Ammendments to the Website Award Rules - Explaination and Discussion

[Danny S. Jones]

For the past month (Aug. 2010), discussion has been made in committee to simplify many of the award rules. To this end, the following amendments were suggested and put to an official committee vote. By unanimous consent of the FORVM Website Awards Committee (Comitia Curiata) the following amendments to the official rules have been approved:

(Amendment I.) Allow a special extended session for the 7th Comitia Curiata to
serve in office until December 31, 2011. From thence forth, the term of the committee
shall be January 1 through December 31 of each year. Therefore, committee member
elections should be held in November - December of each year starting in 2011.

It was discussed and decided that the term of committee members should be occur in the same time frame as the award schedule. The only way to line the two up was to either hold additional election at the end of the year by cutting the term of the current committee short, or allowing them to serve this fall and then a full term in conjunction with the award schedule. Each member agreed that it would not be a problem to serve the extra time, and this would be the simplest approach. Therefore, the current committee will serve a few months extra, and from next year on, the committee schedule and awards schedule will be on track.


Danny Jones
7th Comita Curiata

[Danny S. Jones]

(Amendment II.) Awards should be conducted in quarterly sessions according to the following:
                 First Quarter: Standard Award Polling Session
                 Nominations and Discussion: January
                 Website Award Polling: Feb/Mar
                 (Poll closing, last day of March)

                 Second Quarter: Standard Award Polling Session
                 Nominations and Discussion: April
                 Website Award Polling: May/June
                 (Poll closing, last Day of June)

                 Third Quarter: Standard Award Polling Session
                 Nominations and Discussion: July
                 Website Award Polling: Aug/Sept
                 (Poll closing, last day of September)

                  Fourth Quarter: Annual Award Polling Session
                  Oct/Mid-Nov Nom Submissions
                  Annual Award Polling: Mid-Nov/Dec polling
                  (Poll closing, last day of December)

These rule changes were suggested with the idea of simplifying the awards process so that more members would get involved by serving on the committee and voting in the polls. With the new schedule, the workload of the committee will be eased. Also, the public polling time for awards will now be two months rather than two weeks, giving more time for members to submit their votes, and allowing those who don't frequent the boards as often as more active members to participate in the awards process also.


Danny Jones
7th Comita Curiata

[Danny S. Jones]

(Amendment III.) Allow up to three nominations per category to publicly poll each quarter.
If there are more than three nominations in a single category in one quarter,
the committee will vote to decide the top three that should go on to public
polling. Other nominations may be considered again the following quarter.

Not only trying to simplify the process, but to add exclusivity and prestige to the FORVM awards, it was decided that we would limit the number awarded each year. The basic thinking was that if everybody has one, it's not worth much. According to the new rules, beginning January 2011, each quarter there will be three websites that will be awarded the FORVM award for Medieval Studies, three websites that will be awarded the FORVM award for Classical Studies, and three websites that will be awarded the FORVM award for Numismatic Excellence. The annual award winner for each category will be selected during the fourth quarter.



Danny Jones
7th Comita Curiata

[Danny S. Jones]

(Amendment IV.) Website nominations will be limited to committee members and FORVM
discussion board members with a rank of Legionary or higher.

This has been discussed in previous years. New members cannot send private messages, and therefore had to email their nominations in the past. This created a problem with having to publish an email address on the board - spam. With the new rule, spammers are weeded out and participation in the boards are encouraged. At the time of this post, only 5 posts are needed to become a Legionary, so the requirement is not a harsh one. If you have any questions about the rules or rule changes, I would encourage you to post them here.


Respectfully,
Danny Jones
7th Comita Curiata