Crothian said:
There isn't one as I'm sure you've guessed by now.
And that is exactly one of the points I was trying to make. There NEEDS to be one. There needs to be codification, not "rule by whim".
Dextra said:
taken to private discussion
Last edited by Dextra : Yesterday at 05:19 PM. Reason: Not worth it
Not worth it? Somebody makes a complaint and first you are dismissive and then stop conversation all together? To me, that just says that you have no intention on taking anybody's complaints or concerns seriously. Nice message to send to the publishers that you are hoping to attract.
Morrus said:
I'm afraid EN World's awards program will always be associated with EN World. Sorry to hear we won't be hearing from ICE in the future.
And I am sorry to hear that. You have no idea how sorry. I actually like the ENnies very much and think that they could be a great Award, but not so long as they are ruled by whim (as opposed to codified rules) and not so long as they refuse to break ties with a fan site dedicated to one single system.
Treebore said:
I think it isn't a point really worth arguing. The judges just nominate what they collectively believe to be the 5 best products in a category. The fans, who can be anyone, including industry professionals and publishers and freelancers are the ones who determine the top one in each category.
But the judges also get to move products from one category to another on whim. Not based on any set of codified rules that somebody can look at and say "well, those are fair rules", but solely on their discretion. And if one judge gets the notion that an adventure book should also be listed under Best Setting, and if he can convince (or even fast talk) enough of the other judges, then it gets moved over. And does it take a majority (3 judges) or a unanimous vote (all 5) to move the product into a new category? Or does it just take 1 judge? The point here is that we don't know, and we cannot look at a pre-written set of rules and say, "oh! there is the answer".
In the past, I thought that the cats like Best Adventure and Best Setting were judging the entire product, not just a portion of it, apparently I was wrong, but did not know it because the rules were not codified. My concern here is that participants be treated fairly. And unfortunately, there is no way to ensure that because there is no set of rules that participants can look at and see HOW things are done.
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What is boils down to is that ICE is not participating in the awards this year, period. That decision won't change.
In order for ICE to participate in the future, there needs to be some changes.
The changes requested were basically for clarification and codification of the rules, and a request that certain categories be considered exclusive in regards to certain other categories.
This done to maintain fairness to ALL the participants, not just those that produce huge books that cross-category boundaries.
Think about that.. Fairness for all or fairness for just those few companies that can make huge products that might fit in multiple categories? Last year, we saw that the fairness extended to the large companies, and the resulting fairness to the small companies? The answer given was basically "Too Bad, deal with it"
I also asked for the ENnies to do what they said that they wanted to do, which is to stand up on their own. Apparently, they consider that this does not mean divorcing themselves from one of the largest fan sites on the internet. They refuse to see that remaining tied to this fan-site
can cause unintentional bias among their judges and among the pool of available voters. (In my opinion, these sorts of things can only make the ENnies better (and please notice that none of the request would have a direct impact upon any single participant).
They apparently either refuse to see (or do see and don't care) that they will ALWAYS be considered the d20 awards so long as they remain tied to a d20 fan site. Several posters on THIS thread have pretty much proven that.
And instead of engaging me in conversation, I was treated dismissively (first in a post meant to brush me off, and then again in one where it was edited and the edit note said "not worth it", and then told outright that the ENnies will never be separated from EN World.
That makes me sad. It also means to me that perhaps I should just give up trying to talk to the ENnies board, and should maybe take my arguments to the publishers themselves. At this point though, I am a bit undecided.....