It’s that time of the year again when we ask Wargames Illustrated readers to get their thinking caps on and cast a vote for their favourite Miniature Manufacturer, New Rules, Wargames Article, and more in the ‘Wargames Illustrated 2021 Awards’. Here Editor Dan talks a bit about the awards process. Compiling these awards and watching the votes roll in is a very interesting process. In this Editor's Exploits I share some insider information on why that is. At the time of writing 54 people (from well over 1,500) have already voted for ‘The Great British Kitbash’ as their Best Wargames Illustrated Article 2021. Perhaps it’s not surprising that this article has received a fair number of votes given the fact that kitbashing is a popular subject/pastime and it's a great piece. What is surprising is that the article in question hasn’t yet been published in print or online! It will feature in the December magazine, in time to be included in the vote, but as of yet nobody outside of WiHQ has even seen it, so how can it have received any votes!? And that begs the wider question - how can we ‘trust’ any of the votes! There are a couple of things to bear in mind here: The voting form isn’t just filled out by Wi readers. Many of our Social Media followers don’t read the magazine (I wish they all did!) so they are voting based on the few words they see on the screen in front of them i.e. The Great British Kitbash. The voting link is shared by loads of companies who ask their fans to vote for them, so once they are done voting for ‘their’ company/product they just click on anything else to fill in the gaps. The Perrys after winning the Best Manufacturer award in 2017. An amusing consequence in connection with this second point is that fans often vote for ‘their’ companies/products in totally nonsensical categories e.g. Best Wargames Rules: 'Bad Squiddo Games', Best Range of Miniatures: 'Too Fat Lardies'. You might be surprised to learn we do police all of the entries. For example; all the votes for articles that have not yet been published will be thrown out, and all the votes in nonsensical categories will likewise be ditched. Mass voting by a company or a product's fans is allowed and left in. Most voting systems are susceptible to block voting by fans. The hope is that if you get a high volume of entries that block voting doesn’t have a distorting effect, and luckily we do have a high volume of entries. Even when we did get a block vote of 60 people all voting for the same
