Hello everyone,
first, I apologise for the delay in sorting out the next round of our TFP Awards.
The staff has been talking over the Awards because the response from users has diminished since the first edition of the awards. We feel that this has happened for some of these reasons:
- some users are not interested in participating in them, which is fair enough. To those of you who aren’t convinced by the awards, we want you to know that the goal is not to create an elitist group within the community. Far from it. What we want is for you to show appreciation for those users whose contributions you greatly appreciate. The award is simply a token of that. As far as I’ve seen, none of those users who have received awards have been big-headed about it, and we believe it will help better integration of users, because they’ll realize that they are valued here. If you do not get an award does not mean you are not all special, unique snow-flakes
- some users forget to vote or don’t vote, possibly because the voting system doesn’t facilitate the process (having to look through the boards specifically searching for candidates and then writing up PM’s)
- some users aren’t sure who to vote for, due to the high frequency of the awards
So what we have decided to try this time is the following:
The Awards will now become quarterly. That means that we will be having the nex round around early January (not the 1st for obvious reasons), April 1st, July 1st and October 1st. This will give users 2 to 3 months to consider the options and really observe the interactions on the boards.
We also wish to
change the voting system. In November, a thread will be created where we ask you to
nominate candidates for each Award that is up for the next round. We have also decided that to help the process along, the staff will also make suggestions for these, that can be discussed in the thread.
In December, we will post polls up with 4 candidates (maximum, minimum 2) for each Award. Then
all you will have to do is vote in the poll. I am looking into making them so that you cannot see the results until the very end.
The current awards will still be valid for the 3 months we indicated initially, meaning that come October 1st, the first group of award winners will no longer have the award icon next to their avatar, and so on successively for each group.
We feel that these changes address all the difficulties that have occurred in the past editions of the Awards, and we hope that this will help all of you participate more actively in this process.
Thank you everyone for being patient and for joining in! See you soon
