Rachel Varga link wrote:
The rule change makes perfect sense. You are supposed to vote for who you think is best. When you pick someone because your pick is already taken then you are not voting for who you think is best.
That's why I'm saying that the nomination round is now essentially redundant. Why vote for someone twice (nomination and preliminary round) if you can accomplish the same thing by simply not having a nomination round? It'd save the awards team time and effort, as well as the voter base's time, as they wouldn't have to track the nominations in a separate round. They could just count everyone's pick in the preliminary round, and then give a full list of everyone that received votes at the end of the prelim round, noting the five finalists - Those finalists being the five people that were deemed to have the most picks, first in the case of ties for 5th place.
It'd also make the contest 28 days shorter, so not as drawn out.
For that matter, you could eliminate the preliminary round as well, but the dynamics there are a bit different. The chances of a first place tie with 5 finalists are significantly less than with 33+ nominees. A first place tie in the prelims isn't a big deal, as long as you end up in the top 5 and 'make the cut'.
But others have pointed this out already, I'm simply suggesting asking the contest voters about if they prefer going back to the way it has been done for many years before this one for next year, or perhaps about simplifying the process even further and stop wasting people's time.
That's something that IMHO the committee SHOULD poll their voters on, and now is as good a time as any to open that question up for next year. The committee meets in July, so doing a poll of the voters querying about this change can easily be accomplished during the May-July timeframe. That is, if they actually care what the voters as a whole think about this.
The Committee members are the caretakers of this particular contest, which has been going on in various iterations for over two decades now under the guidance of a number of volunteers, many of which aren't involved in the contest anymore as either voters or committee members. So the Committee should be mindful of what their voters as a whole actually want as well as the historical norms that have been in place up to this point.
Change for the sake of change is just silly, and in this case it bothered a number of people that in some instances have been longstanding voters in this contest, with how it was rolled out. A lot of the voters weren't even aware that there had been a change until 1 February 2019, when the nomination round was opened, which tells me it wasn't well publicized.
As a comparison/counterpoint instance, when the physical person verification rules were put in place, due to a handful of unscrupulous people gaming the system with multiple voter handles in previous contests, that change WAS suggested and publicly discussed at length in advance. And a number of people offered input on that decision, which helped arrive at the current solution in place today. In short, it wasn't perfect, but the committee did it's best to arrive at a mutual consensus of sorts, with the goal of ensuring the fairness of the contest.
Incidentally, that 'multiple handles' thing is also why the voting was moved OFF OF the house boards a number of years ago. It's pretty simple to have multiple accounts on a house forum, just use different email addys for each, and IP's can be spoofed/worked around. And the Bunnyboards have more members than all other house boards combined, even back then when it was just 2 houses, so it was pretty clear to the contest judges at that time that the contest was unbalanced. Hence that particular change of moving the contest to neutral ground. Just in case you were wondering about why votes aren't handled via house boards anymore.
But back to the point of my observation here:
IMHO the Committee really should poll the voters on this change for next year's contest and see what they want, between now and July. That's what I'm suggesting. ASK THE VOTERS. If the majority is good with the change, that's all fine and good. If they aren't... well we won't know that until/if the question is actually properly asked. And also perhaps ask the followup question of not even bothering with a nomination round in the future if people prefer the new way, since IMHO it's now essentially redundant.
I've said my piece. It's up to others to make their feeling known to the committee if they care enough to let them know.
If others have thoughts on this, I'd suggest PMing the committee members directly, so as to not cause too much friction on this board or cluttering up this specific thread any more than I already have. I simply wanted to point out the redundancy in the current system, and that it now seems wasteful and unnecessary to me, which I've done.
Carry on!
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