I like the idea of an awards show where a select panal of judges - people experienced and respected in the industry - are the ones that come up with both nominees and winners.

The judges' own sites would be excluded from candidacy. Nominations would be solicited from the public, and the judges would review the nominations to trim them down to the best, say, 10 among the publicly submitted nominees.

At that point, they select the winners from those nominees. Hell, you could even have a different group of judges. One to narrow the nominees down, another group to actual vote on final winners.

Of course, were that to be the case, then some people would complain about the judges all having an agenda, i.e. "Everyone knows that judge never liked me. There was no way I was going to win." But at least there would be some transparency on who was making the decisions and what individuals the votes came down to.

So really, there's no way to ever make everyone happy.

Cybersocket, I get the feeling, has chosen to take a very hands off approach to the whole process. They've done this because, in the past, people were certain the results were fixed. So now, they leave it completely up to the numbers that come in on nominations and votes. That leads to an entire lack of quality control. Hell, last year CorbinFisher won Best Megasite and... we're not even a megasite! . An outcome of Cybersocket being completely objective throughout the whole process is sites that really shouldn't be nominated get nominated. If they were to cull the heard of nominees, then they'd end up getting thrashed for doing that. It's a lose/lose situation.