ICE and the ENnies

[eyebeams]

Regarding the particulars, I, personally, won't argue much over whether the RPG experience was limited to one or three years. My main concern would simply be to avoid conflict of interest. I'd want to make sure that none of the current nominees (as of this posting) are ruled out, assuming that there's full disclosure.

The trouble with one year is that products are often planned up to two years in advance. Plus, you do have people who have low but regular working cycles, especially in layout and art.

I do think that 1 year on two off wouldn't work. I've run a couple grad student conferences and for any group undertaking, experience is invaluable. The first year you screw everything up; the second you screw most things up; and the third year you start to get an idea of how things really work. Again, I'd probably go with 4 on/2 off as a limit.

Experience is the last thing that should inform fan judging if the idea is to be representative of fan interests.

That said, I already get to promote those rules by voting and telling others what I think. You can promote your guidelines or rules in the same ways.

That's arbitrarily appealing to the vote. If the voting process was designed to also determine policy directly, then there wouldn't be *any* rules, would there? Hell, there wouldn't even be judges, just three rounds of voting for noms, categories, then winners.

(In fact, such a system is perfectly workable. If you're serious about all democracy all the time, then you should argue to emove the judges. Arguing for the process as it is is not an argument in favour of the wisdom of the fans, but an argument that the fans are guided by policy X rather than Y.)

Is there a compelling reason to formalize the rules further? Especially given that there will be people who disagree with both your and my set of guidelines.

Sure. What I've proposed is consistent with the stated goals of the awards. In this thread, Morrus talks about how he doesn't want industry interference. The virtue of the awards is that it's supposed to be by and for fans. I am confident that eliminating part-timers and repeat candidates will lead to more new faces with equally sharp insights. I'm disturbed at suggestions that fans need to be able to pick a past judge/past industry person. Why is that? If people think that there really are so few able potential judges, it actually shows *less* confidence in fandom, not more.

 

[Settembrini]

I can understand eyebeamz objections, but I can´t really wrap my hand around how "the industry" is to be defined.
Is any lad with a pdf that is for sale in "the industry"?

I fear our hobby isn´t structured in a way that lends itself to a clear-cut distinction. I daresay the best one can do is to be totally open on the projects and companies one is involved with.

Take Jeff Rients: He´s totally a fan, but helped a buddy of his to collect Traveller Timeline Material. Now that timeline is on a CD product by FarFuture Enterprises. That would put Jeffs contribution in a 2006 publication. This truly is not an "industry", is it?

That way us fans can vote for the judge with our preferred bias or whom we think as being the best represantative of our fandom.

 

[eyebeams]

I fear our hobby isn´t structured in a way that lends itself to a clear-cut distinction. I daresay the best one can do is to be totally open on the projects and companies one is involved with.

Take Jeff Rients: He´s totally a fan, but helped a buddy of his to collect Traveller Timeline Material. Now that timeline is on a CD product by FarFuture Enterprises. That would put Jeffs contribution in a 2006 publication. This truly is not an "industry", is it?

It depends on whether he got paid in something other than comps. I'm sure the awards admins can handle vague areas as well as they did in the past. It's merely the duration of the rule that's too short.

 

[JoeGKushner]

In terms of distancing the Ennies from En World, I've mentioned in the past that perhaps staff reviewers and other staff members shouldn't be allowed to run.

I've also mentioned 'term limits' to prevent the same faces from cropping up time and again.

One of the problems with the 'ties' to industry though, is in a digital age, what is a 'release' date on PDF products which tend to be evergreen and prone to revision far more than print titles?

For example, what would be appropriate if a print compilation of old Pyramid stuff came out with material I wrote ten years ago? Is that 'new' material or old?

What about a revised PDF using OGC material someone wrote for a charity project or something along those lines?

 

[eyebeams]

In terms of distancing the Ennies from En World, I've mentioned in the past that perhaps staff reviewers and other staff members shouldn't be allowed to run.

I've also mentioned 'term limits' to prevent the same faces from cropping up time and again.

One of the problems with the 'ties' to industry though, is in a digital age, what is a 'release' date on PDF products which tend to be evergreen and prone to revision far more than print titles?

For example, what would be appropriate if a print compilation of old Pyramid stuff came out with material I wrote ten years ago? Is that 'new' material or old?

What about a revised PDF using OGC material someone wrote for a charity project or something along those lines?

Are you getting paid for the new compilation? If not, then no. Given the prevalnce of work for hire, recompilations usually don't occasion any further payments, so it's not a issue.

Plus, of course, increasing the mandatory non-industry period for judges actually solves this problem by putting eligibility outside the lifecycle of a typical product.

 

[DaveMage]

In terms of distancing the Ennies from En World, I've mentioned in the past that perhaps staff reviewers and other staff members shouldn't be allowed to run.

Funny - I've always thought that the staff reviewers would make the best judges.

 

[eyebeams]

Funny - I've always thought that the staff reviewers would make the best judges.

Fan reviews are a standard practice. Does Pyramid even pay for reviews any more?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Funny - I've always thought that the staff reviewers would make the best judges.

We do.

I'm talking about an 'apparent' conflict of interest. Just because we have the skill sets doesn't mean that other entities don't see a conflict of interest as we're reviewers of a 'd20' site (althought several of us do reviews on other sites like RPG.net). and this may be seen as a conflict of interest or just keeping En World and the Ennies too close together.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Fan reviews are a standard practice. Does Pyramid even pay for reviews any more?

I haven't done any reviews for years because I found the word count too stiffling. And I was lazy and hated editing my stuff before sending it in. Last time I think it was $25 per review.

 

[BSF]

Your familiarity with real world organizations should make you similarly familiar with the problem of candidates taking their places simply because there are no other real alternatives or when candidates simply take turns at a set or shift through a static, repititious slate for the sake of appearances.

Fair enough, but I know that when I nominated myself a few years back to be a Judge, I was in the field with roughly 2 dozen people. I said my piece, I didn't garner enough votes to be a judge.

I didn't view that as the option of no other candidates being available. Nor was it really candidates taking turns. Those judges were voted into position over a field of many.

One thing that does seem to be occurring is that fewer people are interested in judging. I do see that as a problem because it begins to narrow the field. The interesting question then boils down to why are there fewer judges nominating themselves?

A few years back I wanted to give back to the community and hopefully have fun in the process. But I knew it would take quite a bit of time.

For Gen Con 2006 I knew I would be too busy at (RL) work to do a good job as a judge, so why nominate myself? But there is another reason at work here, for me. I have watched enough of these conversations that I begin to see what hassle is also associated with being a judge. Mind you, I am not implying that well presented concerns and observations shouldn't be part of the process, they should. But over the years there have been a lot of allegations of bias, rubber stamping, and cries that the system won't work. I know that if I put in the time it takes to be a good judge, I would react poorly to such accusations. I could rationally brush them off, but it would suck a lot of the fun out of the process for me. That mentallity influences me as well. Why would I want to put all that time into the process when I will have other people accuse me of ill intent and poor handling of a volunteer post?

You can't expect that everyone will be happy all the time. And if you volunteer to judge, you had better be prepared for these accusations. Right now we have 12 candidates on the nominee page. We have a few days to garner more candidates. Will it happen? Or is the field shrinking? And if it is shrinking, why?