Voting is now open in the RISC OS Awards 2018

The annual RISC OS Awards poll undertaken by RISCOSitory on the RISC OS Awards website is now open for votes:

Although running a little later than planned, for the next couple of months you are able to vote for your favourite piece of software, the show you enjoyed the most, the project you find most interesting, and more besides.

For most of the categories there are up to six initial suggestions along with a short text entry field. You can either choose one of the options as presented, by selecting the relevant one, or you can use the text field to vote for something else – to do this, just select the ‘alternative option’ and enter your choice in the text field.

While the options on the form will not change, these ‘alternative suggestions’ will be periodically reviewed, and – depending on their number – some may be highlighted in posts on RISCOSitory, and on the RISCOSitory Twitter feed – to serve as ideas for others.

All of the categories also have a “No opinion” option, which is selected by default – if you feel that you have no way to form an opinion in any given category, you can leave this option selected rather than be forced to vote for something.

The one exception, is the ‘Best overall contributor’ category, for which no suggestions have been made. For this category, there is only the text field, which you can use to vote for whoever, or whichever company, you feel deserves recognition for their overall contribution to the RISC OS platform. If you don’t want to vote for anyone in this category, simply leave the field blank.

Combined with the awards poll is a simple survey, designed to form a picture of the RISC OS landscape. While it is a part of the same overall form, however, you can easily choose to skip the survey entirely, or only answer those questions you feel comfortable answering: Every question of the includes an “I’d rather not say” option, which is selected by default.

The voting form will remain online from now until mid-April, giving you two months to make your choices and cast your votes, with the results of the awards poll expected to be published around the end of April or beginning of May.

Voted! All my votes were for Jon Abbott ADFFS. I am SO in love with that piece of software! Keep on, Jon! And thanks for your passion and dedication!!

IMHO, ArchiEmu is quite underrated in this category. And it supports MIDI now.

for the next couple of months you are able to vote for your favourite piece of software

The “success” page says that “The results will be counted up in late February” so something needs a little tweak :)

The “success” page says that “The results will be counted up in late February” so something needs a little tweak :)

It does – this has already been pointed out to me. Unfortunately, though, I set up the poll the weekend before I moved, which happened two days later when I my internet service was installed – I’ve yet to set up any computers that have an FTP client or my password database on them (I’ve yet to dismantle my desk and bring that from the old place). I can only log in to things for which I happen to know the passwords.

The first weekend after… SW Show yesterday, and a trip to London tomorrow
to attend the ROUGOL meeting on Monday. It’ll remain unfixed for a little while yet. As soon as I am able, I’ll deal with it.

a trip to London tomorrow to attend the ROUGOL meeting on Monday

Shouldn’t you be in bed? You’ve got a coach to catch!

Hang on, what am I doing awake, I’ve got to meet you :-O

I still think that “Best Overall Contributor” should be abolished as there are so many RISC OS people who have made substantial contributions in 2018 (and earlier years). For example, the preamble to the question mentions Michael Grunditz and Jeffrey Lee, but these two have both made really important contributions and it would be somewhat invidious to have to choose between them let alone many others who have made just as important contributions to our platform. I left that one blank as I don’t think I could or should choose between our RISC OS heroes. Also, am I, a user along with many other voters, in a position to rank the major contributions that are being made? Do we have to have a “best overall” anyway? It could be demotivating for those who don’t win.

I did a “No opinion” for “Best Foreign Language resource” and gave my explanation as in an earlier post: “Either all languages are foreign or none are, especially now that RISC OS is open source”.

The questions on how much one has spent on RISC OS (Q8 and Q9) don’t include money donated to bounties, RISC OS Developments or other projects. Perhaps this should be a (separate) question?

Warning: Don’t press the return key to get a new line when entering text in a field. I did and was promptly chucked off the poll. :-(

I am always amused by the option “I’d rather not say” in the survey section. Is this for modest or bashful people who are embarassed to be using RISC OS? :-)
It’s like the gender questions you get on surveys for folk who don’t want to ‘come out’. Thinking of which, I am trying to get my ‘head around’ whether it is appropriate for the last question as there is an “other” option.

I still think that “Best Overall Contributor” should be abolished […] I left that one blank as I don’t think I could or should choose between our RISC OS heroes.

If you don’t want to think about who you would consider deserving of your vote in that category, leaving the field blank is the best option – rather than calling for the question to be removed and depriving others of being able to nominate someone they feel deserves some recognition.

Also, am I, a user along with many other voters, in a position to rank the major contributions that are being made?

TBH, it sounds to me like you’re over-thinking of the question by some degree.

Do we have to have a “best overall” anyway? It could be demotivating for those who don’t win.

If we follow that logic, that’s the end of the awards poll – indeed the end of all awards polls for anything, ever. It could be demotivating for anyone who doesn’t win “best commercial software” or “best hardware”. And in the film industry, “Best soundtrack” etc.

I did a “No opinion” for “Best Foreign Language resource” and gave my explanation as in an earlier post: “Either all languages are foreign or none are, especially now that RISC OS is open source”.

That explanation really doesn’t make any sense – RISC OS being open source has no bearing on whether a language is foreign or not. The explanation as to why the category is there has already been given to you in the other thread, but I’m also going to add:

The poll is run by me in the guise of RISCOSitory, and I treat RISCOSitory as a UK-centric site; it’s written in English because English is my native (and pretty much only) spoken language, having been born and spent my entire life in this country (occasional holidays aside) with it as my language.

For me, therefore – and by extension both RISCOSitory and the poll – any language that isn’t English is a foreign language.

The only thing I could potentially be persuaded to do is rephrase the question, perhaps to “Best resource written in a language other than English” or something like that – but at the moment, I don’t see the problem with it, and I feel that alternative phrasing would be too long.

The questions on how much one has spent on RISC OS (Q8 and Q9) don’t include money donated to bounties, RISC OS Developments or other projects. Perhaps this should be a (separate) question?

Hang on a moment. In the other thread, you observed that “Generally, people are put off surveys that are too long, asking too many questions and don’t complete them” – a point with which I agree (and have made in the past – which is also why I limit it to up to six pre-set nominations in each category).

The form as it stands is the result of a balancing effort to avoid it being too long with not asking enough (or the right) questions.

So having said that people are put off by surveys being too long, you’re now asking for more questions to be asked.

Warning: Don’t press the return key to get a new line when entering text in a field. I did and was promptly chucked off the poll. :-(

They are only (short) text fields, not text areas, so trying to get paragraphs/newlines is simply not going to work. I’d hope the size and shape of the boxes might be a clue to that – do you often try to put a newline into a writeable icon in RISC OS, for example?

I am always amused by the option “I’d rather not say” in the survey section. Is this for modest or bashful people who are embarassed to be using RISC OS? :-)

It’s for people who simply don’t want to give an answer to that particular question – and it’s used as a shortcut for those who don’t want to answer the survey at all (every question in the survey part defaults to that option).

I am trying to get my ‘head around’ whether it is appropriate for the last question as there is an “other” option.

There is a difference between someone not wishing to reveal their gender (“I’d rather not say”) and someone openly identifying as something other than male or female (for the purposes of the survey, “Other”). I chose to include the other option, BTW, because listing only male and female is wrong, and fails to recognise that gender isn’t so simple.

However, I didn’t want to provide for all the gender options, because for some people it’s a complicated issue (just search for a list of genders), so I opted for the simplest solution that’s (hopefully) not offensive to anyone it might affect.