This evening, Donna Mahony announced that she is bringing the Domainers Choice Awards back to life. Originally handed out at DomainFest in 2008, the Domainers Choice Awards have been on a hiatus for the past several years.
The 2014 edition will be sponsored by Domain Boardroom, a private domain forum founded by Donna. The voting will be conducted by a third party service provider to avoid any potential claims of favoritism or conflicts of interest.
The Domainers Choice Awards website gives more information about the awards:
In 2014 a wonderful opportunity for the Domain Community to vote on the nominations of individuals and companies that the Domain Community decides should be honored.
We intend this to become a world class event, equal in stature in every way to the “Hollywood” standard of “Star” making Awards Ceremonies.
We will be using a third party service provider to conduct voting; that company is prohibited from using Our users’ personally identifiable information for any other purpose.
Stay tuned for sponsorship opportunities, nomination categories, voting information and event details!
When you visit the website, you can sign up to receive updates if you wish.
I am not sure when the award categories will be announced or when the awards will be given, but I am sure you’ll hear more soon in the coming weeks.
I would like to take this opportunity to nominate myself for Blogger of the Year.
Sorry, Elliot but I think I got this one in the bag.
Finally! Domainer awards with full transparency!! Isn’t that what most domainers really want?!
Rumor has it that the beneficiary of this event will be a non-profit scholarship fund. What a great way for sponsors to ‘Pay It Forward’!
Looks like Donna’s going to hit a home run with this one. It’s probably going to be one hell of a domainer party too!!
I love the idea of a third party voting system. Prevents shenanigans
I would vote for TiTo and domainpicks.com and the of course the website of the year again and again is “BullS”
It’s true. The event will be used to sponsor a scholarship fund! The industry has changed since the first awards and so will the award categories. I will be happy to consider category suggestions. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter to stay up to date on what happening!
Every time somebody runs one of these we have cheating, Andrew wrote last year that he found scripts casting votes, and he had to clean them all out, and you also have site owners influencing members to vote. So the results are always skewed.
I assume that is why they are using Votenet.com to do the voting. I like the idea of only taking the top 3 nominees in each category because that helps eliminate the jokers.
Personally, I have been embarrassed about the TRAFFIC Hall of Fame and Domainer of the Year nominations to be honest. I have certainly not been deserving of either, and to be nominated for them felt like it was a joke on me.
Also, it’s not only “site owners” who influence members. There were brokers, service providers and publishers who emailed their mailing lists (and past commenters) asking for nominations for TRAFFIC Awards. I agree that voting can be skewed, and by default, people who have a larger presence, whether deserving or not, are more likely to be nominated and win an award.
James I agree that results can be skewed. In ANY election. I am taking as many precautions as possible. Only by being ultra cautious and as open and transparent as I can be, will the awards get respect and recognition.
All of the nominations are done buy the domain community themselves. I am giving a very generous 2 week period for both nominations and final votes so nobody has to miss out on a chance to nominate or vote.
I’m go through great expense and effort to have a 3rd party service handle the final voting process.
Neither myself, DomainBoardroom.com, DBRFunFest.com, or DonnasBlog.com will be eligible for nominations. I will not be declining a win..I’ll keep my companies out of the race completely.
It may not be perfect but it will be as close to perfect I can make it!
As always, I’m happy to hear any suggestion you may have to help in the process.