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Furthermore, there's no reason why an outstanding zine shouldn't go on to get good positions in several different categories and thus illustrate their overall worth. Such a poll would involve a rather greater deal of effort than the ones that exist today, on both the part of the pollster and the voters, but there's no reason for a voter to feel obligated to cast votes for all the awards. As few people would feel they knew which zines ran En Garde well AND United well AND Diplomacy well, I would expect few ballot papers to rank zines in all of these categories. This might have the effect of slightly cutting down on the numbers of votes recorded in each category, but there would be no reason for the number of votes received overall to fall, and all the votes would come from people who cared enough about the hobby to go to the effort of participating in a complex award system - in short, the people who know what they're on about. (Aside: eh, I'm not impressed with this proportionial font nonsense - makes it much harder to fill a page up. Then again, it's what most of the other zines and subzines have to struggle under, and they don't find it that much of a problem. Future GIT issues will probably contain more words than older ones ever did, but fit onto half as many pages, and people will be convinced it's smaller than it used to be...) я   ёђѓјћ   [\] X Y Z ` a b +/mno†‡ˆ‰ЅІЇЛМјє№ьшфрмзгЯЫЧУПЛЗГЏЋЇЃŸ›—’ŽŠ†‚~zvrnjfb]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]^a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a V]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a  U]^a c&Мгдежђѓє()*>?@A[\tuvwŽ‘žŸЛМНийкыьэюћїѓяычуплзгЯЫЧУПЛЗГЏЋЇЃŸ›—“‹‡ƒ{wsokg]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a &юІЇЈБВГКЛМН[\ћїѓяычуплзгЯ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a ]a  я  ђ \ Y a noМ\ŸьэЇВЛМ\љѓющфпкеаЫЦСМЗВ­ЈЃž™”№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№№я\я\mџџџџџџџџ9!K@ёџNormala "A@ђџЁ"Default Paragraph Fontаџ@мЅe#Р я\%m,$l,$l$$ $ ЊE($ь$˜$Tю$E MS Sans Serif SymbolTimes New Roman ArialIf I ran the Zine Poll... That's a pretty big "if", I know, and, no, this isn't a wild bid to take the darn thing over. If it can plant a couple of seeds in peoples' minds, though, it'll have done its job. Essentially, it's an attempt to rehash the Gladys. What I'm less than keen on about the Zine Poll is that it only produces one first place. I originally wrote "winner" instead of "first place" there, and it's an easy mistake to make. Is there a distinction in your mind between winning the Zine Poll and winning in the Zine Poll? Probably because so many of the participants are Diplomacy players, and the emphasis in that game is so much about winning, or, more specifically, coming first, I'm yet to see a convincing argument defending saying that you won when you didn't come first. Lots of people set themselves targets of not actually coming first overall, but coming in the top so-many (normally top five or top ten), and that's fair enough, but somehow it doesn't ring true; to perfectionists, first is everything, the rest is nowhere. So-o-o-o, have more first places. It's a more credible argument that people should try to excel in some particular area, and be the best at what they do, rather than try to be non-specifically as good overall as possible. This also gives people realistic targets to aim for, to be acclaimed as the best in some small area of the hobby. I suppose part of this attitude comes from the fact that I don't personally play Diplomacy and regard it as an over-rated game. For me, this is a postal games hobby far more than it is a Diplomacy hobby. Judging by the declining level of postal Dip gamestarts, I suspect I'm not alone in this opinion. Another way of looking at it is that I only partake in a part of the overall hobby, and that's fair comment. In that case, the hobby is a very big place and it would be extremely hard to find someone who embraced it, or, rather, embraced all of it. So why should anyone have the right to vote on an award to represent all the hobby when they only participate in a small part of it? Ryk Downes was, I'd say, on the right lines when he split the Zine Poll up into (for I'm not precisely sure of the exact terms) The Diplomacy Zine Poll and The Zine Poll. However, I'd go further. There's no reason why the Diplomacy sub-hobby should have its own poll and all the other sub-hobbies should not, except, maybe, tradition. So, if I ran the Zine Poll, I would split it up into polls for as many of the sub-hobbies within the overall Hobby as would be appropriate. Surely this would be a good way of accurately rewarding achievement and simultaneously enfranchising the disenfranchised? It would also facilitate a continually evolving poll which would be able to respond to the changes within the hobby and precisely represent zines' strengths and weaknesses. Were I to run the Zine Poll this year in this fashion, fifteen appropriate sub-polls might be: Best Zine for Diplomacy Best Zine for Railway Rivals Best Zine for United Best Zine for En Garde! Best Zine for GM's own games Best Zine for letter column Best Zine for hobby news Best Zine for humour Best Zine for presentation Best Zine for efficiency Best Zine for newcomers Best New Zine Hobby's Most Valuable Member Hobby's Most Important Zine Best Overall Zine OK, polls for "Best Zine for Postal Snowball Fighting" and "Best Zine for 6 Nimmt!" might be taking things too far. Perhaps the borderline might be whether it is possible to run a game particularly well or particularly badly, and whether it is a popular enough game to be played in, say, half a dozen or a dozen zines. The polls I suggest there would have the considerable benefit of continuity from ones already existent; Best Zine for Diplomacy would be the direct continuation of the Walkerdine Zine Poll. Each zine would be placed in each poll, and so a summary of a position in as many polls as was appropriate would be built up for all the zines that exist. Mission From God might be able to say that a certain zine came 6th in the RR poll, 12th in the Diplomacy poll, 9th in the letter column poll and third in the humour poll; surely this would be a more telling endorsement than "a funny zine recommended particularly for RR players". For those determined to be the best of the best, the Best Overall Zine poll would be the loftiest achievement possible; a new editor would aim for the Best New Zine award in their first year and would probably target one or two specific awards in their second one. This way, almost every zine would flourish in at least one of the categories, and so would have something to be particularly proud of. Result: encouraged editors and fewer folds. It would be a specific way of identifying which zines really are the best at what they do, and would communicate zines' particular strengths far better than currentlўџ џџџџ РFMicrosoft Word 6.0 Document MSWordDocє9Вq