The CCA's are like the Oscars

[McDuffies]

That'd be cool. Maybe even the most coveted award on the CCA.

Like, "the best looser"? That one should be easy to figure out. Every comic above certain number of hits would be disqualified.

[Arumo]

Just break down the awards by genre.

[Dark Kape]

Maybe there should be a tad more work added to "the committee" where they actually look at the nominations and have some thought to the nominations rather than just pick the most nominated? Creating a committee for this purpose would be rather difficult though...

I don't know. I'm just trying to think of how to make this a much more fair and justified "competition".

But I'm not sure how everything really works so ignore me I guess ^^

[Zortic]

Maybe there should be a tad more work added to "the committee" where they actually look at the nominations and have some thought to the nominations rather than just pick the most nominated? Creating a committee for this purpose would be rather difficult though...

I don't know. I'm just trying to think of how to make this a much more fair and justified "competition".

But I'm not sure how everything really works so ignore me I guess ^^

This is another issue that has been a huge debate. I know there has been talk of a "juried" award process that would coexist with the WCCAs. But the problem is that then you have to answer the question of "who is qualified to judge every webcomic out there?" I honestly don't see any reason for me to consider my opinion to be any more or less valuable than any of yours.

However, that is why we've choosen to make it the "Web Cartoonists' Choice", in theory fellow cartoonists would be more objective in their awareness of what goes into a good comic than the general public would be.

[Toxic]

OMG! I just realized what the CCA's need. A host! Or a Joan Rivers like character to ridicule the nominees and presenters. Dibs!!!

[Ronald_MacK]

Well, from what I've seen, Zortic makes a pretty darn good host. I didn't realize that the black & white of a tux complemented his green skin so well.

Keenspace awards would be kickin'. And it might draw attention to 'spot-worthy comics as well. But I'm just happy I did my part and cast a few votes.

[Zortic]

Well, from what I've seen, Zortic makes a pretty darn good host. I didn't realize that the black & white of a tux complemented his green skin so well.

Keenspace awards would be kickin'. And it might draw attention to 'spot-worthy comics as well. But I'm just happy I did my part and cast a few votes.

Thanks!

[William G]

I signed up, and I nominated one Spacer comic for best comedy...

Anyone want to guess which one?

[Arumo]

On the point of an independent comic award thing, how would you even begin to do that? The CCA has their comics because mass majority reads them and that is how they become elected. Anybody has the opportunity to get on the list as long as their popularity is that high, which is based upon the quality of their comic. If you wanted to do something that was say on a much smaller scale I'd say put up an award for say an unnoticed comic that has less than 10,000 hits a year. Have people that have less than 10,000 hits submit their comic and then have a jury decide which is best.
10,000 hits is probably a very hard number to have less than. Even my comic which I just dumped (because I was told it was horrible) got over 1,500 a month.
So for the better comics that have gone unnoticed probably because they weren't on a drop down or something you can give them the "best under-appreciated comic" award.

[Toxic]

Someone should do a red carpet thing, like those SNL skits with the paparazzi.

[RanJado]

Most because I'm bored:

Some of you might not know, but there are "independent webomic awards" or were.

Back in 2002 there was "Webcomic Choice Awards", started by well me. Mention the idea around the old TWC forums and got people interested and the like. (This was still the time CCA was still going under "Cartoonists' Choice Awards", pre "Webcartoonists' ")

But by the time it was time to start up WCA 2003, there wasn't really much interest. It had been practically a year since, but then another person started an a "small comic" awards program.
In 2002 WCA was affilated with TWC, and for 2003 we set-up an affilation with bCx after Fuitad was out of the TWC picture. But then basically we got dropped by bCx when buzzComix made their own "buzzAwards". Similar in set-up to WCA(but not the same) where there is actually a group of people looking at the webcomics, rather than a popular vote.

So basically the webcomic community had two summer awards programs(one for big comics, and one for small), and there was no need for a winter/end of the year awards program.

Yeah it kinda sucked not getting WCA back up again, but then the first time it took alot of work and made me put my (crappy) webcomic on hold so I could organize it. But then with no WCA to organize, that left me more time with my webcomic publishing site.

Seeing as I'm still bored, here's some WCA fun facts:
1. Bobby Crosby was at one time a judge for WCA before saying it was taking too long and starting up "Thanksgiving Awards". TA was basically held in the old TWC forums, but was just canceled/forgotten. Bobby was also soon banned from TWC.
2. About 6 of the 12 webcomics given awards ended by the end of 2003.
3. We had a domain name, but i canceled it and now some crackers(hackers) have it.
4. Started a news site thorugh WCA, which had three different forms the last two years. "Webcomic News", "Small Media Comics" and "Independent Comic Front". I think I''ve basically called it quits with running a full news site.
5. First heard of Comixpedia in 2002 when they heard of us. They said we were not needed, and basically told us that we should try becoming involved with CCA. Well Comixpedia went from a smaller site to the leading webcomic news site today. CCA is still the most popular webcomics awards program. Oh yeah, Comixpedia would not really give us any press after that one time in 2002.
6. Uh...We had presentation comics. I tried to push a red carpet thing that would be like the SNL skits where the artists would practicaly make fun of themselves showing up or a fellow artist. But we had some pretty good presentation comics.

[Mac]

hey look, it's the "i didn't win, WHY DIDNT I WIHIHIHIIIIIN!!" thread!

i'll join in on the fun...

[JexKerome]

If there's going to be a commitee, then they gotta do something to validate the entries. Otherwise it's just a popularity contest, in which case there's no way some brilliant up-and-comer is going to beat the old, stablished comics like Penny Arcade or Megatokyo. It might be better than these two, but it won't have a strong-enough fan base to out-vote them.

Then there's also the fact that the CCAs do not reach every corner of the webcomic universe; all it takes for a great comic to miss out on the recognition it would deserve is for the author/fans to never hear of them, or find out about them too late to nominate/vote for it. You could say there's always next year, but in that year the same old powerhouses will have grown more immovable, specially if they get more readers from winning the CCAs.

Specially when you consider most people will, when in doubt, vote for a comic they've seen/heard about over one they've never heard of; almost no one will take the time to "test" the other contenders. For example, I like Sinfest a lot, but frankly I won't vote for it unless I'm sure the other contenders are not better than it; since I don't have the time nor desire to try out those other comics, I felt it better not to vote at all. Many people most likely didn't do this, though, their votes going automatically to the one they know about without giving serious tought to any unkown contenders.

If you'r patterning yourselves per the Oscars, then the CCA commitee should act like the Oscar commitee: they choose the nominees, and then they choose the winners among them. Hard? Of course; there are literaly thousands of webcomics out there, and more pop up every day. However, the system as it is is unbalanced and subjective, and it may in fact be that the very proliferance of webcomics makes any attempt to find "the best comic out there" an impossibility.

[Zortic]

If there's going to be a commitee, then they gotta do something to validate the entries. Otherwise it's just a popularity contest, in which case there's no way some brilliant up-and-comer is going to beat the old, stablished comics like Penny Arcade or Megatokyo. It might be better than these two, but it won't have a strong-enough fan base to out-vote them.

However, the entire premise of these awards is that my opinion, or the opinion of anyone else on the committee, doesn't carry any more value than any one of your choices. There's nothing about our backgrounds that would give us the right to veto choices made by a majority of the voters out there.

Unfortunately popularity is part of the process. But I've yet to see the evidence that established comic monopolize the awards. Taking the "outstanding comic" category as an example, Penny Arcade has never one and Megatokyo has only won once, and Count Your Sheep is a perfect example of a "brilliant up-and-comer" that did get a nomination.

Also consider the effect on the value of the award when comics start being taken out of the competition. Using CYS again as an example, I think it's exciting to see it listed in the same category as a comic like Penny Arcade. If you cut out more established comics, then nominees are given the message that they only got nominated because they weren't successful enough to be eliminated.

Then there's also the fact that the CCAs do not reach every corner of the webcomic universe; all it takes for a great comic to miss out on the recognition it would deserve is for the author/fans to never hear of them, or find out about them too late to nominate/vote for it. You could say there's always next year, but in that year the same old powerhouses will have grown more immovable, specially if they get more readers from winning the CCAs.

This is something that we're always going to be struggling against. But I do find it interesting that the first couple of years the complaints were that it was a "Keenspace Only" event, and that perception does seem to have disappeared. These awards are open to the entire community, we can only bring awareness to those that we know about, but we rely on most of you to help us spread the word.

If you'r patterning yourselves per the Oscars, then the CCA commitee should act like the Oscar commitee: they choose the nominees, and then they choose the winners among them. Hard? Of course; there are literaly thousands of webcomics out there, and more pop up every day. However, the system as it is is unbalanced and subjective, and it may in fact be that the very proliferance of webcomics makes any attempt to find "the best comic out there" an impossibility.

I could do that, I could put out a list of my personal choices of which comics I thought were best. But would you, or anyone else really care about what my choices are? If I added another person or two, it would mean a bit more, but it's still just the opinions of a choice few. The fact that these awards gather so much controversy and popularity is because people really care about the results, the opinion of the masses carries a lot more weight.

The only reason that voting is confined to fellow artists is out of the hope that there can be more professionalism in the awards. Only web cartoonists can know what goes into producing a webcomic. These awards belong to our entire community, and it's up to all of us to make our votes count and truely show the best of what we have to offer.

[JexKerome]

Also consider the effect on the value of the award when comics start being taken out of the competition. Using CYS again as an example, I think it's exciting to see it listed in the same category as a comic like Penny Arcade. If you cut out more established comics, then nominees are given the message that they only got nominated because they weren't successful enough to be eliminated.

I think I expressed myself wrongly; I never suggested that some comics were taken out; I just pointed out that those with an established fan base among webcomic artists have a huge advantage over those who do not. I've seen the CYI and PA sites, and the moment your nominations appear they start campaigning (not to say pimping) for votes, promising stuff like extra wallpapers and such. If only one drooling fanboy-artist votes for this reason, the actual nomination the comic received is moot; they'll vote not because they think it has the Best Character Development, or an Outstanding use of Color, but because the author promised them A New Wallpaper. An undecided fanboy ("CYI or It's Walky!?") might be swayed this way, easily.

I could do that, I could put out a list of my personal choices of which comics I thought were best. But would you, or anyone else really care about what my choices are? If I added another person or two, it would mean a bit more, but it's still just the opinions of a choice few. The fact that these awards gather so much controversy and popularity is because people really care about the results, the opinion of the masses carries a lot more weight.

But even in the Oscars it's the opinion of a chosen few. And here, like the Oscars, the awards give you little more than bragging rights. Like the Oscars, people would still debate over each nomination, and over each winner once they were announced; and this would be true regardless of whether they voted or not or even if they were not ALLOWED to vote. The typical example is when a movie no one ever heard about wins an Oscar; people might say what they like, but the Academy people chose it for whatever merits it had, and that's that.

[Sheep]

Hi, Adis here. Just dropping in to say that I haven't seen any nominee asking for votes in exchange for stuff (although, I haven't been to every nominee's site, so who knows?)
I certainly haven't done it, what would be the point of that? All I did, and all I've seen others do is say: "hey, I got nominated for an awards thingie, here's the link if you want to vote." The true award for me is the added exposure to my work.
-adis!

[Alaina]

Then there's also the fact that the CCAs do not reach every corner of the webcomic universe; all it takes for a great comic to miss out on the recognition it would deserve is for the author/fans to never hear of them, or find out about them too late to nominate/vote for it.

Maybe to remedy that problem there could be a nomination requirement. Like, the author can nominate him/herself (to get recognition) but it has to be seconded by at least 2 people on the committee (depending on how many people the committee is made up of).

Or 10 (eh, just a number I threw out) fans can nominate can comic to make it into the committee consideration.

Either way, I think it's a great idea. It sucks when you see the same old comics up for the same old awards that don't even apply to them anymore only because of they have a large fanbase.

[Not damonk]

5. First heard of Comixpedia in 2002 when they heard of us. They said we were not needed, and basically told us that we should try becoming involved with CCA. Well Comixpedia went from a smaller site to the leading webcomic news site today. CCA is still the most popular webcomics awards program. Oh yeah, Comixpedia would not really give us any press after that one time in 2002.

Note that the Comixpedia never said any such thing about the WCA being "needed" or "not needed". Some readers may hve posted comments, but I honestly don't remember any slamming. After going through the 'Pedia archive, my suspicions appear confirmed -- there are no slams of the event since we launched as a newspublication.

Also, the Comixpedia only started as a newspublication in February of 2003, so I'm not sure where the 2002 thing comes in, unless you're relating it to when it was just Xerexes' personal blog. If he said something then, I have no idea.

But I do remember that *I* went and posted comments in your forum way back in 2002 when you first started, and I tried to offer advice and suggestions in regards to some specific problems I could foresee you running into. I also remember that for the most part, the advice was ignored or scoffed at.

[Warren]

hey look, it's the "i didn't win, WHY DIDNT I WIHIHIHIIIIIN!!" thread!

i'll join in on the fun...

WHHHYYYYY????

*cuts wrists*