Not too long ago, someone asked about sites that are not
in English - being in English is NOT a criteria. Chances
are someone on the Awards Committee speaks or reads the
language of the site (virtually any of the Romance or
Germanic languages are covered). Sites in Japanese have
even been winners. Fairly pure commercial sites have also
been winners - but be forewarned that we aren't impressed
by slick graphics covering a corporate vanity site - the
site must still pass all the above four criteria. Graphics
and code only encompass part of what we look for. Someone
asked us to explain this in a more lengthy way once, here
are those explanations:
Unlike most awards out there, the Vision Award isn't
specifically about the HTML code, ease of navigation, nor
graphics used on a site. It's a fairly pure concept award
- show us something new, make us think, expose us to some
new artform, demonstrate a proven desire to draw people
together into communities - thereby making it imperative
that we want to add your link to our pages so that we can
return from time to time and see new things, or just to
review familiar things as exposed and laid out by someone
with a clear mastery of the subject. 3-17 people review
each site, then we average all scores.
What I usually suggest to people is to continue on in the
direction they are moving in, and to expand what they have
- we love huge well-done collections (online museums and
galleries). At some point all sites reach this critical
mass, or they begin to die. Your site is moving in this
"huge collection" direction, and it already is possessed
of a distinct feel. I'm sure as it matures and becomes
larger that parts of it will become true galleries,
several parts are proto galleries already. It's also
possible that it might become a recognized expert about
culture and communities - another type of site we favor.
Only time will tell.
We actually liked your site. It was sweet, innocent and
well laid out. There is a distinct freshness to how you've
sumptuously created your visual (and auditory) mood poems
using (what all the judges thought was) clip art.
Unfortunately, the clip art also caused us to basically
disqualify the site as a reframing of other peoples work.
What we were looking at are stunning pages, but filled
with non-original work. Once we weeded out all the
non-original work, there wasn't a lot to judge. "The Award
Committee expects most content to be original and unique"
(see http://pacranch.com/visioncriteria.html).
Essentially this means that most artwork, text, and coding
needs to be original.
On a very special note not specifically about criteria,
but because people do ask from time to time: Sometimes a
site will resubmit every few months. As a rule, we ignore
such applications unless we see real growth. The Awards
Committee does not respond in any way to such
applications. If your site has experienced true growth and
it now meets the four basic requirements above, feel free
to resubmit by directly
E.Mailing us and letting us know you would like to be
evaluated again.
As an additional thought, we frequently receive
applications (usually from Asia, India, Pakistan and
environs) where the site is merely a reframing of another
site, quotes word for word another site, or is
merely a collection of links to sites the author likes.
Such sites are rarely visionary and rarely eligible. The
Award Committee expects most content to be original and
unique, not merely links to, or quotes from another site.
Sites in non European, non North or South American
languages are still eligible, but be understanding that as
none of the Awards Committee speaks these languages, a
little translation help here and there throughout the site
will help us. Obviously, if the entire purpose of the site
is an online book, E.Zine or similar, a translation in
English, French, Spanish, Italian, Flemish, Nederlander
(Dutch), Romanian and similar languages will help us
review your writings, prose and poetry. The Awards
Committee takes a neutral stance regarding language, but
we do need to understand your site to review it. We have
awarded Asian sites (mostly Japanese) without translation
that are online art galleries, and will continue this
practice. Purely visual arts need no translation.
Correspondence is usually conducted in North American
English.
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