The guest of honor: Are site awards detrimental?

I find OTMs a hassle to keep up with each month, and not all members want to go vote. Not bothering with them this time around, set up some threads in chitchat where others can share threads they've loved.

Awards aren't detrimental, but I think they're a good way to give incentive to some players. There's definitely a good feel when collecting new shinies!

 

I love seeing OtMs and other rewards. As staff, it's a great way to show appreciation to our hardworking members. Yeah, it can be a pain to keep up with, but another alternative is to put it up to a member vote! Let the members pick who among them should be OtM, and have the previous month's winners unable to be up for the same award twice in a row.

 

Recognition is nice, having goals to work towards is nice. Is it needed? No, but it's a nice little extra tidbit to make people feel like they've accomplished something even if it's only virtually.

Of course, this is coming from an achievement hunter so to each their own. But yeah not need but nice to have.

 

We run seasonal (every two month) spotlights. Members nominate other members, characters, couples, threads, and quotes - and every single staff member votes on the final outcomes. We feel that this way (staff voting in lieu of members), it avoids the risk of it becoming a popularity contest. Staff always post a blurb as to why they feel "X" was deserving, but members are always welcome to see individual staff votes/responses!

We haven't had any complaints thus far. But I'm definitely looking into featuring a random "member/character of the day," pulled via script/plugin... because that's an absolutely stellar idea.

 

I'm honestly not a big fan of site awards - and I've probably replied to this thread and said this before. In my experience it is less of an honour and more of a popularity contest which means that some - very good but not often portrayed - characters get thrown off to the side while the usual, popular ones get the limelight.

More importantly I'm forced to ask the question: why? Why is that character being highlighted? Why are they the character/member/couple of the month? Why are they up there month after month while Jenny's character who has a few small - but very interesting - plots is not?

There are certain awards that are good: having awards for reaching a certain number of posts, or advertising, or giving members recognition in general for doing stuff to help the site, but I don't think a popularity contest is the way to go about it. Then you just end up with the same characters shining and miss out on the great characters who are portrayed by active but less... extroverted members of the site.

The most I do on my site is highlight wanted ads to encourage people to look at them and they're on a rotation when there's more than one - one week per wanted ad, changed on a saturday night, starting from the oldest and going to the newest then cycling back around.

 

The site I'm currently on, we have OTM awards and a Member of the Moment once a week. We do a character, moment, thread, romantic couple, character dynamic, AU ship and family for our monthly ones, and those are nominated by and voted on by members; and the weekly member one is chosen by our head admin with some input from the rest of the staff team based on who has contributed to the site and the community in a meaningful way.

Personally, I'm quite a fan of having these awards. I know we've had some concerns on the site when it came to the OTM ones in terms of them being a 'popularity contest' and the usual sort of fusses, but I've always liked the idea of having awards like that because it can really motivate members, either because they've won or they want to win. I've never seen people complain about the weekly one, and I feel the same way about it, because at the end of the day, having these incentives does sort of make you get more excited sometimes and makes you want to do better.

 

I have a lot of competition IC in game already and do not want to make my site a popularity game by adding OTMs. Though I have implemented other polls to vote on with a long list of things to win and do it once a year.

 

Yes. I've seen people who really should earn certain awards being glossed over because the one to win is the popular player on site whereas the other guy keeps a low profile. Still irks me to this day especially when I see a lot of his stuff still being used but the other is more negligible to the core of the site.

 

When I was running site awards, the main challenge was getting anyone to vote. After the first few rounds, the answer was always just "idk"

 

I like site awards if there's a forum for people to submit for them. It's too much to keep up with everyone as an admin. As for OTM's, I kinda despise them. They very easily show cliques and it becomes a popularity contest and peoples feelings get hurt. Most of the time it's admin who are nominated and win so they don't see anything wrong with it. I like doing member spotlights where I highlight members who have gone above and beyond in a given month and have contributed to the site more than what they are needed and required to.

 

I don't think there's a downside as long as you recognize the people who produce content consistently. I'm sure that sometimes awards systems are just used as a circular back-patting ceremony, but I've never personally encountered that.

 

I think it really depends. I was on a site where there was a very clear "favorite" group and a character of the month was REPETITIVELY chosen from this group of people.

 

The only site I've ever been on that had them would put up a thread each month featuring the character of the month and everyone else could post on it. It never seemed detrimental, I think because everyone could be involved even if they weren't chosen.

 

I can understand why sites have OTMs and so on, but I don't like it. There are cliques that take advantage of this sometimes, and some writers aren't comfortable with it. I think it stirs up feelings of jealousy and competition where it isn't needed as well. I'm firmly against doing them unless it's with a completely transparent system - which is hard to figure out where it's not too much work but is still flawless.

 

I don't like this sort of stuff cause it one hundred percent usually ends up giving people main character syndrome and it's a bit...annoying to say the least.

 

I think this depends of the mindset of your players and the community you build on your sim. I promote awards that players vote on and that are quantitive. So either the players nominate each other and share in each others successes or they have hit thresholds with their activity that unlocks an achievement for them.

 

I like awards for voluntary participation- I do a Word of the Month every month for mini-profile badge awards.
Some random, crazy word chosen from the dictionary; members have 30 days to use it in a character post to win the award badge.

But randomly awarding a player or character just smacks too easily of favoritism.