Monday, January 26, 2009

SHORTY AWARDS GONE WRONG?





The images above are screen shots from after nominations concluded. Below is a partial list of Shorty Awards rules. At the end of the nominations the votes will be counted and the top five candidates will move on to the finals. In the case of a tie, in nominations, a sixth nominee will be included.

There were no ties between any of the top six contestants. This being the case, only the top five nominees are eligible in the finals per rules set out before the competition. Inexplicably, the startups category somehow had six contestants move into the final round. 

Rules are from http://shortyawards.com/about/ and retrieved on Monday January 26, 2009.

How do the finals work?
The five (or in one case of a tie, six) people with the most nominations in each official category have gone on to the final voting round.
All finalists are encouraged to register ASAP to get free guaranteed admission to the awards ceremony and to be notified if they win.
The people with the most votes in their category will be the winner of the Shorty Award in that category.
The finals round lasts from Monday, January 12 through Friday, January 23 at midnight (Pacific time).
The Shorty Awards' 26 winners will be offered $1,000 grants to travel to New York and attend the awards ceremony, thanks to support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Winners must attend the event to claim the grant.
We will do a final audit for spam, hanging chads, and other shenanigans, before announcing the winners.
Follow @shortynews or join the mailing list for updates.

Ed: Color and bold added to aid the reader.


The contestant @hanniversary had 23 votes in nominations originally. You can see that Shorty Awards has recently changed the nominations results [past few days]. They removed 2 votes from @orgsync to make it appear that @hanniversary was #5. @orgsync had 24 votes in nominations [see screen shots above]. They appear to be covering their tracks as to why an ineligible nominee was allowed into the finals in the startup category.


QUESTIONS:
  • Why were the nomination numbers not accurate before finals voting started?
  • Why were the vote numbers for @orgsync changed?
  • If the numbers for @orgsync were wrong and only recently noted, how did nominee number six [@hanniversary] make it into finals? 

These questions, left unanswered, undermine the integrity and fairness of the entire process known as the Shorty Awards. 


8 comments:

Eric Fortenberry said...

These are all very good questions David. I hope someone can dig up some answers because the integrity of this competition is indeed at stake. I hope those two nominations that mysteriously disappeared were removed with good cause, otherwise I suspect we will need to investigate many more people's nomination and vote counts.

David Damore said...

Thanks for your comment Eric.

Anonymous said...

David-
That does seem kind of odd that the user that shouldn't have been in the finals ends up winning. I think there should be a good explanation of the reasons by the Shorty folks.

At the same time- I also understood the awards required individual "I nominate" messages. The winner specifically sent out a link that included the whole tweet. All the user had to do was click the link and then "Update". Pretty bot/spam like.

My two cents worth.

Anonymous said...

Here's a fat clue: the contest is over, you can't change the result, and (judging by the count of the comments in your blog) no one cares what you think.

Cheers.

Anonymous said...

Вы не правы!!!

David Damore said...

Dear Anonymous #1
The folks putting on the awards didn't even follow their own rules. Then it appears that they manipulated the voting results to "fix" their errors. What a way to run things?

Dear Anonymous #2
Quoting you: "Вы не правы!!!" Google Translation: You are wrong!

Is that really the best comment you can come up with to answer any of the questions in the post?

#1 and #2 thanks for visiting. Have a great day.
Best,
David

Anonymous said...

Hi, i'm Hanniversary developer. I understand your doubts, but i swear, that i didn't cheating for getting into finals. Shorty Awards should impose more stringent rules next time. LuckyStartups are doing really awesome job and i'm a big fan of them(i've already said everething to Aronado).I hope they are not grudge against me

David Damore said...

@maxt3r,

Thanks for your comments. So many great people were nominated. The way I look at it is, everybody that had fans vote for them is a winner.

Many more people are aware of the firms, people and applications nominated via Twitter for the Shorty Awards. That is win-win.

Wishing you the very best. Continue to create and innovate.

Best,
David