Dragon Awards Updates

The inaugural Dragon Awards will be presented at Dragon Con on Labor Day Weekend.

A Dragon Awards administrator previewed for File 770 one tool they will use to prevent voting abuse, and explained the award’s eligibility period.

ONE VOTE. The Dragon Awards announcement on April 4 established a one-fan one-vote philosophy.

  • “Using a dedicated Dragon Awards website, fans can nominate one (and only one) of their favorite properties”, and
  • “Fans will be allowed to vote just once for each category’s best”

The Fan FAQ makes it a rule:

Who can vote or nominate?

Anyone can nominate and vote or just vote for finalists, once only please…

Filer Danny Sichel asked the administrators of the Dragon Awards –

How will you ensure that people only vote, and only nominate, once each?

Dave Cody, Senior Director and Co-Chairman of Dragon Con answered —

We’re going to employ various tools to combat ballot box stuffing when the actual voting starts.

Also, for nominations, it won’t be possible to slate or overload the nominations for each category. We’re going to use experts in the various disciplines to create the final nomination lists after examining all the nominations.

Yes, I am being deliberately vague so that those trying to game the system won’t know what exactly we are doing to combat any shenanigans.

ELIGIBILITY PERIOD. On April 14, the Dragon Awards site announced this refinement to its Eligibility Period:

We have updated the eligibility period for works for consistency across the site. Works released between 7/1/2015 and 6/30/2016 are eligible for this year’s awards. We will maintain this rolling year of eligibility moving forward so that there are no gaps or overlaps in publishing works.

Therefore, the Dragon Awards Candidate FAQ now reads —

When does my book, game, comic or show have to have been released to qualify for this year?

To be eligible for the 2016 Dragon Awards the book, comic, game, movie, or, at least, one episode of any series has to have been released between July 1, 2015, and the close of nominations, June 30, 2016.

And Dave Cody extrapolates that into the future —

Eligibility for each award will cover quarters 3 and 4 of one year and quarters 1 and 2 of the following year. Therefore for the awards in 2017 the eligibility period will be from 7/1/16 to 6/30/17.

Thanks to Dave Cody for the additional insights.

[Thanks to Danny Sichel for the story.]