Wooden Rocket update

The 'Oscars' of the online science fiction world have opened with over 3,000 votes for 632 different web sites in the first month. Jessica takes a look at some of the early nominations in the Wooden Rocket Awards.

Since the Wooden Rocket awards were announced last month - the debutante year for an annual award specifically set up to recognize excellence in online science fiction - the flood gates have opened to a whole range of votes being cast for many fine and worthy web sites.

There's been a little over 3000 votes for some 632 different sites in every category of the 'Woodies', so I thought I'd regale you all with a selection of some of the initial front-runners and some sports card stats for the voting.

The hottest category for votes to date has been best online-only magazine and best print-to-web magazine.

The widest choice of entries have been seen in the online-only mag category, with the vote being split so that a head-and-shoulders winner has yet to emerge.

Some of the names in the lead at the moment include old favorites such as aphelion-webzine.com, SFlare.com, SciFidimensions.com, StrangeHorizons.com, 2000adonline.com and InfinityPlus.co.uk.

On the print side, there's been a strong showing for CineFex.com, Ansible.co.uk, and by far and away the most popular to date, LocusMag.com, the site of the Wall Street Journal of the SFF genre, Locus.

Online or off, it seems you can't get enough of the serious reportage offered by Charles N. Brown and his merry band of West Coast colonials.

As an aside, thanks to everyone who voted for the 'Nest, but your flattery is somewhat wasted, because as sponsors for the Wooden Rocket, we're disqualified from entering in any category. Vote for them please, not us!

One surprise hot spot for the Woodies has been the incredibly strong showing for best foreign (non-English language) web site. This is an area of the awards we thought would get the silent treatment, but instead we've had over 500 votes for sites in this category.

Doing rather nicely at the moment are Aolai.de, Bemmag.com, E-nigma and Noosfere.com.

One point of clarification Mark Lewis, the awards director, has received from many webmasters surrounds what is and isn't considered fair encouragement of a site's users' to vote.

If you're a Webmaster and you want to stick up a link on an e-mail newsletter or a hyperlink on your site pointing to the awards and saying, hey, vote for me, this isn't against the rules. Mark has now even added an official range of Wooden Rocket badges for this purpose.

However, if you send out an e-mail newsletter, newsgroups post, or hyperlink saying "hey, vote for me ten thousand times each," this is counter to the rules, and is self defeating, as the Woodies' anti-cheating system is fairly sharp and will catch you out.

In our April 1st 2003 issue I'll bring you another update including some interesting news surrounding the tough level of competition slugging it out for honours in the Best Publisher Site, Best Author Site, Best TV Site, Best Movie Site, and Best Artist Site categories.

Ending on a positive note, the Woodies have had a surprisingly low volume of votes from users discounted because they haven't met the entry criteria or bothered reading the rules - less than 1.5% - and no major cheating attempts yet.

Glad to see the fans are keeping it real. Remember, this Award is open to you, the SFF fans of the 'Net, so if you haven't voted yet, hop on over here and strike a blow for online science fiction and fantasy.

Jessica

Related sites:
http://www.WoodenRocket.com

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