Frequently Asked Questions 2012

Nominations

  • Can I nominate my own project/resource/blog?

Yes, you may nominate your own work for inclusion in DH Awards. If this makes you feel bad for some reason, consider nominating a different resource as well.

  • Can I nominate someone else’s work?

Yes, you may nominate someone else’s work for inclusion in DH Awards. It helps us if you include their contact details if you know them.

  • Does the project/resource/work I nominate have to have been completed in the year of the awards?

Yes! We were a bit less stringent last year, but this year we will remove any that don’t seem to have had a major update or have not been launched, created, started, finished, enacted or had something significant happen in 2013.

  • Can I nominate more than one project/resource/work?

Yes, simply load the nominations form again and submit the form with your next nomination.

  • Something I nominated hasn’t appeared in the list of projects I can vote for, did you ignore my nomination?

No! We won’t ignore any nomination, but we get a lot of them in each category so the  nominations committee will review these and whittle them down slightly by seeing if they are appropriate to the category, recent, etc.  It may also be that we did not receive confirmation from the resource owner that they were willing to have their resource in the competition by the deadline. We are very sorry that your nomination did not make it through that process, but the decision of the nominations committee is final. We won’t change the ballot once it has been announced.

  • How are the categories decided? Will they be the same next year?

The categories were decided by the nominations committee to give a range of distinct categories. While some of these categories will be repeated we may change others. If you have categories you would like to see get in touch.

  • Can you tell me who nominated my resources?

We could tell you as all nominations store the name and email provided, but we probably won’t. Nominations should be assumed to be in complete confidence. While we could put two parties who agreed in touch we are running DH Awards not a dating service.

Voting

  • Am I allowed to vote?

Everyone is allowed to vote, voting is entirely open to the public. You do not even have to view yourself as part of the Digital Humanities community to vote.

  • Doesn’t that just turn it into a popularity contest?

In some ways, yes, it does! The other alternative would be to have the winners decided by a shadowy oligarchy, and we don’t like those. DH Awards was set up intentionally as a community-nominated and community-voted form of recognition. If we start controlling who has the right to vote it undermines this. There were active campaigns by some to get their entire university, sub-community, friends, etc. to vote for their resource…this is fine. It all goes towards publicising DH resources in the community.

  • Can I vote for my own resource/project/work?

Yes, you can vote for your own resource/project/work, but please vote for some of the other categories as well.

  • Can I vote multiple times?

Please do not vote multiple times. The voting form asks for your email address specifically to track this. Yes, you may have multiple email addresses, but it really isn’t in the spirit of things. If we detect any attempted voter fraud we may remove all your votes.

  • Do I have to vote in all categories?

No, you do not have to vote in all categories, but we’d like it if you did. Maybe have a look at some of the entries in that category and you might find something new and interesting! If you are unable to make up your mind then leave that category blank. Maybe

  • The voting (and nomination) form asks for my name and email address, what are you going to use this for?

This is solely used to track if you have accidentally voted more than once. We will not release your name  or email to anyone. We will not email you unless you have indicated that you wish us to do so.

AWARDS

  • Is there a cash prize given with the award?

No, absolutely not. We have no sponsors, no money, and provide no cash prizes.  What you get is the honor of having won and a little icon to put on your website.

  • Where can I find out who won?

The award winners will be listed on this website as well as circulated to the usual DH mailing lists and via our twitter feed.

  •  Do you list exactly how many votes each resource got?

No. We list which resources were candidates for voting on the nominations page, we list the winners in each category (and 1st and 2nd runners up),  we list the total number of ballots, and we list the number of votes cast per category. We do not list the total number of votes for any particular resource. We may make overall aggregate statistics available if requested by the DH community. 

  • Where are voters from? What languages do they speak? What browsers do they use? What data do you collect from those visiting the website?

This website uses Google Analytics and so tracks a variety of usage data of the website. This data is stored anonymously and we make no use of it other than for aggregate statistics. We have released information on visits during the 2012 voting period of Countries (http://tinyurl.com/dhawards2012-country), Browser Language (http://tinyurl.com/dhawards2012-language) and Browser (http://tinyurl.com/dhawards2012-browsers).