Of course, announcing the ability to vote in the first place would help!
As noted in the 31st December Snippets post, things became a little hectic around these parts over the last couple of months, which meant very little time could be devoted to keeping RISCOSitory up to date.
However, I was able to set aside some time to set up the 2014 RISC OS Awards voting form, and even announce that via comp.sys.acorn.announce – but what I failed to do was also announce it here. Oops! That was more a slip of the mind than anything else, but not subsequently realising that I hadn’t announced the voting form here? That’s something I think I can put down to how busy I was!
There are a few differences in the awards poll this year.
The first change is that amount of time during which voting is possible has increased. The voting form was put online at the start of December, and will remain online until the end of January – a full two months. So while there has already been a month in which you could have voted, there is still another month to go.
The second change is in the period covered, which is actually slightly longer than a year. Although the awards poll is, nominally, for 2014, the actual period covered runs from November 2013 until December 2014 – a full fourteen months – and a similar period will be adopted for future polls.
The third change is that this year there are no preset options from which you have to choose. Instead, each category presents you with a text field, into which you can enter details of who or what you feel deserves to win the award. This is a direct result of the same period of hectic activity that saw a lack of news posted on RISCOSitory, and which also therefore limited the amount of time that could be devoted to reviewing a year’s worth of news to decide on the options.
(The original plan was to have a series of options for each category, as last year, but with an additional option for “none of the above” along with a text field into which an alternative vote could be entered.)
The fourth change is that four new categories have been added this year, largely as a result of discussions and comments received last time. The new categories are:
- Best game or diversion, giving recognition to the more playful side of RISC OS.
- Best foreign language resource, because while RISCOSitory largely caters to the English speaking userbase (being a UK-based website), RISC OS itself isn’t exclusive to English speakers.
- Best overall contributor to RISC OS, to honour whoever users think has done the most to help move the platform forward.
- Broken cog of the year, allowing users to name and shame whoever they believe has most let them down.
If you don’t have an opinion for any given category, just leave text field blank and move on to the next one.
As before, combined with the awards poll is a simple survey, designed to form a picture of the RISC OS landscape – and while it is part of the same overall form, the survey can be skipped entirely if you choose, or you can opt to only answer some of the questions: Every survey question has an “I’d rather not say” option, which is selected by default.
So if you haven’t already, why not vote now in the RISC OS Awards, 2014?