Hi Antanana,
2013/8/14 attolippip <attolippip(a)gmail.com>
Dear all,
Could you share with us your awards giving algorithm?
We (Wikimedia Ukraine) awarded the winners at the ceremony itself and sent
the prizes by post to the ones that were not able to come in person.
This year there are talks of abandoning this practice and switching to
"The Participant is to be present at the Awards Giving Ceremony to get the
prizes" (but it seems a bit too expensive for me, as we compensate winners'
travel costs, and sending by post is usually cheaper, than paying for
"there and back again").
I am not aware of any WLM contest that had a requirement to appear at a
ceremony. Since anyone in the world could technically win (if they made the
photo while on vacation for example) I don't think this would be very
reasonable either.
I have found out that sometimes the contest rules set
some time period for
winners to contact, and it sounds something like this:
The Organizer will use reasonable efforts to contact the Winners, but in
the event the Organizer cannot contact Winners within "_____" business days
from the time of judging, that Participant shall be deemed void.
Contacting is always a tricky one. At least internationally we had a rule
that an activated email address is required. We will enforce this a bit
stronger this year probably. We did leave a message on the talkpage where
relevant, but this was mostly a courtesy.
On one hand, it DOES take time to find out the real person behind the
nickname sometimes, and storing the prizes seems okay for two weeks (a
months?), but after a long while it just seems that people do not care -
why should we?
We usually contacted them in NL without telling which prize they won - that
motivates a lot because they will have a chance to win the first prize. If
they won the last prize they might just ignore you and answer some other
emails first, and then forget all about it... We also asked them for a
ranked list of preference of the prizes, and awarded the prizes on a
first-prize-first-pick . This also helps, because they can influence what
they won by responding.
On the other hand, if a winner really can't come then and there - why
deprive him or her of getting the deserved?
Totally agreed.
I would root for someting like giving a month to contact the Organizer. If
failed - the prize becomes a donation to some other contest.
I would rather see that the prize moves to the next in line. Otherwise you
have a complicated scheme of budget etc. I think it is better to actually
award everything. This does mean that no prizes can be sent out until that
period is over though - they might get a higher prize!
Lodewijk