Article Of The Week 01, June, 2009

Robot · Jun 8, 2009 , 06:41 PM

Which article should win this week's nomination? Vote for your article of the week now.

What is Article Of The Week?
Article of the Week is a contest that select articles that villagers consider the best for the selected week.

What determines an Article Of The Week?
Article Of The Week is based on a simple nomination system. Villagers can nominate their favorite article by clicking on the following award nomination button below the post.

The topics with the most nominations during the course of the week are displayed on this thread using the poll feature. At the end of the week, the first three topics with the most nominations are the award winners of the contest.

Top Three articles will be forwarded to our newspaper partners for publication.

Darex · Jun 9, 2009 , 11:51 PM

I nominate my article 'When Internet warriors meet Ribadu,Falana,Okey Ndibe' in London.

Jun 9, 2009 , 11:57 PM

http://www.nigeriavillagesquare.com/...te-part-i.html

Definitely my favorite.

emj · Jun 10, 2009 , 12:07 AM

Eherm, what's this week? Are we talking about this week or the last?

Kenn · Jun 11, 2009 , 04:21 AM

.

I don’t think this is healthy. Having such a partisan contest, where there are no set criteria but only the congealed subjectivity of the individual poster, diminishes the value and message of these articles. Each article and author speaks to us in different ways and when they do I don’t think it is with the aim of engaging in a popularity contest. Most times, it is simply to bare their minds on weighty national issues. Thus, to reduce this to a bazaar of votes on a weekly basis achieves nothing but communal mediocrity.

Just my two pence.

.

DeepThought · Jun 11, 2009 , 06:20 PM

Kenn,
I partially agree and disagree at the same time with you on this.

If by partisan, you mean allowing an author to nominate him/herself, maybe you have a point. I don't know. Authors may even be unaware of this development, for example, I doubt if Pat Utomi even knows his article is nominated here. I know mine is only because I visit this site regularly.

I also doubt if anyone is writing merely with the intention an article nominated or to engage in a popularity contest. Nomination of any article in this situation, to me is merely incidental /coincidental and I see nothing wrong with it. I wasn't even aware of this program until I saw it a few days ago.

And not everyone nominated will want their articles published .. For example, I would be reluctant to have my real name spashed all over Newspapers(Yes, Kenn, not everyone wants to be popular!)
I think it will be a good idea if Admin clarifies with an Author to make sure they have no objections because I'm sure many authors will not even know they are nominated.

Finally, perhaps, having people voting every week may be too frequent? I don't know, left to me, I would suggest doing this on a monthly basis, but that is just my subjective opinion. Also, perhaps a set of guidelines may have to be developed as criteria for this program. But then , maybe I'm making it too complicated, maybe people should be free to nominate just about anything they want?

Anike · Jun 12, 2009 , 05:51 AM

I do not think we should do this. Randomly selecting articles to be forwarded from those that have been deemed eligible to be published, and whose authors have indicated that they wouldn't mind their article(s) forwarded, seems like a better alternative. I agree with Kenn in toto. I don't think we should set up a system that will trivialize any author's effort, just because the author's style/content does not appeal to the voters.

Shoko Loko Bangoshe · Jun 12, 2009 , 06:09 AM

For me, the problem with this is that someone who desperately wants his article to appear in a newspaper can game the system by encouraging his friends to register and vote for his article, no matter how bad his article is.

The only way round this is to ensure that only quality articles are published in the first place, or failing that, not to automatically forward winning articles that are substandard.

Big-K · Jun 12, 2009 , 09:35 PM

Thanks for your feedback folks.

The [Beta] in the heading simply means that this is still being tested. Once the underlying technicalities and kinks are sorted out, the overall aim is to feature certain articles using the votes here in combination with popularity (hits) of such articles, the various attributes ratings in the “articles and comments” section, and the overriding judgment of the site administration. These hopefully will help reduce the ‘subjectivity’ and more importantly, the time, efforts and drag we witnessed when selecting articles for the NVS Vol1 anthology. So instead of asking villagers to think long and hard about articles they like over the past year, what about putting in place a real-time system such as this?

But small steps first.

Deepthought, Of course the periodicity can be tweaked to be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly as we move forward. On awareness, I don’t think any author will forward his/her write-ups here and not bother to check them. No author is published on NVS without permission.

SLB Any system can be gamed. Right now, we have “popular of late’ on the homepage based on the number of hits. Authors can game that one too and if they are desperate enough to invite their constituents to NVS because of this, good for NVS.

Anike, Of course, no statistics, hits, or votes will ever replace the qualitative and overriding judgement of the admin.

Thanks all..I’ll formally let the village know how things progress and how technically sound the setup is. Stay tuned!

Shoko Loko Bangoshe · Jun 13, 2009 , 12:32 AM

SLB Any system can be gamed. Right now, we have “popular of late’ on the homepage based on the number of hits. Authors can game that one too and if they are desperate enough to invite their constituents to NVS because of this, good for NVS.

For me, it's not the gaming per se that is the issue. What would be a problem would be if NVS was forwarding substandard articles to newspapers simply because they had been voted the best by people gaming the system. This could compromise any reputation that we are trying to build as a source of quality articles.

But I see that you aren't using the votes alone to decide on whether to forward articles, so I'm OK with that.

katampe · Jun 13, 2009 , 02:19 AM

Great idea!

There is nothing like having a system, real time system you called it. Ken, in some post somewhere, talked about standards against the extreme notions of good and bad. I think that is applicable here too. Once, a standard is set, it creates room and a criteria for measurement however subjective the standards are, yet they make for working efficiently and we can make subjectivity objective when operational, as in a system of selection. But I try to explain a few things below that can enable us achieve some measure of objectivity.

Most authors write because they are responding to an issue. A societal issue that they have brought their value orientation to debate or argue on.In this sense, argument means stating the reasons why you feel so passionate about your take on an issue, it is like I am not just writing an article to say something is good or bad, rather I mean giving us evidence for the position you are arguing about and why we should be convinced.

If an author responds to a societal issue, then evaluating that issue as it affects our existence should not be hard. Harder would be deconstructing the philosophical bent of the author. What values he/she chose to see the world through and where he/she derives his/her reasons from.

For example, if Oluwato was an author, you can be sure , she would predicate her arguments on biblical principles, so also Wole Soyinka if he writes (putting Oluwato in good company), you will see possibly at the beginning of the essay some drama or anecdote that foreshadows and illuminates what is to come, or what he sets to argue. I mean to say every author has a style, but what about the relevance of the ideas argued for? Is it important to society, or does it have utility besides idealism?

Whatever the answer is, yet, an author may go unread because the density of his/her ideas is beyond the reach of the average reader, or too tasking for a reader that wants light entertainment, or people just don't subscribe to their views life. Each writer/author has its use, style and ways they approach debate with their convictions.

For example,if NextLevel was to write an article, he would rely and give weight to empirical evidence. If Pius Adesanmi writes an article, he would give weight to moral evidence steeped in Greek mythologies.How people interpret their articles would depend on their experience and their persuation. I guess this is where subjectivity comes in.

Yet, these are styles, but then we must ask what ideas are they bringing to the table? Are they just moralizing, or are they carefully sifting through the complexity of humankind and arriving at positions based on utility of ideas.In essays we see personality and historical markers, I mean you can perceive the psychology of the writer and historical script being peddled.

Personally, I seek to understand the idea being proposed in an essay and I am impressed less by the style and flowery of the language. It does not mean I hate stylists, I love them and they make reading fun and lyrical. Yet, I will argue in the Nigerian space and at this moment of our national history, we need ideas and less of stylists. If NVS can make it a duty to sift through essays for ideas, it helps highlight something very important and something that has utility beyond aesthetics.

Originally Posted by Big-K

Thanks for your feedback folks.

The [Beta] in the heading simply means that this is still being tested. Once the underlying technicalities and kinks are sorted out, the overall aim is to feature certain articles using the votes here in combination with popularity (hits) of such articles, the various attributes ratings in the “articles and comments” section, and the overriding judgment of the site administration. These hopefully will help reduce the ‘subjectivity’ and more importantly, the time, efforts and drag we witnessed when selecting articles for the NVS Vol1 anthology. So instead of asking villagers to think long and hard about articles they like over the past year, what about putting in place a real-time system such as this?

But small steps first.

Deepthought, Of course the periodicity can be tweaked to be weekly, bi-weekly, monthly as we move forward. On awareness, I don’t think any author will forward his/her write-ups here and not bother to check them. No author is published on NVS without permission.

SLB Any system can be gamed. Right now, we have “popular of late’ on the homepage based on the number of hits. Authors can game that one too and if they are desperate enough to invite their constituents to NVS because of this, good for NVS.

Anike, Of course, no statistics, hits, or votes will ever replace the qualitative and overriding judgement of the admin.

Thanks all..I’ll formally let the village know how things progress and how technically sound the setup is. Stay tuned!