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the guest of honour: are site awards detrimental?


NyxDarklore
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I dislike OTM's immensely.  They can be bias, an outright popularity contest on their better days, and can be completely demoralizing to those who don't often or never win.  

 

.....That being said.... 

 

I am a fan of random OTM's and spotlights.  I add all new characters to a spreadsheet each month and do a random OTM for 4 characters on the site to feature in the newsletter.  It's not voted on or popularity based and once they've won they won't win again for at least a calendar year so it gives everyone an opportunity to be in the spotlight.  

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I don't think I'd like to be in the spotlight... quite happy not being teacher's favorite. I think if anyone is going to have awards they should be fair and everyone should be able to win them.

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5 hours ago, Gereth Yaztromo said:

I don't think I'd like to be in the spotlight... quite happy not being teacher's favorite. I think if anyone is going to have awards they should be fair and everyone should be able to win them.

 

perhaps I wasn't clear...  lol.  When I say random I mean I let like... a number generator choose the four.  So definitely not teachers pet.  ...Unless the teacher is a number bot.  😁

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I'm going to be the odd neutral here.

 

Recently I had an issue where a member of a website was a potential candidate to member of the month. The decision for these OTMs are between all members of staff. The user in question two months prior left the site, dropped two leaders + HPs, and was unquestionably rude after being warned for their previous actions. Previous to the previous, their behavior was consistently taking IC to OOC and vice versa, along with general rudeness for ~2 years. Then right before the idea to make them MOTM, 10 days previous to the idea brought up, they did a r*pe plot where their homosexual male character shapeshifted into a female and manipulated/r*ped another female (who was a group leader) into having children with them. Not only did it exploit another character, but it disserviced the LGBT community. This plot blatantly against our site rules and ratings policy. Due to this, they were talked to afterwards and warned properly. Many other situations occurred with this user, notably making them infamous. Despite this, other staff members brought them up for MOTM... and I put my foot down. 

 

'Of The Months' are supposed to be an ideal representation of the community. Whether that's a fantastic character, writer, or user, the choice should be wise and accurate to the site's vision. It is NOT a popularity contest or out of favoritism. The rest of staff were friends with said user (I say this lightly, as they talked behind their back negatively). They agreed on all decisions previous to this. My assumption is that they would agree. Despite this, they still advocated for said user and blew up when I disagreed. Drama ensued. Many left. Friends I had for quite awhile chose to leave because they did not see the hypocrisy in their own actions.

 

Even so, I do not regret sticking to my position. Ther for someone who DID NOT deserve that honor. I will not have someone after those actions represent the site without significant improvement and how they reacted (after staff info being leaked, unfortunately) only proved that. Staff, as always, should remain logical and unbiased when picking these. The goal in mind is to pick a user/character/etc that is an exemplary example to how things should be running on the site and base that on their behavior/actions/etc. NOT someone who the small majority in charge likes. I thought having staff vote as a group would avoid this but: OTMs Awards should not be a popular contest. 

 

Despite this, I do enjoy OTMs. On our website, we never pick someone twice for a specific OTM if we can avoid it. It provides variety and that everyone has the opportunity to experience being publicly recognized. Along with this, OTMs drive members. Being picked is either a goal or when they are picked, it pushes them to do even better. They give the community something to talk about. It's something to look forward to and almost puts people on edge at the end of the month as they await for the next candidates! It can be exciting. Whether that's random highlighting, letting users pick, or having staff decide, the system still overall provides aspiration among the community. Someone within this thread also mentioned validation and I think that's another reaaaally good reason because as a member who's experienced that before, it does feel amazing to be recognized.  It's a pleasant way to show off what the website has to offer. 

 

Overall, OTMs has it's positives and negatives. You, as a website owner/staffer, should pick what suits your community best.  As always, you shouldn't expect something to work right away and be perfect. As someone who's been doing these for almost three years, you need to work out the kinks and put in the effort to make everything fair/clean for the community itself. I wish you all luck with that. Always open to ideas myself! Thank you for your wise opinions here and I look forward to engaging/hearing more. ❤️

owner of some website ❤️

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  • 1 month later...

I loathe OTMs, and never contribute in the nominating, the voting, and when I admin, avoid them. I find them rarely to be a reflection of actual true awesomeness but of popularity contests. 

 

They can, worst of all, be utter Feelbads for other players. I never want to create enmity or envy between players. At least, if I can help it.

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OTM's are hit or miss for me. When it's voting style/popularity contest I don't like them because it tends to wind up being the same people over and over and can start to feel like a club you're not in lol. When OTMs are activity-based, at least then I understand if/why I wasn't selected. Personally, I run a mixture of both on my site.

 

We do the typical top posting member/top posting character and several of our members enjoy competing for those spots. Those do sometimes tend to be the same people — our regular posters and always-active members vs. our casual weekenders. Because we have very lax activity standards and would never fault anyone for not posting frequently, I'm of the opinion that members who are active are deserving of some recognition and reward for pumping blood into the heart of our site, so to speak.

 

On the flip side, we also do random OTM's: Adult OTM, Student OTM, Thread OTM, and Post OTM. The only eligibility/criteria is that a member posted at least ONCE during the last month. We try to keep them more vague/generic instead of specific (e.g. ship OTM, etc.) since not everyone can fill those tropes or be eligible (though, we DO have those categories for OTY/annual awards).

 

For the adults/students, I just roll an x-sided die for however many members we have and keep rolling until I get an adult that posted within the last month, and a student that posted in the last month.

 

For Thread/Post OTM: at the end of every month, I pull a report of all of the threads posted in during the previous month, toss them into a spreadsheet, randomize the order/line numbers, and then roll an x-sided die for however many posts we had (e.g. 200 entries in my spreadsheet, I roll a 200-sided die) — whichever number I get, that'll be the Thread OTM, and then I repeat it again to find Post OTM (roll for a thread, then I randomize the Post ID's that were made during the month IN that thread, then roll a second time to get which post ID is the winner).

 

It's...admittedly kind of a lot of work, but it brings otherwise not super visible threads to the forefront and get people reading things they might normally not check out when they're featured on the sidebar, and so far our members seem to really enjoy it. It's extra nice when the dice favor a newer or less-frequently posting member; when they get it, they commonly remark on how excited they are to have been chosen (despite its randomness).

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm joining the crowd with the "loathing OTMs" response. Everywhere I've ever been, they've ended up as a popularity contest in some form or another and they've always lead to hurt feelings, even when site staff have done their best to make it about highlighting lovely writing or nice things characters have done. It's kind of like the horse-to-water cliche; you can lead your members to inclusivity and praise, but you can't make them look outside the bubble they create for themselves. Or blinders, maybe, might be a better analogy than bubble. That, of course, is if it's a member-voting based OTM, but I think staff picked OTMs are also an issue in that it can lead to easy accusations of favoritism. 

 

I have, instead, tended to lean toward a discord channel for highlighting especially nice pieces of writing. Even that, though, I think takes some very pointed effort to make sure that no one is specifically feeling left out. It can be hurtful to see the same people, no matter how wonderful their writing is, getting highlighted over and over while you're never mentioned. I think, in situations like that, that it's important for staff members to be the one to go out of their way to find nice things in the writing of members that are highlighted less often so that they feel like they're included too. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have the same opinions as you OP. I've had a lot of experiences on different sites where the Of the Months are typically given to members who are apart of the main "group" of the board while members outside of that inner circle really struggle with getting recognition for their contributions. I'm sure that staff on some sites really fight to be fair in their Of the Months but my overall bad experience makes me immediately prejudice against the Of the Months whenever I see them.

 

In that regard, I don't believe in member based polling votes for who wins the title because, well... that's always going to go one way unfortunately. I believe in staff choosing directly who is showcased and that gives a lot more opportunity for fair picks to members who have been contributing.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Our features are almost always prizes for participating in events or contests. They are usually picked at random. Occasionally I will award them to someone who has helped out the site. This last time I asked my mods to agree on a person who deserved some recognition. 

When giving the Writer of the Moment (because I'm not organized enough to do something every month), I always give the person the option to gift it to someone else. I think its really nice because instead of declining, they get to make someone's day better. 

...

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