Awards Programs: The Criteria

One of the most important documents in any significant awards program is the criteria. In fact, an awards program is typically only as good as it's criteria. The only factor that is more important is an active, willing awardmaster who is actively working on his or her program.

That being said, the next question that comes to mind is "what makes this document so important?" The answer is simple. The criteria is the contract, so to speak, with other webmasters who submit their sites for review. A well written criteria document should tell prospective award submitters exactly what needs to be true in order for them to win your award.

Thus, an awards program with a well written criteria will flow like clockwork and will be a pleasure both for submitters and awardmasters alike. Everything is spelled out and everything is understood.

A set of well written criteria makes the awardmasters job much easier. You see, all you need to do is compare the site against your criteria. Nothing is left to chance and there is little room for doubt. For example, if your criteria says "good navigation" and you cannot find your way around the site, well, then it's obvious what you need to do, isn't it?

How do you come up with a good set of criteria? Well, sit down and think about what your awards program is all about. Personally, when I came up with my programs I began from the theme and worked down. Let's say I wanted to award good science fiction sites. That's the theme. Now it's possible to design some criteria around that.

What kind of sites are you looking for? What, in your opinion, does it mean for a site to be "good", "great" and "excellent"? What is a bad site? What do you never want to see in a site? What kinds of things do you want to encourage?

Always remember to look at both the positive and negative sides of the coin. Start general: what is a good site and what is a bad site? Then work your way to the more specific: good navigation, good layout and so on. The more specific you get, the easier your job as an awardmaster is. On the other hand, by making your criteria too specific you may be excluding perfectly good sites that truly deserve to win your award.

It's a good idea to actually look at some sites that you think might win your award. Surf to them and look at them. What makes these sites special in your mind? Remember to look at some sites that definitely would NOT win: what's wrong with them?

Okay, so what's in a good set of criteria? First is the theme. What kind of sites, in general, are you looking for? Next is more specifics - do you care about navigation, design, HTML coding, content, advertising and so on? In our awards program, for example, we care concerned with content and layout. Thus, HTML coding is not even considered or looked at. We simply do not care how good or bad your code is - it's not relevant to our purposes. Other awards programs, however, deem HTML coding and style to be of primary importance. It all depends on what is important to the awardsmaster.

Start writing down the things that you care about, one line per item. In addition to the item (good HTML code for example) it's a good idea to state why this is important. If you do this, try and tie it back to your theme. Thus, in our program we say good navigation is a must - because we want to award websites that communicate well, and this means it must be easy for someone to get around the site and find what he wants to find.

Sometimes you may not be able to tie an item back to the theme - you want to see good HTML code, just because you think that is important. Don't worry about it - this is your awards program so make sure you are happy with it.

Before you are finished, spend some time thinking about what kinds of sites you will NEVER award anything to. These are the exclusions, and they should be clearly listed in a separate section of your criteria. For example, you don't like Satanic sites? This is the place to tell them to buzz off.

Be as brutal as you want. Remember that by giving an award to a site you are more or less granting them your blessing - so by all means don't give an award to any site which violates your code ethics or your morals. Just be sure and state these in your criteria. For example, we feel that psychiatry is unethical and all psychiatrists are evil, therefore we will exclude sites which promote those subjects. If you feel that anti-Christian sites violate your ethical beliefs, then be sure and exclude them.

Oh, sure, you will get an email or two from someone who feels you are being unfair or silly or stupid. Who cares what they think? This is your awards program and you do not have to support any activities which you feel are unethical.

It is also a good idea to visit http://www.awardsites.com and look at some of the awards programs posted there. Check out their criteria and see what other people are doing. Remember, do not plagiarize, just see if you can use any of the concepts yourself.

Write it all up in the form of a list and post it with your awards program. Check it over a few times to be sure this is exactly what you want, then publish it on your site.

Now, run your awards program using the criteria as your guide. Remember this is a contract with submitters, so be sure to judge their sites using your criteria and nothing else. If you find sites which somehow do not fit properly, then judge them using the criteria anyway - and modify your criteria for the future.

What do you do about those people who submit sites which do not meet the criteria? Some sites bury a password somewhere within the criteria which must be included on the submission form. If the password is not entered then the site is automatically rejected. In other words, one of the criteria for winning is the webmaster must have read the criteria! I prefer just to apply the criteria - it soon becomes obvious what needs to be done.

Create a good criteria document and you will be running a class act - an awards program which works well, attracts good sites and makes your own site look good.