What’s a fair cross-section of the wargaming world? How about 2,046 Wargames Illustrated readers? That was the total number of votes we received for our 2023 Wargames Illustrated Readers’ Awards and, while I say 2,046 Wi readers, the reality is that quite a few of those voters probably don’t flip through the physical or digital pages of our magazine each month. Two of the questions we ask on the online awards voting form are ‘Best recent issue of Wi?’ and ‘Best recent article in Wi?’ We had several messages from folks who were filling out the form to tell us “We should be able to skip these questions - we don’t read Wi”. My response (through gritted teeth) was “Tell them they shouldn’t be voting then - it’s for Wargames Illustrated readers!” On reflection, was I right, or have I forced the hand of people who are going to submit the form regardless and are throwing responses in there that are not genuine and will cloud the results? How clouded? The magazine voted ‘Best Recent Issue’ in the recent Awards was our November 2023 issue; with the theme of Pulp. Could it be that voters just saw the one-line description which featured the word ‘Pulp’ and voted for that magazine based on the fact they like Pulp? Is it more a case of recency bias and, unsure of what issue is best, they are just picking a recent one at the top of the listing? The previous year, our lowest-selling magazine had the theme ‘Just add Fantasy’. This mag went on to win the ‘Best Recent Issue’ award in 2022. Could it be that (mainly non-Wi readers) who were at the voting form to put a tick next to their fantasy wargame of choice saw that theme name and voted for it as it matched their interests? There was a bigger oddity in 2022. Due to the timing of our magazine’s releases, the poll went up a week before our December issue was uploaded to the Vault. Despite nobody having the chance to read the articles from that issue the two within it got off to an early lead in the first week of the voting. Clearly, something was off! Wi431 - Our Pulp-themed issue. Should we try and keep it purer? We know that various voters head to the online form because companies they follow ask them to, and that some arrive because of prods from friends and family who run miniature or wargaming companies. How much should we try and keep our Readers’ Awards pure and filter out non-readers where we can? Perhaps we need to give it a grandiose rethink… or perhaps we can keep it as
