Don't believe your eyes

    Runet AwardNot all contests by name are such in essence. Most often these are marketing events with a notorious finale. However, to participate in the crowd is not forbidden. However, many contestants who rely on something more than simple participation often have a protest against the "game without rules." If the protest has a strong basis, then, in order not to discredit the whole event, the organizers make concessions. This happened with the Runet Prize-2007 , which, under the pressure of several sites of the winners of last year’s competition, was forced to change the rules of the game.

    It all began with last year’s open letter from the participants of the “top ten” of the Runet Prize 2006 to the organizers of the competition. Initially, the organizers reacted vividly to criticism. They promised to introduce technical means to combat “cheating” (a picture with a digital code, the need to confirm your choice by clicking on the link in the letter), make the SMS voting procedure more transparent and remove sites that contradict Russian legislation from the list (mainly adult -themes). “In fact, none of these promises has been fulfilled,” said representatives of the Orthodox Web developers community in their explanation of the participation of Orthodox sites in the Runet Prize 2007 , which was signed by representatives of all four Orthodox sites that were included in the past year in the "top ten".

    The first reaction to last year’s winners’ refusal to participate in the Prize was followed on the websites of two antagonists: Habrahabr and Web planet . In both cases, in articles with clearly “yellow” headlines, a generalization was made to all Orthodox sites, a lot of overexposure and misinformation were allowed. However, the authors understood the meaning of the appeal correctly. The consequence was that the organizers of the award corrected the rules and announced this openly . Then several more articles followed: on the Telnews.ru website and two posts on the Web planet ( ROCIT: “Representatives of the Orthodox resources did not notice something” and “The Orthodox were ordered to advertise FireFox”) The last two materials had even more overexposure and misinformation than in the previous ones. But most importantly, the result was achieved, which Orthodox web developers said in a second press address , namely:
    1) after the first appeal, the organizers canceled the SMS voting;
    2) cleaned the list of contestants from adult sites (in other words, porn sites) and
    3) put the first real defense of voting from markups - the voter must solve a certain arithmetic example and enter the answer, otherwise the vote will not be accepted.
    In the second appealOrthodox web developers also summed up their demarche: “We do not regret the decision and are glad that not without our participation in organizing the main Internet contest of the Runet, positive trends began to be observed. Let's hope that next year there will be more positive changes and the competition will finally begin to get rid of the image of the “marginal event” that has strongly adhered to it. We wish all the projects, despite the shortcomings in the organization of the voting that made the decision to participate in the competition this year, fair competition and fair refereeing. We urge our readers who decide to participate in the contest to cast their votes for social projects Miloserdie.Ru, Sirotinka.Ru, Mozilla-Russia.org, Gramota.ru, Deafworld.ru and other similar sites. ”
    One of the participants of the very first last year’s appeal to the organizers of the Award, the representative of the Mozilla Russia website Alexey Gubanov told TelNews that the authors of the open letter showed a “position worthy of respect”, but did not plan to support Orthodox sites in the boycott of the People’s Vote. Alexey Gubanov also made some assumptions about the outcome of the vote: "I do not think there is a site in RuNet whose popularity can be compared to bash.org.ru . Of course, this is a real national leader, and is worthy of victory, whatever the attitude to the prize itself. If in the presence of such a bright leader some kind of gaming site will win the vote, well - once again we will see what the prize is worth. ”
    Source: Monitoringkonkursa.ru

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