By the rules, I'm referring to the rules of the 2013 Anime Beta Awards held in January. You can view them at:
http://celawards2013.zero-space.net/ind ... tion=rules.
Overall, they are a pretty nice set of rules and seem to have worked out well in the past. That said, here are my comments on them:
Eligibility Rules:
[Inflexible] Rule 4 is out. It will be hard enough to vote using email. I'm not going to spend any energy on checking to see that entrants voted in every category or voted at all. Not voting is its own penalty.
Submission Rules:
1) This is a suggestion to be discussed in the forums, but I would like to throw it out. In the standard categories, why not just allow 6 entries, period, not six categories. Some folks have galleries with a more limited range of cel types, maybe they have mostly mecha and nothing much else. They could make all of their entries in the one category if they so chose. I believe Sensei was trying to mix it up a bit the last time with suggestions for new categories. I think this might produce some interesting results.
3) The limits would be on the largest dimension, not on just width. Frankly, I'm not too worried about this one. If submissions are off (just a hair too large or the like), I will just fix them without bothering the submitter. Only, in the case of animated would I send them back to be fixed by the submitter. And, in that case, only because there is something of an art to getting a good animation. And, I leave artistic efforts to those more capable than I.
4) I suggest a clarification:
The sentence "Artwork which was previously entered into the Anime-Beta Awards but did not win any awards
within the last five years is eligible for re-entry in any category. " would be added as the first sentence. The current first sentence would be changed to read: "Artwork which was previously entered into the Anime-Beta Awards and won an award
within the last five years is eligible for re-entry, provided that the winning piece has changed owners." The underlined words represent a change. The award winners for the early years are no longer available for viewing. There needs to be some limit as to how far back to go. I not wedded to five as the magic number, but I think it's time to put something explicit in. I remember 5 years as being discussed previously and was surprised to not find it in the rules.
[Inflexible] The sentence "If you do not e-mail the coordinator, your entry will be disqualified." will be changed to "If you do not e-mail the coordinator, your entry may be disqualified." By this point, I trust you are picking up on my attitude about these things. Sometimes, people just make errors. There needs to be some flexibility on this in cases where error has been made but things are fixed without harm.
5) I suggest changing "previous winners" to "previous winners within the last five years". The reasoning is the same as that given in 4) above.
7) "Categories with fewer than three entries 24 hours before the beginning of voting will be eliminated." will be changed to "Categories with fewer than three entries after the end of the entry period will be eliminated." My intention is to be a little fuzzy here. If there is a private viewing period, there might be some entries eliminated / added that might change the category total. My intention would be to wait to see if a category would have to eliminated until the end of that period. the publication of the daily totals should alert folks to the possibility that a category is on the bubble.
Finally, some thoughts on schedule, I would think that there should be some time for the usual discussions. Then, we could start.
Here is a straw man schedule:
12:01 AM 24 August (Saturday) - 11:59 PM (Sunday) 15 September (Eastern Daylight Time) Entry Period
17-18 September Private Viewing
21-23 September Public Viewing
26 September - 07 October
And, finally, finally -- some comments about categories.
OP/ED/Eyecatch: Just fine with category. I have an issue with banning these from all other categories. This leads to too many potential problems. There are many series, Ranma 1/2 for example, where all of the OP/ED are not available to the English audience. It is too easy for someone to run afoul of this ban out of ignorance. And, yes, in this instance, ignorance is an excuse. I know that Hankens have similar rules. But, generally speaking, Hankens cost more and people are very much less likely to have a Hanken and not know it is such. And, yes again, I have purchased OP cels and not known that they were OP cels. Even the vendor didn't know, so I don't regard this as an academic issue. My thought is that we want to reduce the likelihood of inadvertent rules violations, where the rule doesn't provide much benefit.
There needs to be some minor discussion of categories with respect to the cel vs paper, but I'm pretty talked out for now. So, I'll save the discussions for the forum or whatever.