As you may know every year we've been holding a competition called the Animesuki Choice Awards, where people can vote for the best anime airing that year for particular categories. However every year there always seems to be some sort of controversy with the winners and the award system so we decided to create a system that would review the Awards, take in any suggestions for improvements, and make the Choice Awards as fair as possible. The poll is a part the process that allows us to collect more accurate and quantitative information about what the voters would like and we ask everyone who takes an interest in Choice Awards to take the time to consider the poll carefully.
The format of the poll is a bit different from last year. Rather than asking what you’d like (Since we know enough about that already), we’ve decided to ask what you definitely would NOT like, which is a particular and perhaps over looked area we don’t have enough information on. Here are the poll choices and the background behind them:
1. I do NOT want a 15 to 20 category award format.
2. I do NOT want a 20 to 25 category award format.
3. I do NOT want a 25+ category award format.
4. I do not wish for hobbies and/or games to be removed from the Sports category, and/or the awards entirely.
5. I'm against "best of the year" categories to be based on (episodic and/or total) length rather than (original) distribution format (ie. Movie, Tv, OVA)
6. I'm against limiting number of nominations per genre as a means of preventing series spam and bias.
7. I'm against allowing wildcard nominations (ie. besides a few fixed genres you would be able to mention/nominate any number of additional genres).
8. I'm against wildcard genres in general (any system to do with non-fixed genre categories)
The first three Poll options pertain to the number of categories you’d like to see in the awards. If there is any range you would not like to see then please vote for it. The idea is that you leave the option you prefer. So for example, if you prefer the range of categories to be between 20 to 25, then you would pick the other two choices. Or if, for example, you have a strong opinion that the number should not exceed 25 then pick that option.
The fourth poll choice is to do with the Sports/Games/Hobbies category. Last year we decided to add in “Games/Hobbies” to provide more competition in this genre but due to popular opinion, we have decided to remove them this year and leave it as just “Sports”. If you would not like us to go ahead with this change then please vote for this poll choice.
The fifth choice is regarding the Movies/OVA and TV series categories. Due to the blurred lines between Movies, OVAs and TV series, there has been a noticeable difficulty in whether to regard Movies and OVAs in the same category or OVAs and TV series in the same category or regard them all as separate. For this year we have decided to separate all three but we have also considered a different system that does away with all of the above and instead has categories based on length of the episode(s). The categories would thus be Standard length (20min or more), Extended length (40min or more) or Movie length (1h+). If you would not like to see these type of categories then vote for this option.
The sixth choice is to do with the number of nominations allowed. Since there has been particular controversy with certain anime dominating the awards, we have considered limiting the number of nominations that you can give to a particular anime for genre categories. This means you cannot nominate an anime into more than two genre categories in the nomination phase. If you would not like this limitation then vote this choice.
The last two poll choices pertain to a different type of nomination system we have been considering. Here is the proposal for the Alternative Nomination System:
Spoiler for Alternative Nomination System:
Genre, fanservice and some character categories all SCRAPPED. The following are the only fixed categories:
Everything else is a wildcard category, but there's no pre-deciding, you simply vote for it and the script picks it up. During processing we simply group what the voters chose as category names into a single name. So say we could just group Adventure and Action together or if we see a pretty high number of contestants in both not group them. The actual rule would be something like this:
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You may vote for any number of WILDCARD categories. Each such category must contain a minimum (and maximum) of THREE (3) nominations. Your first is considered 2pts and the other two 1pt. Each wildcard category is under the format -{XX}- [Name of your choosing]. Please order these categories in order of relevance to you. Some categories may be grouped by us for reasons such as being aliases for others or based on other factors (such as not actually being represented that year). If your post contains two or more categories that get grouped into a single group then only the nominations in your first category of that group is considered (which is to say your other categories belonging to that group are ignored). You may use character wildcard categories as well but remember that they must be in the format Character / Series.
Basically posts would look like this...
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-{XX}- [Sci-fi]
Steins;Gate
Un-Go
Redline
-{XX}- [Romance]
Horizon
Kimi no todoke
Ano hana
And you can have as many as you want.
If you would not like this kind of system, then please vote for Option 7. If you are so allergic to this idea that you would not even like one or two wildcard genres in the future, then please also vote for option 8.
The wildcard thing sounds generally too confusing and sounds like it makes more effort required for the organizer, so I am generally against it. And I prefer at least some or most of the genres would be preset.
To me, the reason for treating movies separately from series and OVA is the enormous budgetary differences involved. I would keep series and OVA together and put movies in a separate category. Length isn't the deciding factor for me, but I don't see how series can compete against movies in the production categories. I might even consider dropping movies from the Awards entirely. Most people here are focused on series and, less commonly, OVAs. Anime movies rarely get much traffic in the discussion threads.
I'm also opposed to the wildcard genre idea. We already have a pretty well-defined set of genres. Why would you suppose voters would come up with something different? Even your example shows the existing science-fiction and romance categories as genres. As Konakaga says, it just seems to add unnecessary confusion. What problem with the old system was this proposal designed to fix?
I'm opposed to the wildcard idea. The genres are already well-defined. To avoid unnecessary confusion, maybe the wildcard should not be there.
Anyway, not everyone might have watched the movies so I guess it should be optional to this point. I don't think dropping it completely would change much but some people just watch the movies. Since most people are focused on the series and maybe, the OVAs, I think they should be separate from the movies.
Disclaimer: Not here to debate; just want to clarify a few things, since the first post might have touched to heavily on the solution (which seems complicated at first sight) and not very much on the motivation and thought process behind it.
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Originally Posted by SeijiSensei
What problem with the old system was this proposal designed to fix?
It's meant as primarily a means of avoiding the whole "category clumping" problem. Having X/Y/Z is only really appealing to people who look at it as "I want my favorite series to win THAT category", the people who have interest in the category itself feel betrayed since we are either botching it, misrepresenting it, or some extremely mainstream show makes it in with little to anything else but thematic relevance and ousts all the relevant entries by sheer brute force. The show may very well be deserving, but even then we still have to consider how the category(s) might not have been well suite or balanced to make for a fun contest (one sided wins are boring, and lack value). The X/Y/Z awards tend to also earn little respect, and given how confusing and awkward it is to word how something won best X/Y/Z even though it might have no foothold in neither X or Z it's no wonder why; this means they are easily forgettable and results in them have very short lived significance (it's only significant while there's a competition—this is a yearly contest, that's not acceptable). The value of something winning a X/Y/Z tends to sometime be virtually naught. If possible we want to avoid such categories as much as possible and have either less (if the category is not needed that year) or more, if a genre (for example) gets a lot of variety in the way it's expressed that year.
Sadly we can't have well defined (strict) categories because it would mean we would have 100+ categories (which is another common point of tension), as well as suffer from the problem of having very badly represented categories in certain years. So the idea would be to have all the main ones (the ones that are consistently well represented yearly) and any additional ones after.
Basically the only solution is to have customized set of categories for the particular year. No more and no less then what the series in that year can provide. Wildcards are one way of getting an unbiased version of that.
Wildcards wouldn't be a "lets have a Strawberry genre", only serious categories will be selected (everything else will be scrapped), and its a means of empowering the people nominating (no bearing on voters, other then better categories) to help produce interesting and diverse competition for the voting phase. You don't have to use them when nominating; they are optional. It's also an answer to the numerous "we should have X category!" problem.
Obviously everyone understands this is largely a popularity contest, but since this is animesuki we want to have a classy popularity contest (and if possible useful results too). One goal of the contest is to promote shows to people, so regardless of how much you might like the current format, better categories will always be something we'll look into, since that's one of the keys to raising awareness on shows (if you liked A & B you might like C). We also want to eliminate any points that have consistently caused discord, lengthy discussion and dissatisfaction so as many people as possible can have a good time.
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Originally Posted by Konakaga
The wildcard thing sounds generally too confusing and sounds like it makes more effort required for the organizer, so I am generally against it. And I prefer at least some or most of the genres would be preset.
I am an organizer. The contest since last year is running in an automated format, so volume is a non-issue. Wildcards are not a problem to include nor maintain, even if they would be overly used (which they probably wouldn't).
The wildcards only apply in the nomination phase to determine any other worthy categories. The voting phase would have fixed categories (based on results of the nomination phase).
Again, any non serious categories suggested via wildcards will be ignored.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SeijiSensei
Why would you suppose voters would come up with something different?
There would be less categories; a lot less. Wildcard formats have only strong categories as preset categories. Wildcards in a way are intended as the "trial by fire" for any category for which there is doubt if there is even interest in the community over it. You might have "Horror" making a strong showing and "Sports" tacking the year off (for example). This would mean people who just want to quickly nominate their favorites would have a easy time of doing so, since there are fewer categories to go though. People who want their favorite genre of the year to get a good showing can go the extra mile. It also adds some value to the nomination threads since obviously supporting a wildcard someone else mentioned increases the odds it will go though to the voting phase.
And again, it's only nominators, not voters. The voting phase will have only fixed categories. Wildcards will never be in the voting phase.
The intent of the nomination phase is to bubble up all the good shows of the year, not be a redundant voting phase before the real one (though it also acts a filter for heavily contested categories).
I think "fanservice" need to be removed from the awards. While I don't have anything against it but I think removing "fanservice" is a good move because lack of competition to begin with. For example Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai won by 36 votes(that's few) not because it had good fanservice or whatsoever but rather it is the most popular nominee than the others. Seikon no Qwaser 2, Freezing and Manyuu Hikenchou not even nominated despite having better fanservice than Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Carnival Phantasm, Ben-To and Mayo Chiki. Not to mention people generally avoid ecchi shows and that's narrow down how many ecchi shows can be nominated.
I don't really like having a bunch of choices. This has nothing against what those categories are, but I tend to take voting like this srs bsns, and sometimes I can get bogged down thinking about things too much. This means I'd prefer less categories so voting can be shorter and maybe more fun and feels less like an obligation?
I would like games to remain in the sports category. Anime like Saki give me the same adrenaline rush feeling as something like Kuroko no Basket, so I sort of consider them similar. And finally, I think basing categories on length is a good idea. There are OVAs of 2 eps, 6 eps, and some 10+ eps. Series can have 13 episodes but are 2 minutes per episode. Using length will probably allow for less weird groupings.
I think "fanservice" need to be removed from the awards. While I don't have anything against it but I think removing "fanservice" is a good move because lack of competition to begin with. For example Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai won by 36 votes(that's few) not because it had good fanservice or whatsoever but rather it is the most popular nominee than the others. Seikon no Qwaser 2, Freezing and Manyuu Hikenchou not even nominated despite having better fanservice than Boku wa Tomodachi ga Sukunai, Carnival Phantasm, Ben-To and Mayo Chiki. Not to mention people generally avoid ecchi shows and that's narrow down how many ecchi shows can be nominated.
While fanservice is usually used for animes related to ecchi stuff, it doesn't have to. Carnaval phantasm was still litterly pure fan service when it came to all the type moon characters.
Also about your examples of "ecchi series" like qwaser, freezing etc, those series might have more revealing fanservice, it's however not the "best serie" with fanservice, but those are more series with the "best fanservice" (although this is rather subjective, but whatever).
As for the wildcard system, this might be a hassle for some people . I can understand why some might opt for it, seeing what was discussed last year. But it still doesn't change that it will still cause some confusion because almost every series today seems to have multiple genres.
Also what is the "threshold" for taking a wildcard nomination seriously? If some people really think that a certain anime should be eligible for a certain category, how many people are needed ? Like if a few people are nominating for example Hyouka and Tari Tari as the best "Bildungroman" or "coming of age" story. Although this category is legit , i am however sure that not every knows what this genre is or that such a genre even exists.
Also the reverse can also be true, if someone starts nominating a serie which normally does not fit in that specific category. But would this become a "legit nomination" if the rest are going to follow? I assume that this wildcard idea was meant to accept certain "strong animes" with many different genres for a certain category, despite that it's normally not one of their main genres..
Last edited by hyl; 2012-10-29 at 21:09.
Reason: typo
I would like games to remain in the sports category. Anime like Saki give me the same adrenaline rush feeling as something like Kuroko no Basket, so I sort of consider them similar.
Forgot to say it before, but I agree with this, it would feel really lame to me to have something like Saki or Chihayafuru to not count in the "sports" because it's a game.
Forgot to say it before, but I agree with this, it would feel really lame to me to have something like Saki or Chihayafuru to not count in the "sports" because it's a game.
Mahjong is already a recognized sport since 1998, although i am not sure if it's internationally recognized like chess.
Also in the fictional world of Saki, mahjong is an international sport with tournaments held worldwide. So i don't think many people will argue that Saki does not have "sports" settings.
I even think that fictional sports like basquash are considered to be a sports anime
So maybe, to prevent pointless arguing back and forth about what is a sport and what's actually a game (like let's say, Shion no Ou), we don't need to separate them. Doing so would just need more arbitrary rules about what is what.
Location: Where It's Legal to Marry Clara and Alice
Age: 35
The rules and everything sounds pretty straightforward and interesting at least to me, I'm going to have to follow to see how it's done since it'll be my first time doing somethng like this one here. None the less I will gladly participate in this.
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-{A5}- [Opening/Ending Song]
That's going to be a tough one for me depending on the choices that will be given/selected for this event.
I liked last year's awards, and I see no reason to make any big changes so I oppose the wildcard system, and I want more than 20 categories and I strongly oppose limiting nominations in genres.
Just putting it on the record that I believe the status quo is fine and am comfortable with it.
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