September 3, 2001

2:44 PM

The New Zealand Net Awardshave announced their finalists. Picked by a panel of people including Web saavy magazine editors, personal Web site operators, and tech-radio deejays, the NZ awards seem much more even handed, open, and real than the Webbies (albeit only for NZ sites...) And, as far as I can tell, they're doing it on almost no budget. Pretty impressive. Why doesn't this community start something like it?
posted by benbrown (20 comments total)

New Zealand is a ridiculously net-saavy country. Web sites for TV and radio shows actually add to the experience, as well as putting you (in most cases) in direct contact with the personalities on the program. The Web stuff I've seen here -- it's as if people here don't get caught up as easily in the GET RICH schemes. People have good ideas, they put their own efforts into them and they just work hard until their little project is a success... instead of turning it into a money burning dotcom.

Anyways. The NZ net awards look really promising, is my point, and they'll be highlighting alot of really great stuff.
posted by benbrown at 2:49 PM on September 3, 2001

Although I am not familiar with almost all of the NZ sites, I have to agree that the categories are well thought out, I especially love the "The NotAward" category.
posted by riffola at 3:29 PM on September 3, 2001

i contest the 'real', but otherwise it looks better than most to me.
posted by titboy at 5:12 PM on September 3, 2001

The NZ net awards look really promising, is my point, and they'll be highlighting alot of really great stuff

While I do agree that they are promising, some of the nominess in the categores do seem out of place. i.e Best over all Design, For The Masses - a "Design Community" site, sure it has a nice design but shouldn't it also be in Best Internet Community.

Also there are plenty of other sites that just don't fit into the categores so well, Neil Finns site, S-Up and Darcy to name a few.

However, they are better than those Webby like Netguide awards and I hope the continue til next year.
posted by X-00 at 6:23 PM on September 3, 2001

i would be rather keen on knowing who selected the finalists.

x-00: nice spotting on the neil finn site. i've never seen that one before. looks excellent. definately worthy of an award.
posted by titboy at 6:50 PM on September 3, 2001

You'll find the judges here

Yes Titboy, it does and its been out all most a year, and is always being updated.
posted by X-00 at 6:58 PM on September 3, 2001

good lord, the judging panel is more insestuous than the finalists lists
posted by titboy at 7:14 PM on September 3, 2001

good lord, the judging panel is more insestuous than the finalists lists

Could you explain why exactly their so "insestuous"?
posted by X-00 at 8:06 PM on September 3, 2001

With an overall population of about three million people, you'd expect the NZ Internet community to be smaller, therefore it could be seen as incestuous because everyone probably knows each other.

We're a small country down here, remember.
posted by animoller at 8:25 PM on September 3, 2001

X-00, fyi: one of the judges is engaged to the awards director, another is also a nominee, etc...
posted by sawks at 8:53 PM on September 3, 2001

Like Ms. Moller said, the community is small here so its harder to find completely unrelated people to be judges. However, at least everyone involved is involved in Web stuff and does know what they're talking about. As opposed to the Webbies where, you know, Shaq is a judge.
posted by benbrown at 9:13 PM on September 3, 2001

although the webbies are uncensored, which is pretty relevant for the internet, don't you think?
posted by titboy at 9:31 PM on September 3, 2001

I'm a nominee in the awards, and I think they're a bunch of crap.
Yes, we have a small internet-community here compared with other countries, but you can't accept that as an excuse for having one of the nominees also on the judging panel. Come on, people. We're not that small.
I also find the conditions of being a nominee retardedly farcical, if truth be known. No adult content? As bloated and as overhyped and misguided as the Webbys are, at least they recognised that with the popularity of Stile that a nomination was in order.
posted by ddgray at 11:42 PM on September 3, 2001

Shut up all of you, Celebrity Weakest Link is starting...
posted by holloway at 12:33 AM on September 4, 2001

Why should only "web people" judge web sites - in fact I think having "ordinary" people on these awards is a good thing - too much web work has failed to address the needs of potential users.
posted by johnny novak at 4:35 AM on September 4, 2001

"Look! An ordinary person! Kill it before it breeds!"
posted by Catch at 1:56 PM on September 4, 2001

I like the *idea* of the awards, but it is a very small circle of people involved. It immediately strikes me as a bunch of friends patting each other on the back. There is a lot of good kiwi stuff on the web that wasn't nominated.

The fact that the competition director is VP of Marketing for a nominated company is not good, while it is probably not a scam, it also isn't good practice, there is a fairly obvious conflict of interest.

Most of the judges know personally a number of the nominees, which also doesn't really mean anything is wrong, but it is also bad practice.

Yeah, there are only 3million people in NZ, but I bet I could find 10 net-savvy people to judge the awards who had no personal interest in any of the nominated sites.
posted by sycophant at 4:35 PM on September 4, 2001

Yeah, there are only 3million people in NZ, but I bet I could find 10 net-savvy people to judge the awards who had no personal interest in any of the nominated sites.

They'll be the people who are pissed off they weren't nominated :->
posted by Foaf at 6:20 AM on September 5, 2001

Heh, heres an idea, how about someone asks someone involved for their response? or would that take the fun our of it? hehe

Here is a reply to Robyn Gallagher who was kind enough to e-mail me regarding her concerns:

Q. BulletProof FTP is nominated in "best internet software" and you are both the director of the awards and the VP of marketing at BulletProof Software. Is this a conflict of interest? Should BP FTP have been disqualified from being nominated?

A.I wasn't involved in the picking of finalists, simple as that, it is obvious from the Judge's list that neither I nor anyone else in my company is a Judge. I never mentioned my company's products to the judges. Members of the public nominated it and then the judges chose it as a finalist of their own accord through voting. The voting phase is completely people's choice with no input from myself or anyone else except on a one person one vote basis, personally I'll be voting for WinGate. ;)

Q. Moira is one of the judges responsible for picking the nominees, and her site has ended up as one of the nominees in "Best Personal Site". Is this a conflict of interest? Should sites directly associated with judges been disqualified from being nominated?

A.We picked a large pool (15) judges so that if anyone involved was nominated by the public, then the remaining judges could vote on the finalist shortlist category in which the judge had been nominated. In this case the judge who's project is involved is at a disadvantage as they lose one potential vote, which if anything lessens their chance of nomination. Judges were told not to (and agreed and abided by) promote their own project to other judges. If we had to exclude projects that our judges were involved with then we would have to exclude half of .nz. This is the reason the netguide "Web" awards use foreign judges but one of the reason's these awards were created was to reflect the preferences of new zealanders regarding the net, not foreigners.

Q. Is it right to exclude sites with adult content, despite that fact that some sites, such as sensibleerection.com are pretty popular? And hey, even Stile won a Webby last year.

A.Only purely adult orientated sites are excluded, this is for logistical and legal reasons and we had no requests from the public to add an adult category, though we did have requests (which we implemented) for other changes to categories. This was our mandate to originally exclude purely adult sites and then evidence that it was a decision people had few problems with.

We don't claim to cover all possible uses of the Internet,we have however sought public input over a number of months as to what people want, that is the idea behind the "open source" nature of the awards. We believe we have managed to strike a good balance with regards to what people are after and reaction so far has been very positive.

And in general as an answer to your suggestions of "corruption", well the awards are (again) people's choice, whoever gets the most votes will win and as people don't need to vote for the people/companies on the finalist shortlists chosen by the public and our judges anyway, so anyone can still win.

In the end if people believe these awards allow them to reward excellence in the use of the Internet they will take part by voting, it seems they are. People who believe they are not doing so, well they can bitch if they want, but they'd serve themselves and the new zealand internet scene better though by making some positive suggestions to us, so we can implement them like we have many others. If you believe these awards were somehow created in the spirit of cronyism then might I suggest you are entirely mistaken. This project has cost a number of people quite alot in time and if for instance i was merely doing it so a product created by my company could win an award i would be truly wasting my time. In our case winning a NZ internet award would give almost no fiscal benefits as our target market is the US and Europe. And that was even if it were possible for us to "rig" the awards, when we make every effort to make these awards about the people's choice. This is an altruistic product, if you or others can't beleive that then i am sorry for your cynicism!

If you require any further clarification please don't hesitate to ask or if you know of anyone else with questions they can do what plenty of people have and talk to us, feedback and suggestions are all a part ofmaking sure these awarsd achieve their purpose. ;)
posted by thomas_s at 12:10 AM on September 7, 2001

People who believe they are not doing so, well they can bitch if they want, but they'd serve themselves and the new zealand internet scene better though by making some positive suggestions to us, so we can implement them like we have many others.

Damn the scene and DAMN THE MAN.
posted by holloway at 3:58 AM on September 7, 2001