"Concept Demo" Awards Program

This is not a real awards program. This is an experiment into how an award program can presented in a way that both protects the award program's interests and provides a more graceful experience to applicants. You cannot apply to this program and get an award, even though it looks like you can.

Text that is part of the demo, part of the model of how to present an award so it protects reviewer interests while being kinder to applicants, has a standard white background. Commentary that is not meant to be included in a real program, has a khaki background. This text is an example of commentary.

But why streamline the awards process at all? Isn't streamlining the awards process just awarding lazy applicants? I'd like to remind you that many applicants aren't just applying to your program; your award program isn't the only one out there. It's important, yes, but I'd like to invite you to step into your applicant's shoes. Your applicant doesn't just see your program; your better applicants are probably applying to several programs. And seeing the same things again and again, often things which insult a good applicant's intelligence, can frustrate applicants.

So what's the point? Why is this needed?

I'm an award applicant. I have worked for years on my website, Jonathan's Corner. It's not perfect; there are still problems I'm trying to fix. But it offers something of genuine value.

An integral part of working on my website and making it the best I can is applying to awards programs. Awards programs are the #1 reason my website now receives over five thousand hits per day. I would not have anywhere near that traffic without awards programs. And I wouldn't know as much about making a good website.

And I've applied to a lot of awards sites. I'm asking award reviewers to read what I wrote, so it's perfectly fair for award reviewers to ask me to do some reading too. Especially as people who won't read criteria submit terribly inappropriate sites and waste reviewers' time.

So what am I asked to read? Some of it is distinctive. I'm asked to read about a program's purpose, and that's as it should be. Different programs have different purposes. Each site also wants me to read its criteria. Web awards criteria vary so much, or so I'm told.

Or so I'm told. I've read over a thousand awards criteria--yes, a thousand--and there are some things that aren't unique. For example, the request not to submit porn. Or the request that I be kind to blind/text-only visitors and use ALT tags. And, well... I've lost count of how many sites seemed to think I didn't know that an internal broken link is a faux pas, and I wouldn't know unless they told me. There are real differences in criteria, but the difference is not between sites that don't want racist material and sites that want racial slurs on every page. That's not the kind of difference I encounter. There are differences, but not that kind. And another thing that happens a lot is that awards programs treat me as if I don't know that if my website is excellent it won't cause browser crashes. They treat me as if I don't know a whole lot of basic things. If I'm going to apply to dozens of award programs, dozens of people want to sit me down and make me read that I shouldn't submit porn, hate speech, coarse language and the like.

I don't think I'm the kind of person awards reviewers had in mind. I think awards reviewers are frustrated by an unending stream of people who submit inappropriate sites. Very inappropriate sites. Porn. Browser crashes. Sites with no coherent theme. Exactly the kind of sites that the criteria are supposed to say, "Stop! I don't want this! Don't submit this to me until you've cleaned it up!" And it is this stream of people who are foremost on a reviewer's mind.

But what about another stream of people? What about people who have read awards criteria carefully, and worked to polish their websites as much as they can? What about people who have taken advantage of the wisdom in awards criteria, and have squeaky clean websites with no porn, no JavaScript errors, no popups at all? Is it OK for them to apply to several different awards programs? And if they apply to twenty different awards program, do they need to read twenty different times not to submit porn, racism, pages that will cause browser crashes, and dozens of other items that I'm not going to ask you to take the time to read? What if they want to submit their awards to hundreds of awards programs? Do they really need to read hundreds of lists that tell them that porn is a no-no?

It seems that the awards criteria, as they are written, are designed to deal with people who shouldn't be applying, but aren't trying to be kind to the people they want. Most programs feel a need to bury a password somewhere... and there's a reason for that. If you don't see what that reason is, I'd encourage you to read The Administrator who Cried, "Important!"

The point of this "concept demo" program is to demonstrate something different, something better. The point of this "concept demo" is to demonstrate a way that a program can communicate clear expectations, and screen out people who shouldn't be applying, while being much kinder to the kind of people you want to be applying--the people who build a site that's fit to win awards... and the people your program exists to recognize. It can be done, and I invite you to read on and see just how it can be done.

To explore the first difference, let me repeat the navigation:

At the opening, which is just navigation, we see the first real difference. What is it?

First let me ask, is your time valuable? If I drone on and on without telling you anything new, will you keep on reading in the hope that it will get better? Or would you like to only read things that you find helpful?

If you'd rather only read things you find helpful, let's extend that same courtesy to your applicants. Most good applicants are trying to do two things:

• Find out whether their site matches the award program.

• If it seems to match, apply.

There was one site that insisted that I needed to read their privacy policy before applying for their award. I still don't understand why. It was an ordinary privacy policy, and I think that person was just thinking, "Well, I wrote it, so I expect people to read it." But that's not a common problem, right?

Well, I can only remember one program that expected me to read their privacy policy. But I've lost count of how many programs have expected me to read their ethics code--an ethics code which happens to be copied on hundreds of other sites.

In many programs, something is made required reading if it could be useful to the applicant. Here I'm following a different principle. The principle is this: Only make something required reading if it helps the applicants in the two steps above.

I'm not hiding anything. It's still easy for the applicant to read the ethics, for instance. But I'm trying to treat my best applicants kindly. My best applicants will have read other awards program's criteria and used them to build an excellent site, and they'll be familiar with the boilerplate code of ethics. And I've used bold, italics, and plain text to underscore which is which. I'm showing respect for the applicants' time by making the least justified claim on their time. The principle is that instead of saying, "If it might be relevant to some applicants, the applicant should read it," I say, "My time is precious. So is my applicants. I won't require them to read things they don't need to read to know if their site should be submitted. Each thing I require applicants to read is a claim on their time, and it needs to be justified."

If a program is temporarily closed, it should say so on the front page, and it should be unmistakable. (If there were no khaki comments, "Program temporarily closed" would be near the top of the page.) Most visitors don't read webpages the way we were taught in school, and the notice above is optimized for how people read webpages.

Furthermore, this requests contact if the notice is still up after the program should be up and running.