the means are calculated to rank the products. You could still normalize the scores, but then use the median. My point was that the median is superior to the mean, I don't think normalization effects that argument.

Fair enough. :) I'm not much with statistics, so I can't say anything either way.

Best,
Nick
 

Spoony Bard said:
How many times will I need to repeat this --
[h1]There will be no return to a d20/OGL award format! Next year and all future years will include all RPG's in all categories.[/h1]
Then the Ennies are of no further use to me. Sad but true. I don't care in the slightest about other RPGs. Not that my opinion matters.
 

Psion said:
Here is where I express my insultedness. With the notions that the judges have to be drawn from elsewhere. That implies to me that someone feels we are biased or incapable of selecting non-d20 products.
I think the judges did a great job. I know and like all of you guys, and am positive that you did the best job anyone could do, which is to say, you were honest and impartial. If I lose interest in the Ennies, it will be because, by dint of becoming a plain vanilla RPG award, they will be useless to me.
 

Buttercup said:
Then the Ennies are of no further use to me. Sad but true. I don't care in the slightest about other RPGs. Not that my opinion matters.

That we must contine to feature non-d20 products does not mean that we can't continue to support d20/ogl products. Some people have put forth the idea of merging all categories and eliminating the distinctions, but no such decision has been made and there are many forces strongly arrayed against such a move.
 

Psion said:
That we must contine to feature non-d20 products does not mean that we can't continue to support d20/ogl products. Some people have put forth the idea of merging all categories and eliminating the distinctions, but no such decision has been made and there are many forces strongly arrayed against such a move.
Then you had better tell Spoony, because he seems to think differently. And in very large type, so that we can't possibly miss it.

Perhaps I'm just over-reacting due to the other things that have gone down here today, but I'm feeling pretty bleak about the future of this site, the Ennies, and D20 in general.
 

Buttercup said:
Then you had better tell Spoony, because he seems to think differently.

Spoony is spot on in that if we continue to be associated with GenCon, we need to continue to support non-d20 products in some form.

That does not mean that his suggestions for product categories that ignore a distinction are to be taken as anything other than suggestions. Anyting put forth by anyone other than Russ or next year's elected judges (which there are none yet...) are just that: suggestions. Take everything else with a salt-lick full of salt.
 
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Buttercup said:
Perhaps I'm just over-reacting due to the other things that have gone down here today, but I'm feeling pretty bleak about the future of this site, the Ennies, and D20 in general.

THings will blow over, and change. People were bleak when Eric left the site, people were bleak when the d20 game finally came out...both times people figured the site would end...it didn't , it just evolved. As long as people stiull like the site, and they seem to, it will go on in some form some way.
 

nikolai said:
You could still normalize the scores, but then use the median. My point was that the median is superior to the mean, I don't think normalization effects that argument.
Actually, normalization will somewhat take care of outliers, and therefore take care of a lot of what you're trying to accomplish using a median.

That being said... I do think using some sort of median (or at least a truncated mean, which is sort of halfway between a mean and median) is probably a better idea than normalization. But I would be much more in favor of doing away with scoring anyway, in which case none of that would matter...
 

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