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Right now, felix and I are having a major philosophical debate over the AS Choice Awards on this thread here.

I have to be frank - I don't like how some of felix's posts on that thread have this very absolutist and authoritative vibe to them, as though felix's personal philosophical position on this is the one we've all agreed on, when I certainly don't remember that being the case.

Personally, I think we on the AS Choice Awards team should want diversity and some degree of niche title success. I think that we should want to avoid complete series domination/one-sided results. I think the reasons for this are frankly pretty obvious, and that these reasons warrant making these valid considerations when potential changes are being discussed. I mean, the word "one-sided" has a negative connotation for a reason. And if you want to know how a lot of people feel about "series domination", just check out J-SaiMoe threads over recent years.


Should we make the contest completely unfair in the process of favoring a good diversity of winners?

No, of course not. But wanting diversity amongst awards winners is, at the very least, a perfectly legitimate secondary concern, in my view. All titles will be subject to the same rules, so that in and of itself brings with it fairness and equal opportunity.

If Set of Rules A are more likely to produce more diverse awards winners than Set of Rules B, then I think that this is a real edge for Set of Rules A. And that this is something that should be factored into the rule choices that we go with.

Now, who here agrees with me? Who here disagrees with me?


I think this is something that as many of us as possible should discuss at length, so I hope we can get a lot of diverse voices on this. Let's see where the majority of the AS Awards Team stands on this.

No opinion of this; if everyone wants to really push being biased towards niche shows then I only ask you find the logical rules to support this. Anything that requires someone's "interpretation" like the "well-rounded" (joke?) suggestion by cyth is out... or at least I'm never going to implement it.

As for the accusation of misrepresenting the group. It's called the "animesuki choice awards" not the "animesuki best niche shows awards" or the "animesuki perfect anime list of [...]" so as far as I'm concerned this extra agenda wasn't ever a thing. We host a fair popularity contest every year; that's all I ever understood it as.

So felix, do you think the AS Choice Awards has been biased towards niche titles for years, possibly since its very inception? Because I haven't seen anybody suggest changing the rules to favor niche titles. I'm simply saying that certain rules are fine the way that they are, with it giving niche titles a decent shot without overly disadvantaging more mainstream titles (clearly they're not overly disadvantaged given how dominant many of them already are). And if I'm reading cyth and Dextro right, they appear to agree with me on this. Unless you think that the AS Choice Awards have been biased and illegitimate for years, why is this stance seemingly so problematic for you?

Also, the "AnimeSuki Choice Awards" name does not implicitly support any particular voting philosophy or approach to the awards, and that also includes it not implicitly supporting yours. The name also doesn't implicitly rule out any particular voting philosophy or approach to the awards. It quite obviously doesn't rule out the system that we've been using for years, with first past the post and a nominee cutoff of 4/5.

There is nothing the least bit illegitimate or invalid about wanting Awards of this nature to have diverse results, ideally avoiding one-sided heavy domination on the part of any particular show or two. There are perfectly good reasons for wanting that. So there is nothing the least bit illegitimate or invalid about factoring such considerations into decisions on which rules to go with.

Maybe you don't have a problem with the idea of extremely boring award results that are completely one-sided, but some of us do. I suspect that many AS members would have a problem with that.

What with this felix this, felix that? Haak is the only one with veto rights in the entire group (though he hardly ever uses them) and everything else either goes (and has gone) though in-group voting if it's a technical issue, or community voting if it's a preference issue. Assuming the issue is large enough to warrant the trouble of course; we can't just have votes for every single minor correction/error.

I barely understand what you even want. You title the thread "Should we want diversity and niche title success in the AS Choice Awards?" and then go "So felix, do you think the AS Choice Awards has been biased towards niche titles for years, possibly since its very inception? Because I haven't seen anybody suggest changing the rules to favor niche titles." and in the first post you're all "Personally, I think we on the AS Choice Awards team should want diversity and some degree of niche title success." What!?

I've already made it clear I have no interest in tacking sides on this. Assuming I'm guessing right what the sides even are, that you've defined. So stop using me to further your agenda (if I'm not voting neither pro or against then my opinion doesn't matter).

Both sides make sensible arguments, but after reading through the debate I do think I'd prefer Triple's ideas and methodology. I think it would make for a more interesting competition.

What I want is the following:

When we discuss major rule changes*, we consider the impact they might have on the diversity of award winners, and the degree of series domination that might arise from these new rules. I don't think this necessarily has to be an overriding consideration, but that it should be one of the considerations that we factor in to any final decisions. That this consideration is on the table, and is valued as a legitimate point to raise either for or against particular rules and suggested rule changes.

I think that a thought that should be forefront in our minds is this - "What will lead to an interesting competition that will seem inviting to as many AS members as possible, and hence hopefully reflect the real tastes and viewpoints of AS as well as possible?" Mainstream vs. Niche strikes me as one area where if the rules favor one group too much over the other, it'll end up turning off a lot of anime fans. Right now, with the current rules, I think we have a good balance of Mainstream and Niche coming out as Awards Winners.

Anyway, I might have gotten the wrong impression as to how much felix personally wants certain major rules changes. If so, my apologies to you, felix, on that.

*Rule changes like the new transferable system, and suggestions of increasing the nominee cutoff from 4/5 to a higher (possibly much higher) number. These changes affect the entire awards (unless you specify that they only apply to a few categories or less), so they're major changes that can radically change the entire Awards.

You already can do that! It's just that it's a organizer preference whenever we vote on issues and everyone is free to have a different position on a per issue basis. Having diverse, even to the point of contradictory, opinion on issues is primarily why in the past we've expanded the group.

There are no group rules that censor, overwrite or inhibit people's opinion. If anything the unwritten rule is that we don't allow any such thing and encourage diversity for the sake of maintaining the contest balanced. For what it's worth the only group rules are that Haak has veto rights on all issues (because shit needs to get done on time!), all decisions as mentioned earlier go though either internal polls (usually organized by Haak) or community polls, and lastly, as much as possible we try not to not intervene in public threads; because as you can see in the nomination thread it tends to either limit feedback only on that topic the few of us there were discussing or just prevent more then a few voices from speaking up in general (we have a year to discuss things between ourselves if it really needs discussing).

With regard to your main worry there, the transferable vote model was voted in for testing next year (keyword: "testing"). Its intended purpose is simply that given a reasonably-balanced category of A, B, C, D it eliminates issues of vote splitting that can lead to a series winning even though it's hated by (as an example) 70% of the voters. There are a bunch of other pros but thats the main goal. IF it fails to achieve this (which honestly is mathematically impossible), or causes some unforeseen issues, or is just plain not fun (though in all the cases where I've experienced it used it's been more fun), then obviously it will be taken out—just start a poll next year after it's done and we can see what the census is.

As for the more then 4 all I really ever wanted to know in the thread was to get a reading on where people (outside our group) where considering. And well, the little debate we had there kind of caused all the trouble to be for naught since we only really heard 2-3 voices on it as the thread became too awkward. If you really must know, (A) I'm still in favor of Haak's idea that the Credits category might be better off in it's own thread and not managed by us, (B) I "think" the ideal number is 3 derived from using the multi-winner version of the transferable vote system; but that was voted out, at the very least until we test the simple version on the voting phase.

I've been putting this off until I can formulate a comprehensive reply but I've had a lot going on lately zo I don't think I'll manage that anytime soon.

In the meantime, I'll just say this: I've always believed that the Awards had two main priorities
1) Representing and reflecting the community as accurately as possible.
2) Advertising anime.

And I also believe that 1) should take priority over 2). In otherwords, I agree with felix in this case: I just don't think it would be right to prioritise promoting niche titles over the possible detriment of inaccurately reflecting the community. I think it would bring the Awards into disrepute. I know that sounds obnoxious when the Awards aren't terribly proffesional to begin with, but I like to think we try to be as proffesional as we can.

Now that doesn't necessarily mean I'm for felix's radical suggestions. But with felix's proposals, I'd lean towards "against" more for logistical issues than ideological ones.

To the question the thread is asking, then yes, absolutely. We should want diversity and niche title success, and I'm pretty sure we all agree on that. But more importantly, we need the winners to reflect the preferences of the community. The transferable vote system seems like a nice way to achieve that and keep the majority happy. The more I think about it, the more pros I think it has. Although at the end of the day, I'm not sure it's going to change the winners for most categories. We'll have to compare the results between traditional voting and alternative voting if we go with that next year, in order to see if the hassle (for the voters) is truly worth it.

As for the amount of titles that should carry over to the voting phase, than I agree with Triple_R here. Nominating more than 4/5 would make the voting phase more cumbersome (especially if we go with the alternative where you'll have to rank those shows instead of picking only one) and ultimately pointless anyway as it's usually pretty clear in the nomination phase which shows stand a chance to win and which don't. Might as well keep it simple. I don't see much point in increasing the number.

There's just one thing I want to quickly point out here.

Every year, every year since I've started following the AS Choice Awards, do you know what the biggest feedback complaint we get on them is?

Too much series domination. Whichever show finishes with the most awards tends to get flak for it.

On the flip-side, do you know what people compliment the most and/or find "refreshing"? Upsets, underdogs winning, relatively minimal series domination.

Just look over this thread and this thread.

Read over those threads, and it's clear as day that many voters don't like series domination and do like diversity and niche title success. I don't know if I can think of anything that would hurt the AS Choice Awards more than a perception of truly excessive series domination.

This is also my experience with J-SaiMoe over the last few years - Many AS members hate series domination with a passion.

So I think it just makes good sense for us to try to guard against excessive series domination, and hence want a variety of winners.

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2012: 72 people who voted (ie. first thread). I don't even see any complaints of that sort. Up to page 5. Page 6 and onward is just back and forth discussion on awards and various minute details on the winners.

2013: 92 voters (ie. second thread). Up to page 6. Page 7 onwards is just the same people back and forth on award proceedings.

• Bri (who voted for Shinsekai Yori) commented against "Shinsekai Yori" winning
• Blue-kun commented against Tempest soundtrack not winning (a lot of his others didn't win but that's the only one he's bothered by at the time)
• Reckoner didn't like Chihayafuru S2 beating LB: Refrain because supposedly the manga adaptation wasn't as good. (Little Busters only lost by 1 vote!)
• Konakaga (who did not VOTE) commented on how he's disapointed that Little Busters lost to Chihayafuru (again it only lost by 1 vote!)
• Demi (who did not VOTE) commented on how he's disappointed HxH lost to Nagi no Asakura (HxH lost to Nagi no Asakura by 1 vote!)
• Westlo (who did not VOTE) commented on how he wanted HxH to win
• weaponX is displeased that HxH lost ongoing (1 vote difference), most of his other stuff won

Okey so first thread nobody was bothered.

Second thread only 7 people even made anything resembling a complaint. 3 of them didn't even vote and 1 of them complaint about the series he voted for and another one complained even though most of his other choices won.

So 2/92 people actually had any sort of problem and nothing positive to say.
But even then those people had very exact category problems, namely "Sountrack" and "Drama".

In the majority of complaints the winner won by 1 vote difference only, so for all intents and purposes it could have swung the other way easily.

How should I put this, someone is always going to win and someone is always going to lose. So if a show has a cult following behind it there inevitably will be 1-2 to speak up on how X should have won over Y. That's well within the expectations of how the system would function and obviously we can't just change the result for those people. Honestly there were VERY few people who complained given the number who voted.

Might I add that of those (legitimately) bothered BOTH are contest organizers and BOTH could have made this motion you're making but didn't. (hint: it's not a coincidence they are part of the group)

HxH of which most complaints are for, is NOT a niche title, it's as mainstream salami as it gets. I've seen most of the anime and read the manga (I'm probably only 4-5 chapters behind because that's how I read most manga).

On the other hand, Shin Sekai Yori, is pretty niche in it's setting and story. And it won.

Konakaga's a girl


I don't have anything useful to add to the discussion otherwise, but this is an interesting read.

Felix, what do you mean there's nobody bothered on the first thread? What do you call this and this?

That's on Page 3 of the first thread.

Also, this is the very first reply on the first thread. From that reply, we have "Speaking of Fate Zero I am happy it didn't overtake the awards".

The first thread has multiple examples of people showing a general dislike of series domination and a general like of diverse winners.


As for your points on Hunter X Hunter and SSY, there's plenty of people here who haven't seen HxH. I wouldn't necessarily call HxH a niche title, but I certainly don't get the impression it's one of the most widely seen titles here on Anime Suki. It seems to me to be about the level of a popular noitaminA show, rather than, say, the level of a Madoka Magica or a Fate/Series show.


The fact is that people tend to dislike series domination more than they like it, so it's perfectly reasonable for us as Awards Organizers to want to avoid series domination as much as possible, as long as it doesn't upset the basic integrity of the rules.

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He's essentially saying that he's unhappy that the series he apparently really likes won some of the D* awards. He supposedly doesn't have an issue with it dominating just that it dominated in a section he had wanted others to dominate. First that's not what I would call disapointment ("omg stuff I liked won everything but it accidentally won a bit too much and the other stuff I also like didn't win it"), and secondly him wanting it doesn't mean it should happen. 1 person vs however many actually contributed to those shows winning is not fair.

Replies of people trying to be helpful to other people don't count as them complaining. He has another post above suggesting we make 23 threads, should we do that too?

Positivity seems to trample the negativity. On the Fs/n Kiritsugu so-called "disapointment" he said himself he liked the character just not as much as the others. And the last one is just the masses speaking against the series.

Or are you suggesting we should have rules that somehow bend in such a way that a series like Tsuritama who went 10 vs 58 in story, 9 vs 62 in slice of life, 4 vs 55 in sports, 6 vs 63 in TV needs to win to appease it's (at best) 10 voters and as low as 4 in some. How would the majority of voters feel if the rules dictated "fuck Chihayafuru with it's 41 votes, Tsuritama has 4 votes so it's niche and needs to get special treament"

Is that why it's manga is up there with naruto and bleach on every manga site?
Is that why it's rank #3 on MAL and has 156,709 members and 14,843 favorites?

You know what the original Fs/n is ranked at? #1029 and it may have slightly more at 233,532 members but has only 3,955 favorites. Who's the niche-er series again?

Frankly statistically they're all mainstream, but I'd say HxH is more mainstream then the others just from the huge reach it has.

So far you've yet to provide anything to prove this, other then really pulling at otherwise unrelated posts or forcing people to pick one. You've also yet to prove that catering to said minorities that have a "slight" problem is actually going to solve anything. Bear in mind there's always gonna be someone who didn't get their series to be #1. You don't really expect that it's just going to be all happy sunshine with the voters if such rules were to be implemented do you?

As I've noted with these replies the huge majority are happy with the results, and the fairness of the results. It reasons to believe that a lot of grumpy voters will come if the rules change to be biased towards seemingly random by the criteria and examples so far so-called "niche" shows.

Maybe it's just me, but it seem like when you go in the threads you somehow only see some giant hate parade, when really most of the time people are just posting balanced replies (ie. a bit of what they liked, a bit of what they didn't like); which don't mean they're disappointed, especially when by large their replies are either positive to the awards or the series they're supposedly "complaining" about.

I think it's cool to want more things to win and more niche shows to get some Awards, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to the Community's taste and preference.

I dig these awards because they're ultimately very simple and just about anyone can come in and pick their favourites. At the end of the voting period, you get a good grasp of how popular each show was in Asuki and, sometimes, you might even be pleasantly surprised by the results. Or disappointed. And that's fine!

Adding more little rules and/or requirements in order to "shape" a more diverse list seems to me like it'd just complicate the voting process, and while it might give out more diversified results, that might come at the price of simply alienating some people who'd, well, decide not to vote because they just don't care enough. So I'm fine keeping it as it is, or, at least, keeping it relatively close to how it currently operates and maybe try out the alternative voting system next year, just to avoid having things go stale.

At the very least, though, the way the contest is organized right now has the Nomination Period, where everyone can make their ideal list. I've actually grown fonder of that period more than the results' one lately, because there are always some members who have some interesting picks, and I can usually detect people who share the same taste as I do. So that's fine, and I actually find it pretty fun.