My disclaimer: I'm the contrary demi who is usually in the dissenting minority. Every once in awhile I feel like voicing an opinion and this is one of those times. I'll probably have to clean Corny's chainsaw for 3 months after she returns...*sigh*

Best Homes: How I voted. I personally wanted to see a balance between purpose, appearance and content.

Did the home reflect the persona and the use/purpose of the persona at the site?

If the persona was primarily a character for role play, did the home provide back story or information related to the persona at AW, as opposed to just a glorification of the character.

If the persona was a 'general purpose' character, did the home have humorous, historic or other AW resource information that would give me, the vistor, information I didn't have and a reason to come back?

If the appearance of the home interferred with the readability of the content, or diminished it in some way, or had nothing to do with anything at AW, then I graded it less than a home where that didn't happen.

If the home had no content and only had decoration, I graded it less than a home with both a good appearance and content.

I'm on DIALUP, and because of where I live, I do NOT have a choice. I had one home, where I started the download, wrote down the time, went and did dishes, vacuumed(however the heck that verb is spelled), threw the kong for my dogs and it had not finished downloading some 20+ minutes later when I returned from those activities. Was it worth the wait? Well, maybe. AW is not a business site, where I'd get angry about the delay, so maybe. But download time was part of my criteria, tempered by the example I gave. I won't wait 20 minutes at Amazon. I will here. Both sites have completely different purposes in life and I recognize that.

Did the persona decorate more than one room and put content in more than one room? Within the scope of the persona level(novice, citizen, patron), how much did the persona incorporate parts of AW in their home or provide supplemental data to AW? If I see a lot of off site plaques and objects that have nothing to do with anything at AW, when compared to a home that had things related to AW, the home with things related to AW got a higher grade.

Were graphics obviously stolen, such as from a tv or movie site? (two entries come to mind in particular) This drastically reduced the grade in my scoring.

I took this contest to be an opportunity to pick homes that were representative of the best things that AW offers, knowledgeable people who make up a great community of historians, writers, artists, designers and in some cases TROUBLEMAKERS. LOL, but balanced troublemakers. This is not as formal a scorecare as Laurels had, but it is based on something I actually did at one time for a living, which was run usability testing.

I want to talk about Best of Fest also. Heraklia and I don't always see eye to eye and that is no state secret. But she takes a lot of flak, and well, I wish people would just get over what happened. I'm not pointing fingers because I got mad over the Best of Fest contest too. I think progress is being made with this and I'm glad that discussion is going on. It's just that contests involving DESIGN are not objective, they are like Ice Dancing or Springboard Diving at the Olympics; its all subjective judging. So if you enter, or have some emotional investment in what you do, fine, just be prepared -- it's not the same as weightlifting where you either pick up the most weight or you don't. Around here the contest administrators and judges end up with a freaking target symbol on their backs because someone is always unhappy. The thing I believe, is that unlike the Olympics, there is no agenda in play, no intentional plot to hurt anyone, or collusion between countries for a desired outcome. It may very well be unconscious, but I don't believe it to be intentional. That is also why I support 'dissenting' views, because sometimes we don't realize the reactions that our actions cause and its only through the discussion that we have the opportunity to make changes and grow.

Personally, I'd really hate to see Best of Fest go down the tubes. I think site wide voting is do-able, and that primary awards ought to come from the populace, and maybe, the demis get to pick one award. I think more transparency in how the contest is set up, and what criteria voting is based on, can, and should occur. There are some extraordinary people here who create things that make me go 'Wow'. I wish I could point them all out and give them special recognition. Realistically, what I can do is help with the process improvement by reading what you all have to say, explaining the criteria I use when I'm involved and hopefully providing an additional viewpoint.