JUDGMENT DAZE
Stripping the robes off the Webby Awards judging process

by Jenn Shreve
05.04.00

A minor debate erupted among this year's nominating judges for the Community site Webby Award. "One of the big questions was whether ICQ could be nominated, or not," explains Erik Davis, a final judge, and the author of "Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information." Did a site need to be designed with community-building in mind in order to qualify? the judges wondered. Or did releasing a technology that simply enabled community to occur do the trick? (ICQ made the cut.) Davis, who's judging the Community category for the second year in a row, says it's being involved in such discussions that make judging the Webbys worthwhile.

Davis is one of 270 judges (five nominating and five final for each category) who will be casting final votes this week for the Fourth Annual Webby Awards. Maya Draisin, director of the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS), which oversees the judging process, ticks off some of the benefits of judging: "There's an element of prestige, obviously; an interest in seeing what's there; being a deciding vote in what's best is enticing... All in all, people find it to be a good experience."

But not everyone who judges the Webby Awards relishes the distinction. For every judge who says he or she loves being involved, there's another who'll confide off the record that it's a thankless, tiresome job. It certainly isn't easy.

Judges must rank dozens of sites for quality of content, structure and navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity, and overall experience. While some, like Davis, enjoy the resulting debates, others say they simply don't have the time. And, as with any group project, there are always those who don't pull their weight. "My job as a facilitator is to get people talking about the sites, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't," explains Don Hazen, executive director of the Independent Media Institute, who chairs the nominating group for Zines after judging for three years. While some judges were very involved, Hazen says, others barely participated.

Whatever their commitment level, judges wield a great deal of influence. Receiving a mere Webby nomination guarantees a robust influx of traffic, visibility and free press, worth millions in this era of dot-com ads and pricey public relations firms. Winning can mean--stop the presses!--even more press and traffic, not to mention some much-sought-after attention from the venture capitali$t$. "I think the Web is so new and so incredibly vast that any time your site can gain recognition from an impartial source, it is a huge boost both in terms of ego and in terms of driving eyeballs to your URL," explains Hugh Forest, event director of the South by Southwest Interactive Festival in Austin and a first-time Webby judge in the Music site category.

Webby Awards judges are hand-picked by IADAS and Webby Awards founder and CEO Tiffany Shlain. This year the academy added an initial screening process by 85 Web buffs to accommodate the awards' first-ever Call for Entries. Thousands of sites from more than 27 countries entered, Draisin says. Five nominating judges for each category select the five best sites from the entry process and add a few picks of their own. Then, five final judges select the winners. And, of course, anyone can vote for the People's Voice Award in each category. "If I were a site, I'd want to win that one more than the official Webbys," Hazen says of the popularly elected category. "It means people are going to your site; you're going to have traffic."

This year's 270 judges include the usual mix of industry leaders (both from the Web and in the category being judged), experts and celebrities. David Bowie, Tina Brown, Arianna Huffington, Matt Groening and Aimee Mann are among this year's more luminous decision-makers. Renowned personages tend to be listed as Final Judges, whose big task is to breeze through the hand-picked, much-debated nominees in search of a winner (they can certainly do more, of course). These final arbiters are rather dramatically defined by the Webby site as "visionaries, evangelists and luminaries who have catalyzed great achievements on the Internet or have demonstrated extraordinary talent in a traditional medium."

If this star-studded ensemble of cyber-cognoscenti seems excessive, the group gives the whole affair a dash of bona fide red carpet-glamorama. The many less-glamorous industry leaders casting their votes, meanwhile, provide a streak of unironic seriousness. The event itself comes off as an irreverent celebration infused with Northern California-casual style. But don't let all the fun fool you into thinking there's no real point.

"[The Webbys] have ended up being an important vehicle for maintaining more noncommercial, humanistic, artistic aspects of the Internet in the mainstream," Davis says. "The Internet is such an incredible collection of subgroups... From the mainstream's point of view, a lot of people don't ever see or hear or find out anything about these stranger, more noncommercial aspects that the Internet has played a role in. While the Webbys are definitely a mainstream, big-picture sort of affair, they've done a great job maintaining a larger vision of what the Internet could be in our society."

Editor's note: Newcity.com is a sponsor of the 2000 Webby Awards, but its coverage of the event remains independent of that agreement.