Vie's Inn of Wonders' Awards

Rewarding excellence in Content...

Let there be... Awards!

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Every now and then, it's a good idea to allow ourselves to thinker about something, to see if it still holds the same value as it was intended to have in the beginning. Perhaps it's not a bad idea to do the same with the concept of award giving. And for those who are not familiar with awards, offer an introduction to the award giving idea.

What is an award and for what does it stand? An award is a token of achievement of a certain level of excellence that an award giver has set out by means of certain fixed set of guidelines.

Ok... pretty heavy stuff don't you agree? Why don't we take that sentence apart? Investigate the pieces so to say to get a better understanding of the whole...

1) a token

An award is a distinct identifiable object like a graphic, trophy or plaque. It is often verifiable by means of an ID, winner name and warrants being listed in that Award Program winner's list. The award is often displayed on the winner's site. Though the latter is not always a requirement. Awards can be given all year long and/or on fixed moments in time: like month, quarter or year. These time-based awards can be standard or a higher level of normal award giving procedures (sort of "best of" of that period)

2) of achievement

The award winner has done something good. He has created something that is considered well done for the Award giver and de facto for the world wide web at large. The elements in what one has to excel are up to the award give to decide and can be in different aspects depending on the kind of award it is.

3) a certain level of excellence

There are indeed a variety of different kind of awards present in the community today. You have the design awards who will focus more on the style and look of a site or project and the content awards which interest themselves more with what you have to say, most will be a mixture of both. Whatever the award program focus themselves on, an award will only be granted after the award giver feel that a certain level of excellence has been achieved. A level that is determined by...

4) a fixed set of guidelines

The award giving process is a serious one, awards are not presented at random, the award program will have set out some rules a site will have to pass to begin with (as not all sites are eligible for review, we call these the disqualifiers) and a certain scoring system which will help in determining the eventual level of award to be given (called the criteria).

So if we take all of the above as essential elements in the award giving process, we should now be able to determine what elements should have no relation with awards.

- awards are not an exchange of links… awards are or should be seen as a direct cause/effect that starts by the application (or nomination) of a site and all the processes it will undergo to get the final result, in other words: they need to be earned. Link popularity that may arise as a result of winning an award should only be seen as a side effect and not as the main reason to apply in the first place. (Awards that have this as main goal are often called "give-away awards" or "fake awards")

- The award process is not to be taken lightly… Numerous evaluators spent hours and hours of time checking and verifying all aspects of the applicant's site after which evaluation results and possible feedback are sent to the applicant. And that all in a timely fashion!

So although most of the award givers do this as a hobby this does not mean it isn't serious business. And all with a cause: to help and better the internet as we currently know it. So... let there be... AWARDS!

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