So, I was all set to create the polls for the Horse of the Year awards when it occurred to me that potentially members would like a different system.
Right now I run a script that analyzes each category’s top performers (by stakes wins/places) and then selects the top X (generally 4-5, unless there aren’t that many top horses in a category).
That’s great for just picking the most consistent horses at stakes level, but could potentially miss out a top horse who had a big achievement but didn’t win as many stakes races as other horses. (Hypothetically, a horse that only wins the Derby/Preakness/Belmont as a 3yo, running in allowances the rest of the year - should s/he be excluded from HOTY 3yo of the year just because there are 5 other 3yos who had 4+ stakes wins?)
So…any thoughts? For or against the current system? Suggestions for another system? The only thing I can think of is personal nominations (possibly in addition to the top 2 or 3 horses from the above script?). Obviously you couldn’t just nominate any horse (and, perhaps, should only be allowed to nominate horses you don’t own/lease/breed, to make things more fair/less biased), and not all nominated horses would necessarily make the cut (would rather not have a dozen horses up for voting in any category).
I think the current system is fine. A horse that wins a bunch of grade ones vs winning a few plus a bunch of allowances is in my mind the better horse (or had a more ambitious owner)
For the most part, I’m fine with the current system. If you wanted to have your cake and eat it too, perhaps have a brief window of time for suggestions/nominations for ponies that may have been overlooked?
I think Cat’s idea is a good one. I have no real problems with the system (or at least, unfortunately, can’t spare the brain cells right now to think of one that might work better), but I do feel that it can be disadvantageous for a horse with a greater number of stakes win to take precedence "
Just FYI, this year I didn’t ask for nominations as the category nominees were pretty well-defined (i.e. any of the possible alternates were well beneath the nominees in quality; and/or there were already 6+ possible nominees so no room for extras anyway).
In the beta I’ll probably see about adding a nomination feature, probably with voting (so a horse wouldn’t get added to the HOTY nomination list unless a few members agreed it was worthy), and then members can be more involved in the process.
