Of The Month Awards
Hey guys! Okay, so the nominations for February are about to open but before they do, I have a little announcement to go around that is more an informative thing than it is a big song and dance thing...
I've had a few members mention that the OTM Awards are often centred around the same characters - the same characters get nominated etc, so the field is smaller for when certain characters win. Some people have referred to the OTMs as a 'popularity contest'.
I agree with this statement to a certain extent but want to use this opportunity to make something clear...
Unless you are a completely obsessed nutter, like Mere (love you hun!), not everyone on this site reads threads and stories by everyone else on this site. Which means that every person on Aeipathy is only going to be aware of the stories and threads of the characters they themselves rp with. Some of us only have a character in one kingdom, some of us are still new and only rping with a few members at the moment. Which means that everyone who has the potential to nominate characters and stories for the OTM awards are only going to be aware of potentially 10% tops of the people they can nominate.
Which means...
If the same people are the ones who put in the effort and nominate every month, they are only going to be able to nominate from that 10%-ish that they are personally aware of. Which means, as people have pointed out, we get similar nominations each month.
We cannot expect every member to nominate fairly across the board of a site that contains 140 accepted characters and over 10,000 posts. It's just not possible.
This is why wide-spread participation is so required in the OTM Awards. By nominating people from your own 10% of roleplaying, you cover a little bit more ground and a little more diversity and wider-spread nominations. Once we have the nominations, if you'll notice, I link to all threads and moments suggested and all character profiles that are relevant - people have the chance to go and read and entertain themselves with those that have been put forward for awards before then voting on who they think deserves to win.
But they cannot do this in a wide-spread and fair manner, if we don't have wide-spread participation and diverse nomination choices.
So, if you are someone who has been thinking that our OTM nominations and winners are becoming a little uniform, consider how often you have made nominations for the 10% of our writing community that you rp with. Have you been writing with people and telling stories that you think are worthy of nomination? Have you nominated them?
I completely understand how an awards system that seems to favour particular characters or members doesn't seem like fun, but I can assure you from my own reading and processing of nominations that a) people are not only nominating the same stuff every time but that b) it is the same members making that effort to nominate someone every time, which means in total the nominations look very similar.
In an effort to help encourage more diversity, you'll now receive 3 member points for every complete nomination set you submit (that means Character, Romance, Dynamic, Thread, Moment, House and AU Ship). These points will not be retrospectively added and will simply be added from this point onwards. When submitting your nominations, you can submit just one or two of these if you wish to, but you need to submit them all to gain your member points. If you aren't sure what to nominate for certain categories then ask for recommendations on the Discord server! Say - hey guys, I'm working on noms for this month's OTM - anyone have some good recommendations of romances they have liked this month that I can read up on? Let's make this a tool and fun activity that will allow us all to be a little more in tune with the world in which we write.
Hope this helps, everyone! See you in my PM Inbox!
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