Why aren't you voting?

[Morrow]

The highest profile ENWorlders will get the nod. That's probably how it should be, those are the people who have contributed the most to the community. There's no mystery. So why bother?

Morrow

 

[GlassJaw]

I didn't vote, nor participate in previous years voting because the ENnies are unimportant to me. It seems to me the Judges and the products turn into a popularity contest (but then, cliqueish behavior is standard on forums, including the manner of policing the forums themselves), the results are meaningless for the most part in ENWorld, and even more meaningless outside of ENWorld. Winners or nominee's presence make no difference to my buying habits.

Well, the results certainly weren't meaningless to the people/companies that won at the ENnies this year. I do have to agree with you on some of your other points though. I would love to see an industry-accepted awards medium, and so far, the ENnies have done a lot towards meeting that goal. But I agree, for it to be standardized and accepted by the industry as a whole, it needs to get away from the forums and more into the "mainstream" RPG market (whatever that is).

In addition, the ENnies cause plenty of irritation to me, in the form of arguement threads, badmouthing of companies, companies whining, plus all these silly banners and announcements cluttering the pages at times.

So, I don't really see the ENnies as a "fan award", because of the limited sampling. It's more like an ENWorld Ego Stroke to pat their favorites on the back and reward themselves for their importance.

I know for a fact that a lot of good people have sacrificed a lot of their own time to make the ENnies what they are today and ego certainly isn't a factor at all. If you had a chance to go to the ENnies this year at GenCon, you know that it was a great event. When it was over, my first thought was that I wish it was more widely known because it was such a great event.

The limited sampling is an issue though and I haven't been thrilled with the nomination/voting process of judges either. I think these mechanisms keep it confined to the "cliqueishness" you refer to that's inherent to the nature of forums.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I didn't know about this round. I could swear there was a voting round just a few months ago, and I thought the ENNies was a yearly event.

The last time I had an opportunity to vote for the ENNies, I realized I was only interested in one or two of the products displayed and had bought none of them (not at the time, but I may have bought some later). That doesn't actually make it impossible to vote, but it makes it possible to make an uninformed vote.

Even some years back, before my gaming desires changed and I sometimes had one or more products nominated by the ENNies, I never had competing products. So a vote wasn't really fair, IMO. (I think I was a playtester for a couple of them too, and that would be a biased vote.)

Maybe this time around Iron Heroes is a contender. I'll check it out. But still, I doubt I own its competitor, so any vote would be uninformed.

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

I didn't know about this round. I could swear there was a voting round just a few months ago, and I thought the ENNies was a yearly event.

The last time I had an opportunity to vote for the ENNies, I realized I was only interested in one or two of the products displayed and had bought none of them (not at the time, but I may have bought some later). That doesn't actually make it impossible to vote, but it makes it possible to make an uninformed vote.

Even some years back, before my gaming desires changed and I sometimes had one or more products nominated by the ENNies, I never had competing products. So a vote wasn't really fair, IMO. (I think I was a playtester for a couple of them too, and that would be a biased vote.)

Maybe this time around Iron Heroes is a contender. I'll check it out. But still, I doubt I own its competitor, so any vote would be uninformed.

Well, actually, no voting on products just yet. Currently the voting is for selecting the judges.

 

[CronoDekar]

Count me in the "apathy" category. I just really don't care who gets to be a judge; isn't really that important to me. And I'm also with Psi as far at the informed vote goes -- particularly this year since I haven't been keeping up much with books at all, and normally I don't even keep up with 3rd party books.

 

[derbacher]

Voted the day it was started. My votes went to two "old timers" and three new faces. This is the democratic process, folks. Let your vote speak, even if you are overwhelmed. (Like me in the presidantial elections ).

 

[Conaill]

To be honest, I'm still going through and thinking about the nominees. Based on previous ENNIE product nominations, I haven't been particularly impressed with the judges nor their product nomination decisions, so I'm a little leery.

Figured I might as well post this question on this thread too:


Is there a way to find out which judge voted for which product? And if not, why not?

Seems like that might be a good tool to refine people's choices, beyond just "I think they probably did a good job last year". Voting records in congress are a useful tool to guide future elections. Might as well make them available to the voting public here too...

 

[Crothian]

Is there a way to find out which judge voted for which product?

Nope

 

[Conaill]

Nope

And if not, why not?

 

[Crothian]

And if not, why not?

I've been judge for three years, after the first two years I tried to start threads and get people to discuss the pros and cons of what I picked and what I didn't pick but no one was interested in those threads so this year I didn't bother. I thought about doing it but in the end as we've seen in threads like this there are enough apathetic people would post they have no interest in it that it just wasn't worth my time to try. I try to stick to threads that might actually be fun.