Of the Month Awards

Hello all,

I had a chat with some staff members this morning about bringing Of the Month awards to FTRP. Staff of course already has a shit ton on their plates, but as OTMs are something I've hosted previously on other sites, I offered to take charge on the project and run it myself. So now I am coming to the rest of the community with the idea, because I would like your input on one or two things.

For those who don't know what OTMs are, they are monthly awards to recognize community members, threads, etc. The winners are then highlighted on the board in some fashion. Most sites that do OTMs have a spot on the front page where anyone viewing the site can see it, but in the interest of not having to make staff edit the layout of the site I'd probably just suggest either a stickied thread somewhere or a page in the magazine, something along those lines. (If an admin thinks it would be easier than I assume to insert some kind of widget into the side bar or something, feel free to say so.)

One of the things I am ultimately hoping for some feedback on is part of the approach. As I said before, I've hosted OTMs on a number of sites in the past, and they all had different ways that they preferred them to be done for various reasons. I've found the most reliable method that makes the most people happy is to allow open nominations and votes by the whole community. To keep from having an overwhelming number of nominations options, I typically restrict people to only being able to nominate once per category. This allows for a good selection to choose from without having so many that votes are spread ineffectively thin.

What I really need to know is how people would prefer final votes to be tallied: publicly or privately? Upside to publicly is that the votes cannot be contested, while the downside is that everyone can see who you voted for and will know the results before they can be officially announced, (which I personally think is less exciting). Upside to handling votes privately through something like PMs is that it preserves the suspense and surprise of revealing the final votes, but relies on trusting the individual(s) collecting the votes not to fudge the numbers. Most likely the person collecting these votes would be me, since I'm the one that would be heading this, and my hope is that the community knows me well enough at this point to trust that I think cheating on something like this is utterly stupid and beneath me, but I leave reasonable doubt that there are individuals on the site that don't like/trust me. An alternate solution to this would be selecting a committee of members (such as one from each guild) that would help me collect final votes.

I'm also looking for suggestions on categories people would want to vote on. The three most common are Member of the Month, Roleplay of the Month, and Guild of the Month. In the past, I've also seen: Character, Staff Member, Event, Group thread, Solo thread, etc. All suggestions are welcome, though I will probably keep it to a smaller list rather than a bigger one and save a longer list for something more like an End of the Year award.

The rewards for this would just be bragging rights/for funsies. On other sites I have worked out more concrete rewards such as experience or something like jewel, but those were on sites that didn't already have as many opportunities to earn freebies like FTRP does. I don't think we need tangible rewards for this here, and given a recently rejected suggestion I'm incline to believe that staff stands with me in that train of thought and would veto such reward options.

Thoughts/suggestions appreciated. :)

While I'm all for this, and I personally don't have any ideas ^^; but the thing that stands out to me is the guild of the month from the common OTM. Mainly cause of the featured guild in the Mag we do already. So I personally suggest that not be done at least since I feel it would collide with the mags one and how we do it already. ^^;;;

I do like it, it's just that one thing that stands out to me, I swear :'D

I personally would find private voting better, but I'm fine with either. And...

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Item of the Month? (as in including custom items made by ppl etc.)

I think this is a wonderfully fun way to give recognition to members of the site!

While public votes are honest and open, they take out the element of surprise. I think maybe using some sort of polling website or system that can be checked by you to make sure everyone only votes/nominates once would be the best way to do it. That way, the element of surprise is maintained along with the integrity of the vote.

I do believe the community trusts you to handle this! Howerver, it could be fun to have a little committee of people to help gather nominations. That would allow for some people to participate in the organization of it each month instead of everyone just voting. Whichever way it goes, I'm sure the OTM organizing will be wonderfully done and well received!

Some other categories (even just for the end of year one) could be:
Most Edgy Thread (kek)
Best Romantic Moment/Thread
Spiciest GFX of the Month
Best New Acquaintance (As in best thread where two characters meet for the first time)
Kindness Award (someone doing something nice for others)

I think Character of the Month and Guild of the Month are almost too similar to the magazine though. On months that the magazine comes out it would seem a little repetitive to have featured mage, guild, and team but also have OTM mage and guild. Recognizing a staff member and different types of threads would be great categories though!

I typed more than I intended lol, my bad >>"

Well, Beaux stole most of my thoughts out from under me so I don't need to type as much lol. I support not duplicating things the magazune does already

Given the recent fiasco with voting, I think having a commitee would be better then a single person. Basically a way of checks and balances as it were, nothing against you personally. With a committee handling the voting, they can show SS to each other and hold each other accountable for  making sure the voting is fair for everyone. Of course thats only if private voting is chosen as the best option.

Nominations is the other point that kinda strikes me as a potential issue but it remains to be seen once this goes up whether or not my concerns are even valid.

Regarding the staff member of the month, I don't think its a good idea. While staff deserves all the praise for their enduring patience, neverending quest to better the site and, of course, all the fun they bring to us every month, I don't think picking one out of six is really a way to do it. I believe there is a better way that could be used to praise the ENTIRE staff for all the work they do. Just my opinion on that particular selection.

I think this would be a great way to bring the community together once a month and recognize various accomplishments (even if they werent intended as such) across the site.

I would like to see a "guild member"/"guildless" OTM with respect to each guild, (and the guildless masses) and to be tallied by GMs, or staff. Also, loving the idea of private voting.

I think this a great, fun idea! Not all popularity contests are bad. ^^

However, my opinion on it is that this seems more appropriate as a feature of the Sorcerer's Magazine (SM) than being its own thing. Of course, this means that their release is dependent on the SM's release, but this doesn't really seem to be an issue. Additionally, private voting retains the element of surprise, so that's what I'm going for. Cheating isn't really as big of an issue as it might seem if it's in the right hands.

Small reply <3

Basically, I lush it.

Much funs. Although it does sound like people are getting serious, and frankly if it's going to be lighthearted OOC fun then it should stay that way. If you're looking to legitimise if, as Leah said, there is the magazine. And seeing as the magazine already has a 'commitee' of sorts with 8 semi-veteran members, we could certainly validate it.

Frankly if it's going to be taken so seriously that it needs a 'committee', I'll probably insist a staff member be in the chat or whatever to keep an eye on things. Because let's face it, Competitions bring out the worst in people and people WILL be bitter when they lose.

Also adding onto these points, things covered by the magazine shouldn't be included. I.e. Guild members, Guildless etc. Additionally, I agree not to do a 'staff of the month' thing, as we all know I'll win. JK, nah it's kinda pointless cause there's so few of us and frankly we're all amazing.

Finally, I wanna say that I trust Seri enough to know she wouldn't rig the votes anyway, because she is the best bish and she ain't bout that life.

I think it's a great idea, and I guess I agree with Nessa about the OTMs all being incorporated into the Sorcerer mag. And voting should be private, because I like hiding things and hiding from people of the suspense vibes and all that.

But whatever it is, for what it's worth, I think it's a great idea.

Alright, since I've given this a couple days I'll throw another post in to reply to all of the above. So generally, the hot opinions seem to be:

-Host OTMs in the magazine
-Private voting
-Possible committee for collecting votes, just to cover all asses involved
-Don't include categories that may overlap with stuff already being highlighted in the magazine

Frankly, these all seem great and reasonable to me. I'm already on the magazine team, so I can easily turn OTMs into a magazine thing. I'll discuss the details of the best way to do that with the team and see what they think. I also agree with Nessa that this solves the issue of a committee to help me collect votes, as we can just make that the magazine team itself.

Current category idea suggestions:

-Member
-Character
-Thread (Subsequently can be split into group/solo options)
-Guild
-Item
-Most Edgy Thread
-Romantic Moment
-Spicy GFX
-Acquaintences
-Kindest Moment
-Staff
-Event

I've struck out the ones that had reasonable arguments posed against them, but kept them on the list as they could still be good for an EotY way down the line. I would want to keep the OTMs to categories that would have a reasonable number of available nominations every month. (ie such as how staff of the month would be less ideal cause there's a limited number of staff members).

So I'm leaning toward: Member (not character), Solo thread, Group thread, Romantic Moment, Kindest Moment, Cruelest Moment, Item, and Magic.

This is already a lot more than I planned on going with for OTMs, but I think they're all fun for different reasons. I really like the romantic/kindest/cruelest moments cause it would allow people to showcase bigger things their characters have done without having to compete with an entire solo/group thread competition. I also really like the Item idea because it would showcase things that have been made on the site and maybe help educate others on the different ways things can be made, which is also why I'd love to add magic as a category as well. The rest of the stuff can be held onto for EotY stuff, which I would turn into a much bigger thing. (In the past I've had lists closer to 20-30 categories of both serious and silly/ridiculous categories for funsies, and revealed everything in huge voice chat like we're hosting a podcast or something).

If anyone has a reasoning against any of these categories, speak now or forever hold your peace.

Kyran wrote:Nominations is the other point that kinda strikes me as a potential issue but it remains to be seen once this goes up whether or not my concerns are even valid.

In my original post I referred to them as "open nominations" but realized after you said this that I didn't explain what I meant by that. Nominations would be public. I would start a thread with a template for people to fill out and reply to, so everyone can see what's been nominated so far. As I stated before, I only allow people to nominate once per category to keep from having an overwhelming number of nomination options. People can nominate members/threads/etc that have already been nominated if they wish, as well as abstain from nominating in any category if they desire. You can nominate (and vote for) yourself or threads involving your own characters. Usually, I ask people to give a short blurb on why they chose their nominations, to allow them to try to sway votes with logic/reasoning.

Generally speaking, nominations would have to be for things that took place in the month being nominated for. So for whole threads, the thread would have to have been completed during the current month. For categories like the "moments" above, the post being nominated would have to have been posted during the current month, even if the thread itself isn't finished yet. Things like items, magic, and members don't need to have any time correlation to them, I think. I don't feel that enough of these are made every month to give a wide selection to vote from, however these things are on the site in abundance so there is plenty to choose from. I typically work out restrictions in my rules that keep people or threads from winning more than once in a reasonable period of time in categories where it makes sense to do so, such as Member of the Month.

Seeing the support for this idea, staff has Approved it for a go and will announce through either the magazine, or elsewhere as more things are decided.
Great Suggestion! @Serilda Sinclair

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