Some Words About The Hugi Charts

Written by Adok

As you might have noticed, there is no charts section in this issue of Hugi. The reason for that is simple: The number of voters was too small. When the charts section was started in Hugi #8, 16 people participated. The peek was 23 voters in Hugi #9. For this issue I have gotten 14 votesheets so far, and as there is no sign that this charts concept will attract more voters in the next issues, I decided to skip the charts in this issue. There is a simple reason for the lack of voters. It's certainly not the number of semi-active readers, as the number of article writers was always higher than the number of voters. It's the concept of the charts.

Let me explain. When I attached the first votesheet to Hugi #7, there was a large number of sections to vote for. They were mostly non-scene sections, such as "best utility", "best music style" or childish ones like "best town/city". There was also a section where you could name five new sections that should be added to the votesheet in your opinion. If one of these sections got more than a certain number of points, it was included in the votesheet. So the sections in the votesheet were strongly dependant on the voters, which was the main concept of the Hugi charts. I called them "democratic charts". In fact, however, there were anarchistic charts. Soon the votesheet got filled with childish, uninteresting or stupid sections. Luckily some sections also got removed because the voters decided to install a section where you could name five sections that should be erased from the votesheet in your opinion. Still, the votesheet remained huge. Although one didn't have to fill in the whole votesheet, this was the main reason that scared people away from taking part in the charts. The second reason were the childish sections. The third reason, finally, was a consequence of the first two reasons: Due to the small number of voters the charts were unobjective (for example, TOXO, who can only program in QBasic, had a higher place in the coders charts than PSI). This scared even more people away. It was really a vicious circle.

So, what will happen to the Hugi charts section? To console people that like charts: I have not given up the idea of doing charts in Hugi, but I have changed the concept. A completely new votesheet is attached to this issue. It features only four sections, namely demos, intros, diskmags, and groups, for each you can give points to three names. This way it takes way less time to fill in the votesheet, which will hopefully bring more people to participate. Which, again, will make the charts more accurate and bring formerly sceptical people to participate.

Furthermore, the votesheet and the charts are fully in English now.

And from the next issue on, the voters will be listed like in every other diskmag. This way the voters get a little feedback and see that their effort was not unnecessary.

- adok^hugi