Issue Briefing

[Molinari]

Dear Forvm Members,

Last night, I was contacted by an anonymous member of lamoneta.it  who claimed to have created several fake accounts here on Forvm. The reason he created these accounts was to vote for ACSearch, because he was so strongly opposed to the voting practices of his lamoneta.it peers. We were able to determine exactly how many duplicate accounts were created by tracing the IP address, and those votes were removed from the final tally.

In terms of soliciting votes from non-Forvm members by having them create new accounts, there is nothing in the by-laws against such practices and the Committee refuses to impose any new laws retroactively.

The winners of this year's awards will be announced shortly.

Nick

[Joe Sermarini]

In terms of soliciting votes from non-Forvm members by having them create new accounts, there is nothing in the by-laws against such practices and the Committee refuses to impose any new laws retroactively.

Owners of nominated websites have always encouraged their fans to register on the discussion board and vote for them.  We have gained some active members that way.  I think it is good for the discussion board.

[Molinari]

I agree.

[Andrew McCabe]

Still, it does give rather a strong advantage to those websites that have membership systems or have a way of actively contacting supporters, or that care to sing their own praises, perhaps on other lists. There are many worthy websites that only lack votes because they lack advocates to bring the websites to people's attention. It seems to be a tradition on Forvm not to canvass or to advocate the merits of websites that are up for a vote. Thus the quietly excellent sites sometimes go completely unnoticed, to the loss of everyone. If some websites are advocating their supporters to visit and vote then I'd suggest that a feature of the Forvm awards be that people be invited to loudly shout the praises of the websites they favour, here, on this list, not somewhere else as seems to have happened. I would have done so for an excellent website which I favour, not quietly but energetically, but it seemed not very English to do so. Next year I may shout louder.

Worthy winners all, congratulations.

[Molinari]

Next year I may shout louder.

This is a tough one.  On the one hand, as Andrew just mentioned, sites with registered members are at a huge advantage.  On the other hand, as Joe said, soliciting new members is generally a good thing for the boards.  If no changes are made to the by-laws then I encourage you to shout louder next year, Andrew! 

I hope you understand why we would not retroactively change the rules this year.

[hjk]

... sites with registered members are at a huge advantage. 

maybe - but I think, that the winning site has NO registered members. And so I know it is free to all users and has no restrictions ... and so it is easy to test, how useful it is. For me meanwhile one of the most useful sites!

best wishes from Frankfurt + merry xmas

hjk   

[areich]

Actually you can and should register there. The main reason to do so is that you can bookmark coins and create different lists. Especially useful if you're researching something or if you just come across an interesting coin and want to quickly save it for later. I use this feature all the time.

[curtislclay]

Yes, ACSEARCH has no members, or at least no active communication among those who do become members, but it only won the poll, justifiably in my opinion, because of appeals for votes on two sites that do have members and an ongoing discussion, namely the German Numismatikforum and our U.S. Forum run by Forvm Ancient Coins!

[Andrew McCabe]

Next year I may shout louder.

This is a tough one.  On the one hand, as Andrew just mentioned, sites with registered members are at a huge advantage.  On the other hand, as Joe said, soliciting new members is generally a good thing for the boards.  If no changes are made to the by-laws then I encourage you to shout louder next year, Andrew! 

I hope you understand why we would not retroactively change the rules this year.

Yes, no issue at all, and acsearch, lamoneta, and coinproject are all top-class websites.

Had I wished to advocate any of these during the procss, I suspect the english language sites already have many supporters who use them daily (as I do, hardly a day goes by where I don't journey on acsearch), but it may be less well known that on lamoneta I often find original and thoughtful research and expert submissions on all aspects of Roman and Magna Graecia coinage, topics which interest me deeply. Quite aside from issues about voting process and canvassing, it is the sort of site that I would have advocated. Next year I'll make a list and shout out about all the sites I support and why.

[Paleologo]

As a staff member at Lamoneta.it, I would like to thank by heart Mr McCabe for his words of appreciation. His posts on Lamoneta.it are always welcome and it would be great if they just came more often.

In any case (even if this may sound as an excusatio non petita) I would like to stress that there has been no official request from the admins of Lamoneta to join into the poll. The request came from a group of members, some more members supported it, others strongly opposed it, a large majority just ignored it. I think this is rather commonplace dynamics for web communities, as correctly noted above. Too bad someone has taken the whole case which such stiff seriousness (gravitas?) it looked like a good idea to break FORVM's board rules just in order to prove their own point.

Enough about it. I would like to congratulate the creators and admins of acsearch.info (which is a great site, although I'm more often on the twin site mcsearch.info, due to my specific interests) and all the others participating sites. I think Lamoneta.it has fared well in the contest, and I hope it will be more successfull next year.

Yours
Alessandro Giarante (Paleologo)
Vice Admin, Lamoneta.it