[Editor's note: the following article was originally published as a special-edition article on Sunday, January 4th. It contains good advice, especially for newer players, and with the opening of this year's View Award voting, seemed particularly relevant and useful. Enjoy!]
Voting will soon for the View from Valehaven Awards. I've been helping
Ian prepare nominations and prep for voting, as I've been doing it, I
got thinking that we don't really provide much advice for newer players
on participating.
I jotted my thoughts on the topic to share and encourage others to
reinforce, add to, or provide contrary advice in the comments.
1. Vote- If you step back and think about it, an insane amount of work
goes into the game each year and we have very few ways of recognizing
and appreciating the quality contributers and events. The award system
isn't without flaws but it is one of the best we have.
2. Make your votes based on YOUR opinion- Don't vote for a
person/event/group because it is what it seems like "everyone" is doing,
or because you are connected to that person or group unless you feel
they truly deserve it. One frequent critique of the awards are that they
are a popularity contest, and I won't deny that popularity does have an
impact, BUT it is only as much of one if we as a community allow it to
be.
3. Don't stress- No one in game gets to every event or knows everyone.
We all end up voting in some categories where we haven't compared all
the nominees. As I mentioned the system has flaws and something that is
amazing can get overlooked if a smaller number of people are aware of
it. It. If you do have some lesser known people or events you thought
were great and ended up voting for, letting them know will likely be
appreciated.
4. Don't be afraid to not vote. If you don't feel like you have a real
opinion on it (for example if when reading the nominees for "best dish"
you didn't try any of them), or you didn't feel the nominees you were
exposed to are deserving in your mind just abstain from voting on that
category.
5. Generally people are good about nominating those they think are
really deserving but occasionally they get confused or have an opinion
that would vary greatly from others. Don't assume that everyone
nominated in a category are in a narrow range in regards to quality. Use
it as one piece of information to help form your opinions.