Hi James,
I gave you my feedback as a user. It's not that I found the lack of links on the form "problematic", I said I wished there had been links on the actual form. As someone who works online every day, having to refer back to different tabs/pages always means extra labour. When you accumulate them, clicks are time and effort. Perhaps I am very slow and it's just me who felt I needed to refer back to the form to remember what it was exactly I was voting for.
You are right that the form does not have all the fields as 'required'. This is in technical, database terms. If I am presented with a form, I want to complete it all, even if some questions in it are not compulsory. Instead of suggesting a user is wrong for having perceived the whole form had to be completed, perhaps an indicative text or a different design would help avoid this misconception?
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1gDL-FR6r6il8uhMGcRN2ocjLoiWqEI2Fs06DnAYmbCc/viewform
>>>You seem to be missing the point though. The DH Awards are not primarily
about getting some accurate measure of the 'best' in any of these
categories. To do that would necessitate having individuals vote who
actually could assess these properly and make informed decisions. Since
it is open voting, I agree that this is unlikely. The main point of the
DH Awards is one of awareness.
I am missing the point as an active, informed member of the DH community, then. I did never suggest that the DH Awards are offering some accurate measure of the 'best', I was suggesting that allowing voters to categorise the nominated projects *could* be an alternative to pre-categorising the projects in advance. However, for many people (dare I say "most people"?) any awards imply that the best in something is being publicly recognised by a community of experts or consumers or whatever. Awareness seems to me to be a positive, but secondary consequence. Many public reactions to the DH Awards expressed the sentiment that the Awards were creating a "celebrity" culture around DH. It might be possible that you are underestimating the reputational element of the DH Awards.
My intention when voting was precisely to assess them properly and make an informed decision. Maybe I shouldn't have done this? I feel really stupid now for having taken this so seriously when it fact it wasn't. Logically, if I wanted to make an informed decision, I needed the time to do it, and this is I why I suggested that it would be nice if it were stated more clearly that one can only vote for one category and that's it (however, projects nominated under just one category are a fair number deserving proper assessment in my view).
Yo have clarified that the Awards are not about reflecting informed decisions and hence recognising 'the best' but about creating awareness of new projects. The About page of the page reads:
>>>This site is dedicated to Digital Humanities Awards: Recognizing Excellence in Digital Humanities.
>>>
Digital Humanities Awards are a new set of annual
awards given in recognition of talent and expertise in the digital
humanities community and are nominated and voted for entirely by the
public. These awards are intended to help put interesting DH resources
in the spotlight and engage DH users (and general public) in the work of
the community.
Perhaps this text could be edited that the projects *nominated* are already being recognised for their excellence, talent and expertise? As currently written it suggests to me that the projects that are deemed "excellent" are those who win. If you don't win, you were not considered "excellent" by the community of voters.
You have said in your reply that in order to assess which projects are 'the best' (often interpreted as a synonym of "excellent") the process would "necessitate individuals vote who actually could assess these properly and make informed decisions", and that "since it is open voting, I agree that this is unlikely." It is my view that as currently phrased the information around the DH Awards gives the impression that the intention is to reflect informed decisions from the DH community in order to recognize excellence. I personally don't think the obstacle to this is the open voting, but the way it has been implemented. Of course there are many positives in the way it's been implemented, but our focus here is brainstorming how it could be done better by sharing our feedback as users.