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Jul 23, 2005, 8:15pm

Evening,

As we move onto planning the CY Awards, we would like to know what you think
about them in the past, any ideas you have, or reasons why you do or do not
like them.

We plan on using this information to improve the awards, market research per
say.

You can email your comments to cyawards at gmail.com?subject=comments with the
subject line 'comments', please note that any offensive comments regarding
individuals will be disregarded.

Thanks ;)

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

Jul 23, 2005, 8:39pm

They were a popularity contest and not one single person even came to look
at arabus which was nominated, so how can the judging be fair if no one even
looked at it.
[View Quote]

Jul 23, 2005, 9:56pm

Ciena,

fair or not, as it IS a popularity contest, it's up to the people to
decide whether they visit a place and take a nominee seriously or not.
I got 3 times a CY, and was nominated a few more. Others who were
nominated never got the honours, even if their work was worth a lot.

It is useless to charge unfairness in this, as that is not the point.
A popular vote is NEVER fair, it follows a different path: people's
awareness, preferences, friendships, popularity, etc.

What would fairness be, according to you? I don't think ANY
competition is fair in absolute sense, if that ever exists. The
fairness of the competion itself is that the competition rules are
followed. All other fairness issues are subjective. A winner might
find that the competition was fair, a looser might feel just the
opposite.

The CY is not a measure of your value. It is a measure of how SOME
others know about or value your work, rightly or wrongly. So don't
attach too much value to it. It sure gave me a kick to receive a CY,
but it has not made my work more or less valuable.

There is no judging in the CY awards, just votes. Democracy has it
shortcomings too (outcome of last US elections? - my sarcasm, hehe).

Hope you carry on your good work, Ciena, CY or no CY :)

[View Quote] >They were a popularity contest and not one single person even came to look
>at arabus which was nominated, so how can the judging be fair if no one even
>looked at it.

[View Quote]

Jul 23, 2005, 10:59pm

I personally was thinking about the community votes producing the top 4, and
a pannel chosing the winner from them. However if thats plausable or if LT
would go mental is another story.

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

[View Quote]

Jul 23, 2005, 11:13pm

Lets do it in these newsgroups instead. Then we can discuss.

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

Jul 23, 2005, 11:28pm

If I am not mistaken, the first incarnations of CY were done with the
panel system. That was before my time (1999). By popular demand, this
was changed to a popular vote, as is now. If you try to change it
back, you'll be treading old muddy terrain and will have to remake
history :)

On 23 Jul 2005 20:59:44 -0400, "Strike Rapier" <markyr at gmail.com>
[View Quote] >I personally was thinking about the community votes producing the top 4, and
>a pannel chosing the winner from them. However if thats plausable or if LT
>would go mental is another story.

Jul 23, 2005, 11:30pm

I like mud. :)

SW Chris

[View Quote]

Jul 23, 2005, 11:36pm

<ahem>
Don't think LT won't be reading this comment.
*sigh* and you were doing so well...

[View Quote]

Jul 23, 2005, 11:40pm

Of course she will read it, her going mental or not is my indication of if
she likes the idea or not.

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

[View Quote]

Jul 23, 2005, 11:51pm

Personally I prefer to mininuke the mud and just walk over the radioactive
ash.

Im not sure what I think to this idea in general, I do however think that a
major benefit would be that 3 other people would get some kind of
recognition for their efforts, even if they do not win.

I think it would be more fair if say 5 people took the final vote, people
who I pretty much knew were not going to discriminate or show favouritism
towards individuals.

Also had the idea of showing the 4 screenshots on the main stage, and then
calling up the actual person when announced. (Have a media team for a reason
;))

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 12:54am

Divide the awards into two categories...
- "Most Popular BlahBlah..." voted on by the community
- "Best BlahBlah..." voted on by a panel of judges.
The judges should be selected from peers... i.e. excellent builders vote
on builders, owners of excellent worlds vote on best world, bot makers vote
on best bot.

~ Justin

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 1:04am

[View Quote] As in the past winners, perhaps?

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

Jul 24, 2005, 2:10am

What about that one idea we presented to you a few months ago?

Phase 1 - people vote for nominees
Phase 2 - people vote on the nominees. The top 5 are listed per category.
Phase 3 - people vote again, but they have to pick the one of the top 5.

The idea of this would be to round up all the votes that went towards
entries that only recieved a few of votes, most likely due to a popularity
vote (someone just voting for their friend or something). Then distribute
those votes towards top 5. Also, the phase 3 part would do their best to
encourage people to visit the build...such as by putting up screenshots and
maybe a description, and a teleport.


Other than that, I think you already have this covered though... my big
problem with the previous CYs was the lack of voting security...how easy it
was to vote more than once and get away with it. The only solution, after
much debate, is to disclude tourist voting, and the voting must be done
in-world. Voting cheatability completely taints the creditbility of the
awards, in my opinion.

- Com

Jul 24, 2005, 2:17am

Actually I was going to modify evo's database to deal with secure voting, it
would be reasonably easy.

As for tourists I just planned on giving them a password, ejecting them,
getting their computer ID, and using the combined computer name / password
as access to vote as they could get a password, and then come back and get
another password - but when they got ejected to check their CID if it
matched another one already registered (or same IP) then it would disable
their new password, limiting them to 1 account. Its not perfectly secure
(those without a MAC and Dynamic IP like me), but its the best I can think
of.

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 2:22am

Sounds good, though I'd rather have a moving image than just four or five
static screenshots. That would make it more of a hybrid between People's
Choice and the Oscars

Chris

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 2:25am

Sure - that would work fine.

I also do like the idea raised of the community providing a list of
candidates for the judges to chose from. For something with a lot of
candidates like best build, the list could be divided up between 5 judges,
who go take a look at whats worthy to go on a short list, from which the
panel would make their final decision.

~ Justin

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 3:34am

[View Quote] Hence the media department.

Speaking of which, there are still 3 or 4 places available on the media team
for this.
Also there are 4 or 5 places remaining for building, and 4 or 5 for
graphics.
We also need more a pair of extra modellers.

In short, we need quite a few people still, and there is nothing I can offer
you in return for your work, but I hope a few more people will apply anyway.

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

Jul 24, 2005, 4:11am

Yesh that sounded... pathetic =\

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

Jul 24, 2005, 8:07am

[View Quote] I like this idea. Maybe even give both awards in each category?

What I would like to see is revamping of categories:
- Some are confusingly named, overlapping or too restrictive,
like "Environmental Design", "Innovative Design", "Art Themed World"
- Some will just not get much entries anymore, like
"Virtual Art Project" and "Technical Programs" (= others than bots).
- While some categories get many nominations,
and thus many nominees who get left without a Cy.

I always liked the Write-In category where people
can nominate whatever they want, it's fun and creative.

Maybe less categories but broader and clearly defined,
and give out more Cys in them?
Actually that already happened a lot last year:
there were many ties, even 4-way (because of less votes?).
Cys haven't suffered inflation yet, it's more like
too many deserving entries do not get one, year after year.

That is also why I think that you shouldn't get a Cy
for the same achievement twice, no matter how
good and popular it is. Should that be in the rules?

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Jul 24, 2005, 10:50am

That is in the rules and should stay. You may be refering to Xelagot
having got an award twice. I got contacted by a CY official about
that. I showed them the difference between the two xelagots, 1999 and
2004 (it's on a long list of What's New pages on the web), they
consulted internally and they agreed that it was not the same
achievement, although the bot is called the same.

On 24 Jul 2005 06:07:32 -0400, "Mauz" <mauz at my.activeworlds.com>
[View Quote] >
>That is also why I think that you shouldn't get a Cy
>for the same achievement twice, no matter how
>good and popular it is. Should that be in the rules?

Jul 24, 2005, 12:27pm

I think there should be a panel of judges who are NOT in the same social
circle do the judging and they should go see ALL the nonimees worlds/builds
and rate each one 1 to 10. If theres a tie then go back to those and vote
again on the tied ones. That's the only fair way I can think of. I
personally would not vote for a world just because it's owned by a friend.
I would vote for the most deserving friend or foe. If you can't be
objective then you have no business voting at all.
[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 1:11pm

[View Quote] Err actually I didn't remember that, good for you ;)
I just recalled that years ago AlphaBit informed me
that I had won a Cy for my website again
(I'm still proudly wearing the 1999 award there),
but she agreed to transfer it to the second most voted.
Nice to have that in the rules now.

--
Mauz
http://mauz.info

Jul 24, 2005, 2:03pm

I'm personally going to suggest a structure like so:

1) Nominate judges.
2) Elect judges by popular vote.
3) Judge review and voting on all award nominees.
4) Popular review and voting on all award nominees (before the results of #3
are available).
5) Give out 3 grand prizes, which could technically all go to the same
entry: Community's Choice (winner of the popular vote), Judges Choice
(winner of the judges' vote), and of course the actual ... whatever, the
first prize, whatever it's officially known as (overall winner by total
points).

Of course, judge votes are worth more points than popular votes (the
relative scaling would need some thought), and only the real winner by
points gets the actual CY award (and prize? Assuming there are prizes),
however the other two get "official" recognition (unless one entry gets both
or all three spots, which is highly possible), which is probably what most
people want out of the CY's anyway: a chance to have their work seen by the
community.

If it seemed appropriate, you could go back and do a revote with the top 5
entries from the first voting cycle, though I don't honestly know if people
would rather have the voting process be less or more involved (national
statistics say 1/3 of the people who register to vote don't actually bother
to show up for presidential elections -- why did you register? O_O).

Judges would have to be the types of people who would have no reason to be
biased, so it can't be anyone from a specific AW community, and it should
probably not be anyone who's particularly active in AW development these
days; It would be best if we could get a lot of semi-retired AW cits who
know the territory but no longer have a direct interest in what's going on.
I don't know how many people are left with citnums in the <= 5-digit range,
but that's probably about who you'd be looking for (Builderz comes to mind
immediately, citnums aside, as well as quite a few people who are likely no
longer here).

Thoughts?

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 2:11pm

On 24 Jul 2005 11:11:57 -0400, "Mauz" <mauz at my.activeworlds.com>
[View Quote] >Err actually I didn't remember that, good for you ;)
>I just recalled that years ago AlphaBit informed me
>that I had won a Cy for my website again
>(I'm still proudly wearing the 1999 award there),
>but she agreed to transfer it to the second most voted.
>Nice to have that in the rules now.


I was just using xelagot as an example, btw, the only one I knew of.
Every rule needs to be applied in context. However well defined the
rule is ("same achievement" is not really a well defined term in my
opinion, so my reasoning applies even more here), you will always need
some discretion when applying it, there are border cases that can be
interpreted one way or the other. But once a decision taken by the CY
commitee, it should be final of course.

I would suggest that this rule be applied during the nomination
period, before the CY awards go to the voting stage and are announced.
In my xelagot example, I had already received the award publicly when
someone complained that I had already received this award before and
so my case was investigated. This can be very painfull (for both
sides), even if the commitee approached me very tactfully and in the
end the decision was favourable.

Alex

Jul 24, 2005, 2:44pm

"I don't know how many people are left with citnums in the <= 5-digit range,
but ..."
This list looks helpful: http://68.144.33.148/citizens.html .

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 2:48pm

Just to finish off my thoughts in this matter, here goes a general
suggestion.

There should be a way people can object to a nomination, for example,
because they consider that a CY rule has been broken, so that the CY
officials can investigate and eventually disqualify a nomination. Once
the nomination period is closed, the objection/investigation period
should remain open for some time. This is when rules such as "not
twice for the same" should be applied.

But like in weddings, there must come a moment when this
objection/investigation period closes. This should happen before the
voting/judging starts.

Only in the case of blatant fraud should people be excluded (or CYs
revoked) after the objection/investigation period has elapsed. Rules
such as "not twice for the same" could not be applied any more at this
time.

Alex


On 24 Jul 2005 11:11:57 -0400, "Mauz" <mauz at my.activeworlds.com>
[View Quote] [View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 4:19pm

Maybe we should a Celebrity Judge from outside of AW all good publicity
even a big company that would sponser it better than it is now
and call it after them for that year
some prizes would be great to sure would increase interest in whole idea
Ely ;-)

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 6:21pm

[View Quote] I was thinking to offer my help with my Voting Bot (already tested in several occasion) but since you are superior (and can do anything within a second) - I guess, your excellent bot will do the job.
Sorry to want to help. <Studying buzzword dictionary to beat Mark next time>

--
Andras
"It's MY computer" (tm Steve Gibson)

Jul 24, 2005, 6:33pm

Andras, yesh... how many times do I have to tell you?

Its gone up to 60 seconds now...

Visual Studio takes almost a minute to load ;)

PS: I use the Freedman Computer Glossary (Ninth edition) for my buzzwords
^_^

--
- Mark Randall
http://zetech.swehli.com

[View Quote]

Jul 24, 2005, 7:09pm

[View Quote] > Andras, yesh... how many times do I have to tell you?
>
> Its gone up to 60 seconds now...
>
> Visual Studio takes almost a minute to load ;)
>
> PS: I use the Freedman Computer Glossary (Ninth edition) for my buzzwords
> ^_^
>

I usually make up my own buzzwords! <I have an advantage - Hungarian is not a common language on the Internet :)>

PS: I would use some REAL development tool if I would be you.

--
Andras
"It's MY computer" (tm Steve Gibson)

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