Beta Awards 07: Winners Announced

wELCOME cONSUMER · Post by **wELCOME cONSUMER** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 5:21 pm

Roboflonne, I get that you're kidding, I really do. But seriously, please refrain from that kind of comment/observation/joke/insult because it may negatively impact the votes for that entry and/or offend the entrant who submitted that item. I ask that you please edit and remove your statement.

If an entry somehow violates the rules (ie - a hanken where it does not belong), then please contact me. Otherwise, keep personal opinions about the entries private and to yourself.

RoboFlonne · Post by **RoboFlonne** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 5:31 pm

wELCOME cONSUMER wrote:Roboflonne, I get that you're kidding, I really do. But seriously, please refrain from that kind of comment/observation/joke/insult because it may negatively impact the votes for that entry and/or offend the entrant who submitted that item. I ask that you please edit and remove your statement.

If an entry somehow violates the rules (ie - a hanken where it does not belong), then please contact me. Otherwise, keep personal opinions about the entries private and to yourself.

Ooops! I've changed it!!! I'm really sorry! I just thought it was a funny cel!! And I really liked it so I posted! I'll save them for after voting! Thank You!

LinaLoN · Post by **LinaLoN** » Mon Nov 12, 2007 10:02 pm

It's always so hard for me to narrow down the voting to just one I usually have a struggle between two peices. All the enteries are awesome this year! Good luck to everyone who entered!

darksuzaku · Post by **darksuzaku** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 2:20 pm

Hey, got an idea about the voting system, but don't know if it's good, or difficult to implement or too late to do it.

The idea, instead of just voting your favorite for each category you pick 3 choices and points would be assigned for each one:
- 1st choice: will be assigned 3 points
- 2nd choice: will be assigned 2 points
- 3rd choice: will be assigned 1 point

The current system system favors most the votes going to very few cels, specially if there are a very few bunch that stand out. The new system allows more dispersion of votes but at the same time gives less chances for entries being tied up at the end. Of course i'm not completely sure about this, so i guess it would be a good idea to ask the vote counters of past editions about how was the dispersion of votes and if this new system could be more fair.

So far, i have seen this method i propose used in many places like music contests and it works well. At least i would feel more confortable in categories where i can't decide between 2 cels if i can give some points to both of them.

What do you think people?

mmm, and now a question, any idea of how to allow the number of votes/points to be shown in the winner's page after the contest is over without offending anyone?. (I mean, for example, getting 2nd/3rd place with a very big difference in votes with the winner might upset someone)

transmet · Post by **transmet** » Tue Nov 13, 2007 11:12 pm

darksuzaku wrote:Hey, got an idea about the voting system, but don't know if it's good, or difficult to implement or too late to do it.

The idea, instead of just voting your favorite for each category you pick 3 choices and points would be assigned for each one:
- 1st choice: will be assigned 3 points
- 2nd choice: will be assigned 2 points
- 3rd choice: will be assigned 1 point

Sounds like something that might want to be considered for next year's contest.
Your talking about 3x the vote count against what's already been implemented, IMHO.

redwolf · Post by **redwolf** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 12:19 am

darksuzaku: I like that idea; I'd also like to see it considered in the future. In fact, while going through the entries for the first time, I had a very similar thought that the ability to vote for two or three in a category would make the results better. It would also make me feel better as a voter, with the ability to recognize more than one excellent piece.

wELCOME cONSUMER · Post by **wELCOME cONSUMER** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 7:11 am

That's a great idea but definitely something too complex for us to implement at this stage of the game.

I think all final changes have been made to the site, so please take the time to check and re-check the site for us. Make sure your entries are displayed properly and if you see any errors, please PM me immediately.

I can happily say that no Harmonies are listed outside the Harmony category and no Hankens are listed outside the Hanken category. If this statement is in error, please let me know immediately.

On that note, Villainous #3 is not a Harmony and will not be removed. Entrant provided ample proof.

Thank you to everyone who has taken the time to contact us with their questions, concerns and insights about this event. Your assistance has made everything much easier on us because we obviously cannot catch everything. Prompt and friendly communication is always greatly appreciated and you've all been fantastic about that.

majinuub · Post by **majinuub** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:05 am

Shame I couldn't decide on what to enter this year. But from what I seen on the site it looks like I didn't have a chance anyway. The site looks great. Good job to everyone who contributed

.

I'm almost done with my voting but I have one question. Would it be possible to send me the entries for 2 categories? I understand that the right click option isn't available for the sake of image theft, but I'm having a hard time voting in these 2 categories and need to see some of the entries individually to decide which ones to pick.

Cloud · Post by **Cloud** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:05 am

What will you be doing now?

darksuzaku · Post by **darksuzaku** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 12:19 pm

majinuub wrote:Shame I couldn't decide on what to enter this year. But from what I seen on the site it looks like I didn't have a chance anyway. The site looks great. Good job to everyone who contributed .

I'm almost done with my voting but I have one question. Would it be possible to send me the entries for 2 categories? I understand that the right click option isn't available for the sake of image theft, but I'm having a hard time voting in these 2 categories and need to see some of the entries individually to decide which ones to pick.

You can try several things.....
1- Don't use IE, use any other webbrowser and your right click option will be there, at least it works for me with FireFox + NoScript plugin that i always have enabled.
2- You can write the URLs directly, something like:

http://www.zetsuai.eu/5thAnnualBetaAwar ... ry>/XX.jpg

where <category> is the name of the category and XX is 01, 02, 03 and so on... for each entry.

3- If the category you have problems with is the animated sequence one try clicking the name of the category instead of the picture. It will lead you to a page with static thumbnails and you can click each one individually.

zerospace · Post by **zerospace** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 12:54 pm

*raises hand* May I ask a really stupid question?

Maybe I'm just missing this, or its been discussed somewhere in this 15 page thread (and I just can't find it), but.. how is the voting going to work? Are we to choose one from each category or more? It's been awhile since I participated in the Beta awards and my memory is fuzzy on what's been done in the past.

I'd love to attempt to have my choices ready when the voting begins... otherwise my great *insert sarcasm here* memory might have me forget to vote and that wouldn't be good either.

Zetsuai · Post by **Zetsuai** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 1:02 pm

here we go ... (^_^) ...

that's a sample what the voting form will look like:

zerospace · Post by **zerospace** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 1:45 pm

Radio buttons.. ok - so we choose one from each?

Thanks!

Now I can get my votes ready. ^_^

As for the slowness thing I brought up earlier -- I think I have figured out why some of us may be experiencing slowness when others are not. After a little bit of tracerting and nslookups, it appears that the betaawards domain is being forwarded to your hosting and is masking the actual URL of the page the visitor is on, right zetsuai?

Well, when I run a tracert to betaawards.com, what I get is it times out several times once it reaches the domain's DNS server (comes up secureserver.net) before reaching its final destination and gets the response from betaawards.com's servers:

Tracing route to betaawards.com [64.202.189.170]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 1250 ms * 10 ms ge-1-3-ur01.walnutcreek.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.87.198.161]
4 18 ms 18 ms 15 ms te0-7-0-1-ar01.sfsutro.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.86.90.158]
5 17 ms 15 ms 16 ms COMCAST-IP.edge1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.79.43.134]
6 47 ms 15 ms 16 ms xe-11-1-0.edge1.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.79.43.133]
7 15 ms 16 ms 16 ms ae-14-69.car4.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.18.6]
8 15 ms 15 ms 16 ms qwest-level3-te.SanJose1.Level3.net [4.68.111.174]
9 16 ms 14 ms 16 ms snj-core-02.inet.qwest.net [205.171.214.45]
10 32 ms 35 ms 39 ms phn-core-02.inet.qwest.net [67.14.19.34]
11 87 ms 38 ms 81 ms phv-edge-03.inet.qwest.net [205.171.12.102]
12 35 ms 37 ms 36 ms 206.80.195.230
13 51 ms 76 ms 69 ms ip-208-109-112-154.ip.secureserver.net [208.109.112.154]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 34 ms 35 ms 35 ms ip-64-202-160-154.secureserver.net [64.202.160.154]
19 37 ms 37 ms 37 ms pwfwd-v01.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net [64.202.189.170]
20 39 ms 39 ms 38 ms pwfwd-v01.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net [64.202.189.170]

Trace complete.

However, running a trace direct to zetsuai.eu (the actual location of the awards site), we get a normal response time:

Tracing route to www.zetsuai.eu [217.119.54.169]
over a maximum of 30 hops:

1 1 ms 1 ms 1 ms 192.168.1.1
2 * * * Request timed out.
3 9 ms 9 ms * ge-1-3-ur01.walnutcreek.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.87.198.161]
4 * 15 ms 16 ms te0-7-0-0-ar01.sfsutro.ca.sfba.comcast.net [68.86.90.154]
5 15 ms 16 ms 16 ms 68.86.85.81
6 24 ms 22 ms 24 ms te-0-7-0-4-cr01.losangeles.ca.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.84.53]
7 65 ms 64 ms 64 ms te-0-7-0-0-cr01.stratford.tx.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.84.57]
8 58 ms 56 ms 58 ms te-0-7-0-0-cr01.dallas.tx.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.84.61]
9 72 ms 71 ms 71 ms 68.86.85.65
10 109 ms 84 ms 82 ms 68.86.85.69
11 92 ms 92 ms 91 ms 68.86.84.153
12 1518 ms 95 ms 90 ms te-1-3-pr01.ashburn.va.ibone.comcast.net [68.86.84.154]
13 87 ms 88 ms 88 ms 62.156.128.69
14 189 ms 184 ms 191 ms 212.185.8.14
15 186 ms 184 ms 184 ms gw-dtag.foc-1.we.synnet.net [217.119.48.102]
16 188 ms 187 ms 187 ms core1.bb1.we.synnet.net [217.119.48.8]
17 186 ms 187 ms 200 ms gw-loomes.bb2.we.synnet.net [217.119.48.44]
18 189 ms 194 ms 189 ms web169.loomes.net [217.119.54.169]

Trace complete.

Which is why when I initially load the betaawards.com page, it loads slower than molasses. But once I'm in, it speeds up a bit.

The main reason I'm even saying this is to show you all that it isn't that these folks are running slow computers -- the first computer I ran these traces from is a brand new dual core laptop over a high speed connection. The other is an extremely well maintained desktop set up primarily for running Photoshop and programming. In fact, it does not surf the web much at all, so there is no cache to be emptied (actually, I have Firefox set to purge my cache daily on the laptop as well), or hard drives to defrag. While defragging a hard drive might gain you a minute performance boost, increasing your RAM will do far more. A FULL hard disk is another story, since your browser uses it for cache -- without the storage space for cache, of course pages will load slowly. Internet Exploiter is notorious for storing tons of cache -- in fact, IE7 has a ridiculous minimum cache requirement, which is why I do not use it unless I must.

The reason folks like Rei have a problem with timeouts should now be obvious -- secureserver.net's servers are timing out regularly. The best way to correct this is to actually point the domain name to the host servers, but some hosts may not allow you to host two domains on the same account. This is just something to keep in mind for future years, of course, since it really wouldn't be wise to make the change now

Anyways.. my inquisitive nature rears its useless head again

Sorry to babble, just wanted to let the folks who have experienced slowness know they aren't crazy.

(Though it most definitely is also a function of your individual ISP as well).

blueheaven · Post by **blueheaven** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 2:34 pm

The problem is, only a few computers are having trouble loading the page. Not all high speed internet is created equal. I have logged in from work and from home and not had a single problem. Nobody said anyone was crazy, simply that the problem was one of functionality on their end and not the site.

zerospace · Post by **zerospace** » Wed Nov 14, 2007 3:34 pm

blueheaven wrote:The problem is, only a few computers are having trouble loading the page. Not all high speed internet is created equal. I have logged in from work and from home and not had a single problem. Nobody said anyone was crazy, simply that the problem was one of functionality on their end and not the site.

Actually that's my point, exactly. It is partly the site -- the domain forwarding to be exact. A combination of that and the end connection (of course not all high speed connections are created equal -- there is a big difference between DSL and cable, but that's neither here nor there).

All I'm trying to say is this is why some folks are complaining about slowness and others are not. It seems to me that you feel that since you don't have a problem, there is no problem, and that simply isn't the case.

I only posted this partly because folks like Rei can't view the site from home due to the timeouts (not that she's really complained much), and so I thought it would be nice to see if we could learn why. That post was mainly for Zetsuai -- since she's the one gracious enough to be hosting the site. As a web programmer myself, I like to know why some people have issues viewing my sites, if I can, so I figured she might feel the same. She's free of course, to take the information I've provided or leave it.