Well, if you pay much attention to the ENies you probably already know this, but starting Monday, July 16, the board will be accepting nominees for judges for next year's ENnie awards.
I'm very excited about this, and I've discussed it a bit before, but I'd really like to highlight it because I think it's a huge step forward for the process. The nominees will be posted July 30th, and voting will run August 6-12th. This will allow the new judges to be announced at GenCon, so who ever is elected can begin reviewing products right away.
As I've said before, one of the greatest barriers to fair judging is simply time. 240 books in 3 months allows for very little actual playtesting. An 11 month timeline will make careful, thoughtful review much more possible, and can only help the process.
This was absolutely necessary, and I've already seen a couple complaints about how quickly it follows last-year's nominations, but I really encourage the detractors to think it through. Change has to happen sometime, and it's going to be rough whenever it happens, so we might as well rip the bandaid off now. In the end the awards will be better for it. The time table is short, but it's the best possible solution. You've already seen the kind of choices this year's judges have made, so you can vote us out if you think we've lost touch with the community, and publishers can get any available products into the hands of judges as soon as possible, perhaps even taking time at the con itself to demo what they have and get things moving right away.
I love it.
That said, I've heard a lot of complimentary things lately, and while I'm not sure I deserve them all, I do appreciate them. So, here's my commercial:
I'd like to throw my hat in the ring again for next year, but assuming it works like last year, I'm going to need a nomination and a second. Last year I self-nominated, but I think doing so at this point is a bit too self-centered even for me. If you like what I've done here, if you want to see it happen again next year, and most importantly, if you like the way I voted, I'd appriciate someone popping into the nomination threads and dropping my name. Just as importantly, I'd like your vote when the time comes. I've seen it implied that my mobilization of people outside the online community last time was a little unfair (though, in my defense, they were all gamers), so I don't intend to do that again. That means I'm going to need all the help I can get. I'll participate in whatever election threads I can find, but apart from that I'm only going to ask my gaming group and my readers for their support. If I still get in, then I guess I deserved it.
That's it. No more bugging you about my nomination. I'm going to get back to my normal blog and try to actually get this thing done before the awards ceremony renders it unnecessary.
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3 comments:
Is there a place where we can see how you actually voted, or should we assume the final nominations were your votes?
I think going so far as to actually post my individual votes my be stepping over the line a bit. The judges' deliberations are supposed to be secret, and it wouldn't exactly be fair to the other judges to post my votes, thus betraying where they differed.
Not to mention of course that, for the most part, we decided everything on the list as a group. There are a few things that I'm disappointed didn't make the list, but as far as I'm concerned, everything on that list deserved a vote.
What I will do is this, I'll blog about a few of the products not on the list that really stood out to me. That way you can see some of my individual tastes without me having to discuss the votes I cast directly. Look to the Best --- commentary articles for that, and ideas of how I decided what to vote for.
Is that good enough? I guess it was a bit stupid of me to ask you to select you candidate based on votes, but then refuse to reveal how I actually voted, but I guess I didn't really think it through.
I'm sorry. If there is any other information you want though, I'd be glad to give it where I can.
You deserve to be judge again Jer! I will certainly participate in the nomination, I will just have to actually pay more attention to EN World than I normally do. :)
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