Awards 2011, This time its Democratic

This year, since I am not at Penn State, the awards process will be somewhat different. As my involvement with the club degrades, it occurs to me that due to the transient nature of a club at a college some permanent system needs to be put in place to determine awards. Although the system may (and most likely will need to) be revised in the future based on the needs of the club, I have devised this year’s system as a starting point. This year will be the first shot at a system that is designed to run continuously, give all members an opportunity to be involved, and still award the most deserving members. Obviously it will not be perfect the first time out, but we need to start somewhere.

The awards system will have two major components; a nomination round and a voting round. In the nomination round, anyone may nominate any current or former member of the club for any award. One nomination is all it will take to be eligible, but the nomination must include a factually accurate description of why the particular player is deserving of the award. This description may be modified by any amendment; provided the amendment is supported by at least 6 votes in the nomination thread (a single player may have more than one vote as explained in the voting section). A nominee may be removed by at least 10 votes to “REMOVE Player Name or Forum Name FROM NOMINATION” in the nomination thread. A nominee removed this way cannot be re-nominated. The nomination threads will be open from whenever they are created until April 15th (tentatively), after which they will be closed and voting threads will be opened. If no one is nominated within the time frame, the award will be vacant for the current year. A month should be more than sufficient to allow for any necessary discussion/debate/or even a tournament if the club wishes to organize one.

Following the nomination process the forum admins and club officers shall create a thread for each award for the particular year e.g. “Limited Player of the Year-2011” This is the thread where voting will take place. Each nominee shall choose a description for why they should win the award from the nominee thread (if they were nominated more than once) and that description shall be posted in the opening post (including any amendments). Voting will then take place, with voters choosing a specific player (or specific players) to allot their votes to, or players may vote “NO AWARD” If “NO AWARD” receives more votes than any nominee, the specific award will remain vacant for the current year. At the end of the voting period (tentatively May 1st), the player with the most votes wins the award and the description from the voting thread is placed in the award’s thread. Players may post in the voting thread, but to avoid flame wars players may not post anything other than their votes (granted this is more of a containment measure, since no similar restriction is in place over the nominee thread).

Since some players are more qualified when it comes to judging relative skill/ability, players will be given a number of votes based of the below formula. This is the maximum number of votes you may use for each award, although you may split them up however you chose among the players nominated for the award, and you may use as many or few votes as you wish (for example, if you are no longer at Penn State you may not feel as though you are qualified to use your full contingent of points). As a clarification, you have this number of votes for each award and for both the nomination and voting threads, although they do not “carry over”.

+1 Vote: Being registered on the forums and having played at least once in this club setting at some point in your life (because everyone should be able to participate).

+1 Vote: Being an active member of the club. This means you show up at least once a month, not counting summer semester (because these are the PSUMTG Club awards).

+1 Vote: For this being an active member of the club for at least two years, as long as you are currently an active member (because players who have been here longer are likely to know the nominees better).

+1 Vote: For being a forum admin or moderator, or previously winning the “Admin of the Year” award (because of all the work they do making these forums nice, and because we need them to run the this process).

+1 Vote: For every PSUMTG Club Award you have previously won, including shared awards (because the players who have won awards previously are more likely to have a decent understanding of the game and be good judges of talent. N.B. Raspberry awards do not count).

+2 Votes: For every time you have previously won the award you are voting on as long as you are not voting for yourself.

For example if Jake were to vote for the “Rookie of the Year” Award, he would get 7 votes (1 vote for being on the forum, 1 vote for being an active member of the club, 1 vote for being active for at least two years, 1 vote for being a forum admin, 1 vote for previously winning an award, and 2 votes for previously winning the “Rookie of the Year” Award) while Mason would only get 3 (1 vote for being on the forum, 1 vote for being an active member of the club, and 1 vote for being active for at least two years).

Now, for some stopgap measures:

1. The” Remove Competition” Rule. A nominee who votes to remove another player from nomination, cannot be nominated for the same award (if they were already nominated, their nomination is revoked).

2. The “It is what I say” Rule. A specific group of people (including groups of one) cannot amend more than 2 nominations total (among all awards), or a single nomination more than once, in a single year without at least one vote to amend from outside the group.

3. The “Veto Power” Rule. A specific group of people (including groups of one) cannot remove more than 2 nominees in a single year (among all awards), or more than a single nominee from any award, without at least 3 votes from outside the group.

4. The “Only so Much Power” Rule. No individual player may allot more than 10 points to a single award or nomination thread.

Now, I doubt these rules will be perfect, and they are not designed to be such. They are designed to be a reasonable measure to get a reasonable result. After we see how this year goes I fully expect them to be changed (slightly or greatly) in the future.

Everyone should have equal voting power. It's only fair, and that way voting won't get swayed by one person with more voting points in any given category. Plus it will leave less room for complaints afterwards.

Also this current system heavily favors previous winners, some of whom no longer attend the HUB each week. For example, you won 4 out of the 8 categories last year, so you have booku points, but realistically for each category everyone should have one vote.

I didn't claim this process was perfect, and it is not designed to be such. It is designed to produce a reasonable result in each category. I do feel that some vote weighting is necessary, since (as long as we are being frank) not everyone understands the type of decisions that go on in a typical game and as a result not everyone's opinion (particularly on the player awards) is accurate. The goal of the weighting is to give additional votes to the people whose votes are more likely to be accurate. At first I considered DCI rating, although it is open to bias as well-not to mention that we do few sanctioned events. This had additional problems as well, e.g. they don't give ratings for things like "forum admin," "advancement of the club," or casual play. I decided to use awards because we have given awards for these, and I thought it would be too complicated to have to make people calculate their points differently for different awards (I already feel this system may be as complicated as we can go).

I think you and I are coming from different philosophical angles on this one. Your argument, as I understand it, is “we are all special in our own way and as such should all be treated equally.” My argument (in an equally disparaging summery) is “some people are better equipped to make these decisions, so we should give more credence to their opinions.”

Either way, although I appreciate your opinion, I would like to keep this thread open for questions. If this is a conversation you feel needs to be addressed, we can talk through PM, or we can handle it after this awards season.

It's not a huge deal either way, I just felt it needed saying.


Also, for each category I nominate someone in, please just consider 1 vote from me on them.

so...having ten votesfrom awards that you have given to yourself seems REAAAAAALLLLLY poor, just saying.

For the future can we only not count the past two years?

Because of a conversation created in another thread, I would like to request the creation of a new award entitled ~"Most Improved Player of The Year"~

Would that player be eligible for the "Rookie of the Year" award?

Improvement is certainly good, and it is always nice to see effort and persistence pay off. I really don’t want to open the door to changing the process this year (since the rules have been laid out, and doing so steps into a grey area) but it will almost certainly change next year based on feedback, and experimentation. I would be interested to hear what kind of support there would be for a “Most improved” award, and what other awards people feel we should have next year (if additional awards would be beneficial).

Forgive me, I thought the rules stated that we were allowed to nominate ANY player for ANY award in the nomination rounds. I misunderstood. I thought we were capable of also suggesting other awards in additon to the ones all ready laid out by you. Maybe it can be an award next year as you suggested.

There is a difference between nominating someone for an award (which you can-and are encouraged to do) and creating a new award. New awards are going to need to be discussed, and are going to require more than one person being interested in them (in my opinion we already have a few awards without enough interest in them). We can do that after the current “round” is over, and if there is enough interest that may be one of the changes next year.

Just because your suggestion isn't being implemented immediately doesn't mean it isn't a good one. It means this round has started, and we will play through it based on the current rules. After this round is over we can look at what was good, what was bad, and what we can do to improve it next year. There is no need to get defensive because a new award isn't being created mid-nomination round.

the semester isnt even over, why cant we add some awards that should be added? there is totally time

Seems like miss-communication is once again to blame. Believe me, I wasn't being defensive. I just simply requested the creation of a new award because I thought it would be a good inclusion. I'm totally fine with it being discussed now, later, or never.

Jake gets my vote for being a sport. i.e. he gets my vote in every category; including being awesome.

Josh gets my vote for being one of the most original and innovative deck builders.