Now Just to Show You....
Okay, so a lot of people have been saying that they wished that we had stuck with one version of this newer method before just scrapping it.. so here let me give you some totals.
The nominations had been up since December 18th, 2004.
18 people went through and did nominations.
We had roughly 40 Canon Character Nominations, spread out thinly with a variation of 28 different characters.
I had only ONE category with more than 3 nominations except the OC categories. That was the Willow Category, and one of them was Vampire Willow, which would have ended up in a seperate category. So there were 3 Willows if you want to get technical.
Now Here is how voting would have looked for that category.
Willow # 1
"I attempted to kill the person I have known as my best friend going on 8 years now, the man that I saw as a father and I didn't care. I let the magicks take me over. The thing is that woman, robot, whatever she is knows it all, its one of Wolfram and Harts specialties. They do this because they want to keep tabs on the powerful beings on this earth and beyond. Being as I am the most powerful witch in the western hemisphere, as someone once put it...well you see my point?"
I looked at her unable to tell what she was thinking. I guess I will just have to wait for a response...Goddess I hate this.
Willow # 2
That was just like Xander, dig himself in deep, then bail when he panics. I shrugged and headed towards the big table, pulling up a chair before setting my backpack on the back of the chair. I pulled out my notebook, three pens a pencil and a high-liter. What? I was prepared, nothing wrong with that. After I lined everything up I spun around to face the group, letting my arm hang non-chalant like over the chair back.
"Yeah Giles? Got a study date?" I started to snicker, until I realized that once again I was the only one laughing. I suck at jokes. Why can't just once I have one that actually works.
"Heh... no but don't we get some introductions here?"
Willow # 3
Ooh, blush. That's... cute. Oz was always unblushable, unflappable, un...everythingable that comes with awkwardness. That was always reassuring, but... this, this was sweet. I had to smile. I'd only hugged the man and he was blushing. See? Every gosh darn one in this place needed a hug, considering how not used to it they were. Well, I think he liked Sunny - he had smiled, at least, and that was definitely worth something, considering the Wesley I'd seen last.
"Tea?" I asked. Ooh, tea. After drinking diet caffiene-free Coca Cola for most of the morning, having skipped breakfast, tea sounded wonderful. And Giles always had a knack for having the good stuff, so I figured Wesley would as well. "Tea would be great," I said with a smile, and I decidedly ignored the cane. It was obvious he didn't like it being brought up all the time.
***********************************
Now that doesn't seem so bad right? However... not all the posts that we were given as samples even had that much substance to the comments. Most were one and two sentence replies, which I think makes it really hard to judge by.
Because of this I thought, okay so I keep it the way it was before, just have links to all of the character submissions, but then I realized that we were going to try to go to monthly.. that was going to mean a lot of reading for you to do in a short amount of time. I also knew that there were other places that you could go to nominate characters.. I just wanted to be different from all of that.
Had nominations gone up and stayed up people would have only had 11 more days to get their nominations in, and to be honest.. most categories would have gotten pitched out anyway due to lack of nominations.
Please know that I didn't toss out this old method just for the hell of it. It was something that we all discussed and worked on for a while to get down right, however when you see the ship is sinking, you don't take the passengers with you. You start bailing water out of the hull.
This is all we are trying to do. We have about 90 members, and I was not about to let 90 members down, by not letting their characters not get fair treatment. I tell you to consider this. Go through some of the sample posts that were given to us for the first round. Would you be able to judge character by only ONE comment from that post. Sure some comments are large, and have a lot of dialogue, but some of them you just don't get to see the whole scope of the chacter with only one section of a scene. It isn't fair to the voter, and it isn't fair to you.
I apologize that it took actually seeing this new method in action to realize that it wasn't going to work the way we had envisioned. Trust me I wanted it to work.
However, I will say this.
A lot of opinions were expressed, in comments and in email. We have been accused of manipulation, cheating, bias, being God-Like Mods and probably worse within your own friends-locked posts. However I am not going to let a few peoples negativity ruin all that we set out to make this community be.
Like us or hate us. We have offered you all proof and new options.
Stay or leave, make your choice. However no longer will I allow attacks within our own walls. If you have an opinion on how we are handling something email it to us. If you have an actual comment, or question that you feel will better the entire community to see it? Then by all means post it. However I do not want to spend most of my evening repeating myself in comment after comment, defending my co-moderators or members only to have you decide to leave anyway.
Thank you.
The nominations had been up since December 18th, 2004.
18 people went through and did nominations.
We had roughly 40 Canon Character Nominations, spread out thinly with a variation of 28 different characters.
I had only ONE category with more than 3 nominations except the OC categories. That was the Willow Category, and one of them was Vampire Willow, which would have ended up in a seperate category. So there were 3 Willows if you want to get technical.
Now Here is how voting would have looked for that category.
Willow # 1
"I attempted to kill the person I have known as my best friend going on 8 years now, the man that I saw as a father and I didn't care. I let the magicks take me over. The thing is that woman, robot, whatever she is knows it all, its one of Wolfram and Harts specialties. They do this because they want to keep tabs on the powerful beings on this earth and beyond. Being as I am the most powerful witch in the western hemisphere, as someone once put it...well you see my point?"
I looked at her unable to tell what she was thinking. I guess I will just have to wait for a response...Goddess I hate this.
Willow # 2
That was just like Xander, dig himself in deep, then bail when he panics. I shrugged and headed towards the big table, pulling up a chair before setting my backpack on the back of the chair. I pulled out my notebook, three pens a pencil and a high-liter. What? I was prepared, nothing wrong with that. After I lined everything up I spun around to face the group, letting my arm hang non-chalant like over the chair back.
"Yeah Giles? Got a study date?" I started to snicker, until I realized that once again I was the only one laughing. I suck at jokes. Why can't just once I have one that actually works.
"Heh... no but don't we get some introductions here?"
Willow # 3
Ooh, blush. That's... cute. Oz was always unblushable, unflappable, un...everythingable that comes with awkwardness. That was always reassuring, but... this, this was sweet. I had to smile. I'd only hugged the man and he was blushing. See? Every gosh darn one in this place needed a hug, considering how not used to it they were. Well, I think he liked Sunny - he had smiled, at least, and that was definitely worth something, considering the Wesley I'd seen last.
"Tea?" I asked. Ooh, tea. After drinking diet caffiene-free Coca Cola for most of the morning, having skipped breakfast, tea sounded wonderful. And Giles always had a knack for having the good stuff, so I figured Wesley would as well. "Tea would be great," I said with a smile, and I decidedly ignored the cane. It was obvious he didn't like it being brought up all the time.
***********************************
Now that doesn't seem so bad right? However... not all the posts that we were given as samples even had that much substance to the comments. Most were one and two sentence replies, which I think makes it really hard to judge by.
Because of this I thought, okay so I keep it the way it was before, just have links to all of the character submissions, but then I realized that we were going to try to go to monthly.. that was going to mean a lot of reading for you to do in a short amount of time. I also knew that there were other places that you could go to nominate characters.. I just wanted to be different from all of that.
Had nominations gone up and stayed up people would have only had 11 more days to get their nominations in, and to be honest.. most categories would have gotten pitched out anyway due to lack of nominations.
Please know that I didn't toss out this old method just for the hell of it. It was something that we all discussed and worked on for a while to get down right, however when you see the ship is sinking, you don't take the passengers with you. You start bailing water out of the hull.
This is all we are trying to do. We have about 90 members, and I was not about to let 90 members down, by not letting their characters not get fair treatment. I tell you to consider this. Go through some of the sample posts that were given to us for the first round. Would you be able to judge character by only ONE comment from that post. Sure some comments are large, and have a lot of dialogue, but some of them you just don't get to see the whole scope of the chacter with only one section of a scene. It isn't fair to the voter, and it isn't fair to you.
I apologize that it took actually seeing this new method in action to realize that it wasn't going to work the way we had envisioned. Trust me I wanted it to work.
However, I will say this.
A lot of opinions were expressed, in comments and in email. We have been accused of manipulation, cheating, bias, being God-Like Mods and probably worse within your own friends-locked posts. However I am not going to let a few peoples negativity ruin all that we set out to make this community be.
Like us or hate us. We have offered you all proof and new options.
Stay or leave, make your choice. However no longer will I allow attacks within our own walls. If you have an opinion on how we are handling something email it to us. If you have an actual comment, or question that you feel will better the entire community to see it? Then by all means post it. However I do not want to spend most of my evening repeating myself in comment after comment, defending my co-moderators or members only to have you decide to leave anyway.
Thank you.