2011 Rose & Bay Awards Followup Report & Discussion

[ysabetwordsmith.livejournal.com]

The 2011 Rose and Bay Awards for excellence in cyberfunded creativity have now concluded.  Winners have been announced for Art, Fiction, Poetry, Webcomic, Other Project, and Patron.  We are currently working on the certificates for winners.  You can read more about this project on the 2011 Rose & Bay Awards landing page.


Special Thanks To...

These folks helped make the Rose and Bay Awards a success.  Please give them a round of applause!

eseme for managing the Fiction category.
xjenavivex for managing the Poetry, Other Project, and Patron categories.
itew for helping with the Art category.
karen_wehrstein for updating the Nominee badges.

Continued thanks to haikujaguar for the original logo art and to karen_wehrstein for the general icon, button, and banner art.

Also, thanks to all the folks who made nominations, to everyone who linked and talked about the awards, to the nominees whose projects appeared in our polls, and to the voters.  Participation has been enthusiastic all around.  Given that Fiction and Webcomic both had well over two hundred votes, and the other categories also had substantial numbers, we probably had 500 or more participants even allowing for some overlap from people voting in multiple categories.


What was new this year?

The Rose & Bay Awards launched in 2010. After the voting period ended, we held a discussion about possible improvements. Here's what we managed...

• Split off "Webcomics" as a separate category from "Other Project."  (This worked beautifully.  It gave Webcomics a chance to compete only against each other, had enthusiastic participation, and left Other Project free for things like music and movies.)


• Assign a different manager for each category. (We didn't get all the way to one manager/one category, but we did start with 4 managers for 6 categories. If this is still important to you folks, think about volunteering to manage a category next year. All we really need to meet this goal fully is personnel.)


• The Fiction category had non-transparent polling, based on that manager's preference.

What would we like to change for next year?

Some goals requested last year did not make it to manifestation in 2011. We'd like to keep trying.

• Move the Rose and Bay Awards off LiveJournal to increase accessibility.  (This would require having a crowdfunding hub site and/or a separate award website.  It seems very useful, if such can be manifested. Lots of people want this, and we've been trying to do a hub site for several years now, so far with little progress.)


• Subdivide the "Fiction" category.  (One of our biggest categories, this is the only one whose poll had to be split across two questions and then required a runoff.  Any ideas for good ways to break this into smaller categories? The subcategories would have to be easy to determine AND reflect the actual nominations; starting arguments over what belongs where is counterproductive and just peeling off a few items won't help.)


• Offer cash and/or other prizes.  (This would certainly make the winners happy, and be good publicity for the sponsors.  It would require one or more volunteers, preferably people who already have some kind of fundraising experience.)

Further Discussion

What did you like about this year's Rose & Bay award season?
Did you encounter any problems, and if so, do you have ideas for fixing them?
What do you think would improve the Rose & Bay Awards?
Do you have any expertise to offer for making next year's season even better?
Are there any other issues relating to the Rose & Bay Awards that you'd like to discuss?

Please refer other interested folks back to this discussion. The more input and ideas we get, the better our chances of making next year even better than this year.

Comments

[ellenmillion.livejournal.com]

*applause* A lot of work went into this, and congratulations to all the winners.

I have many thoughts...

I would like to see all non-transparent voting. I find it very awkward to vote publicly when I know so many of the nominees.

I suggest long and short fiction as the breaks in those categories. I further suggest that short fiction should encompass both short stories and poetry - there were only 4 nominations in poetry, which isn't comparable to the other categories. Long fiction can cover serials and novels.

I'd like to see discussion of divination as a category - I know a lot of people who do that.

Organization - it was very awkward having the final polls split up over several posts over several days. I honestly don't see any reason that one person can't post one poll that covers all the categories. I don't see any conflict of interest in a person who is nominated creating a poll that they can't manipulate after posting.

Please, please when creating the poll(s), have a link to the nominations, preferably individually, or copy-paste in the information from the nomination. alexandraerin's round-up post (http://community.livejournal.com/crowdfunding/263676.html) was very useful, and I'd like to see the poll (singular) laid out something like that.

Repeats - do we have anything in place to keep someone from winning year after year after year? Do we want something?

Could we get a forward-dated entry at the top of the crowdfunding community that links to the various entries? At the least, update the 'landing page' with links to the nomination and poll entries when they are added. It was not a useful landing page for actually getting to those places.

Better streamlining of the information presented in the voting and nomination posts would be very useful. It was a pretty off-putting block of text in each one - I got serious eye-glazing.

I would be willing to donate prizes and hosting for a private site.

I want to see other, more specific categories, including: best webpage, most creative crowdfunding method. Also, possibly best one-time fundraiser (as opposed to on-going projects) or best 'new' project.

Those are my copious thoughts for now. I may have more.

[bovidae.livejournal.com]

One suggestion off the top of my head: is there a rule yet that a given year's winner cannot be re-nominated the next year? (For one year or maybe two-three years, depending on what people think). Now that we know the R&Bs are here to stay, I think such a rule would help some of the lesser known projects and/or new projects have a fighting chance against long-established popular ones. Nothing wrong with being popular! I just don't want to see the same one or two projects winning their category year after year without a break for new stuff.

[eseme]

I also did not vote in categories where I knew or had some contact with more than one nominee, other than fiction, which had anonymous voting. It is very awkward having your vote visible to anyone and everyone, and visible as long as the poll exists, which can be years.

I think more communication among the staff members would be helpful. Had I known when the artwork would be made available, I would have held off on my first email to all 18 fiction nominees. As it was, I sent out a huge number of emails and LJ messages, and then literally four hours later learned that I was supposed to do it all again to tell them about the Rose and Bay artwork. Needless to say, I didn't repeat the emails for a week.

I really hope the awards can move to another site next year. That was the comment I heard the most - I had one person email me their vote who also included a vote in another category. I had to reply that other categories required votes on LJ. Another person private LJ messaged me that they had trouble figuring out LJ and polls.

I can help with cutting down the poll-post text, although that would also be simplified next year if the awards move off LJ. We could have a main page for the awards with their history, and info about how people can help. Then each poll can simply have the four rules at the top of it. I will note, however, that removing the Wall 'O Text is still not effective at getting people to read the rules - I made the runoff poll post very short, and two creators still voted for themselves, in spite of the rules saying not to do so.

I am also hopeful that a move to another site will allow longer polls - this way we could have all the fiction nominees in one poll. I also agree with AlexandraErin's suggestion that popular voting (as in, vote for all the projects you like, the ones with the most total votes wins) be used.

[minor-architect.livejournal.com]

I agree that the R&B Awards needs its own website and resident coder who is paid to do the work. I also think it would encourage participation to offer prizes to the winners in each category. However, I'd like to know what everyone thinks about running both fundraising efforts at the same time. Or do we wish to fund the website coding for basic features first and stock the prize kitty later? Or vice-versa?

The "Don't Vote For Yourself" rule

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

You know, in elections and in many other votes, you are not prohibited from voting for yourself.

Does this rule have widespread support? Does it actually accomplish something useful?

It certainly has been a repeated issue with people who are not already a part of the crowdfunding LJ community, and who miss that rule (and presumably also then miss the chance to vote for someone else because they didn't know that their vote for themselves would not be counted).

This rule also isn't as straightforward as you'd think because not all projects are the creation of a single creator.

I'm most familiar with Torn World, of course, where there are a few creators who are intensely active and a much larger number of people who are mostly readers, adding a story or piece of art only rarely. Torn World is set up to encourage reader involvement in the creative end of things. Should a reader who is inspired to submit a single piece of creative work be restricted from voting for Torn World? What about two or three? Or what about a theoretical someone who had a lot of stories published in 2010 on the site, and which remain published on the site, but who has none published in 2011--should that person be allowed to vote for that project in 2011?

Even if we came up with some detailed, arcane rule to cover all such circumstances, I suspect that trying to enforce it would be an unwelcome burden on the person administering the category in question due to the amount of investigation into the projects in question that would be required.

Categories

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Splitting off webcomics did more than give other "other" projects the chance to compete against each other, it also led to more webcomics being nominated. I think adding that category was a good decision.

I also would prefer to see poetry remain separate from fiction. Poetry has always been kind of an oddball item in the publishing world, with fewer people trying to make money at it than other types of creative efforts. Having it as a separate category at least shows we take it seriously, which I think is a good thing even if the number of projects remains small.

I'm also not at all sure that dividing fiction between short and long is workable, so long as serials are considered long--the poetry projects that were nominated were also mostly serial in nature, after all. Another thought is that if we move off of LJ for the polls, longer polls would quite likely be possible, eliminating something like this years' need for a runoff poll.

If we do want to divide fiction, we might want to distinguish between novel-length stories (whether serialized or not) and collections of short stories (again, serialized or not).

I would also like to see music split off from other. It's a well-defined art form that tends to inspire a large and enthusiastic fan base.

I really like the idea of most creative crowdfunding method. That fits right in with the purposes of this community, and will help us all to be aware of the variety of methods crowdfunding can take.

I also like the thought of honoring one-time efforts (though this category probably needs a better name).

Finally, I would really like to hear discussion on divination as a category. So far, the only comment on that issue was the fear that we don't have enough administrators.

If we do set up a separate site, my guess is that things can be set up to make the burden of administering the awards lighter, or, alternatively (if we can raise the funds), to provide some monetary compensation to someone who is not nominated in any category to administer all of them.

But in any case, I don't want to stop people talking about potential new categories just because the awards could use more staff.

I admit that staff is pertinent to whether and when the people doing the work will add a new category. However, if people feel strongly about one or more new categories, that might in and of itself inspire new volunteers, which isn't going to happen if people feel that the things they care about have already been rejected.

So, once the current poll is over, I'd love to see a poll and/or discussion about categories.

[alexandraerin.livejournal.com]

First, I strongly suggest a category for music. There are more than enough crowdfunded musicians and musical projects to fill a category and then some, if only there were greater awareness of the award outside this immediate community. Musicians are also good promoters, by necessity. They've been doing crowdfunding since before crowdfunding was a thing. It would be good for the awards (in terms of awareness outside this immediate community) and for all the participants in other categories to have the benefit of musicians driving traffic to the award pages.

Second, I think the benefit of making each category's voting check box style instead of radio button/drop down style should be considered. What's the downside here? Only if every single person who votes voted for every single project would there be a negative impact. The results would be more egalitarian, less lop-sided, and if the awards stay on Livejournal or in a medium with a maximum number of items per poll, well... the grouping wouldn't matter. Two strong contenders wouldn't be weakened by being grouped with each other.

People would still only be able to vote once, but they would be able to vote for multiple items. Given the fact that most traffic to the award page is going to be generated by nominees referring their fans/patrons/readers/listeners to the voting page... well, telling people to check out all the nominees and then vote for the ones they like might go farther in spreading awareness of different projects than saying, "Hi, I know you love what I'm doing, but please go look at all these other people and then vote for the one you really like, even if it's not me."

And as others have mentioned, it really does need to be easier to find links to the nominees. Moving the awards off Livejournal could be a huge step in terms of better organizing. If it is run on Livejournal next year... and heck, even if it's not... you ought to imagine presenting someone who has no connection or familiarity with the awards with a link to the landing page and picture how many clicks and how long it takes for them to figure out 1) what's going on, 2) where the nominees' works are, and 3) how to vote. What's intuitive to someone who's been here since the beginning and/or had a hand in setting it up might seem hopelessly complicated to someone else. All too often when I went to promote the awards I found myself spending far longer explaining the thing than should have been necessary.

Third, and as a somewhat minor and tangential thing, the rule against voting for your own project? I'd think long and hard about what that does for the awards versus the amount of extra mental overhead it's creating. Okay, I get the "it's tacky" idea, but once you reach the point of getting thousands of votes in each category that vote's going to be a drop in the bucket.

Fourth... I have very mixed feelings about a "no repeats" rule, if only because I might have withdrawn myself from the running this year if I'd known that was on the table. Each year, the award is going to be bigger and better than the year before. More people will know about it. It will be organized and run with the benefit of one more year's experience. With or without prize money attached, next year's winner is going to get more out of winning than this year's winner. Next year's participants will get more out of it even if they're just nominated.

Restricting repeats is something to consider for the future, maybe, but I feel that if it is adopted it should be done in advance of the first nominating period in which it will take effect.