Look at the figures I posted earlier. I honestly don't think transparency is their highest priority
I didn't ask

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You didn't ask? Somewhat crucial to the whole set-up wouldn't you think?

I was more concerned by the monetary side of it, which I believe has a direct impact on everything else.

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The concept of the Golden Spiders is fine. Their stated aim is "to reward excellence in design, functionality, creativity and innovation in
Ireland's internet industry." That says it all.

Where the current system falls flat is that they are failing to judge on their own criteria. We already have seen that thay have excluded basic W3C standards [which surely falls under design or funcionality]. As I have said before, this is like the Booker Prize Committee failing to check for spelling and grammar.

They are also pandering to vested interests. Nepotism is rife. We see the same old sites coming up time after time [RTE, Magico to name but two] who clap themselves on the back and say how great they are. It is essentially a closed shop. And when judges on the panel actually have their own sites nominated.. Draw your own conclusions.

They have also turned it into a money making racket. Once money gets involved, then standards of judging become suspect.

What the industry need is an award system based precisely on the Golden Spiders criteria - to reward excellence in design, functionality, creativity and innovation in Ireland's internet industry.

However [and here is the difference], it should be free to enter. Sites should be judged, not by vested interests, but by experts outside the direct area. There are enough people out there - journalists, lecturers etc who are not directly involved with the industry yet who know enough about it to give an unbiassed qualitative judgement. Or the sites could be judged by popular vote. This would be harder to police, but the public know better than any judge as to what they want and like.

The industry itself is not necessarily the best judge of a website. I have seen sites that were amazing from the design perspective, and designers have raved about them. But the general public would find them confusing, non-intuitve and hard to navigate. We must never forget that designs are not for designers - they are for the public.

I will confess to a vested interest in all this. I wrote a site. The design is OK but I have seen better. However, the company involved has received numerous compliments from other companies, and from the public on the design. The company is delighted with the site. The site is highly innovative in that it has functions that are extremely complex and took a lot of sweat and tears. The site has seen sales increase tenfold since I took it over. It is a successful site and I have had a good relationship with that company. I might add that I could have entered it for the Spiders, but frankly I knew a) the lack of value in the awards and b) I wasn't "in" well enough. I might also add that the site validates

Now what p*sses me is that this company has been blinded by the Spiders. They are switching for the sole reason that the design house won the Spider last year and has been bragging about it. I didn't like to tell my client that they were making a HUGE mistake, because it would have sounded like sour grapes. Time will tell.....

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w

But surely in the best interests of your client (who is paying for your expertise and knowledge), you could advise them not to go down that particular route - and atleast if you make concise and accurate points, it wont appear to be sour grapes.

Atleast in my eyes, it would make you appear professional for basically giving your client the best possible advice that you can give.


On a further note to the awards, the current judge list is :

http://www.goldenspiders.ie/judges.html - and there is atleast one person on that list that I would not have included at all

Unfortunately, they signed the contract before I found out. The Owner of the company rang me [too late] to apologise and explain. She said that they had decided to go with this company purely because she had been reading about their Golden Spider award.

As a footnote to the above, I heard that the contract was conditional on the site going live in September. It is now November and still no sign of it. Just goes to show how "professional" that design company is

If I contact them at this stage, what good will it do? All I can do is tell them that the company has a crap reputation, and that will sound like sour grapes


I would have said 5 [numbers 7 to 11] - they all have potential conflicts and three of them definitely do.

My entry has been beaten to the shortlist by far, far, far inferior sites. Fact. It just so happens that my site is in direct competition with three of the judges. Go figure.

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I rang them to enquire why my site had not made the shortlist when at least half of the sites that had were not only inferior, but also extremely badly designed, coded and irresponsible pieces of web design. I asked for a breakdown of the scoring but was told I couldn't have one until after the awards. I will, of course, be requesting this at a later date but I am not holding out much hope. It would be interesting to see which criteria Irish property for sale by owner in Ireland. fsbo sell your own home online sell my house online private house sales beat Property for sale and property to let in Ireland, overseas properties in France, Spain, Bulgaria and worldwide, commercial premises - Hunt For Property.ie in and how the scores matched up.

That is the oddest thing I've seen on a website in a good while

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That's strange. Their site ranks 1,205,048th while Daft.ie ranks at 6,824. Don't Daft allow independent sellers to sell also? And myHome? And most other property sites?