Crowns and Cronies? (dooyoo Crowns)

Member Name: stoffy

Product:	dooyoo Crowns
Date:	31/01/03 (126 review reads)
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Things on Dooyoo seem to be looking up after the platform-changing blip of last Autumn. Writers who have been on a post-Aurora sabbatical have returned, renewed and refreshed, whilst new writers still emerge all the time.

Despite this, Dooyoo has clearly lost significant ground to Ciao over the past 6 months. The latter has infinitely more active members, whilst its database covers much more depth than over here. Having said that, a corner has most definitely been turned and we’ll hopefully see it begin to flourish again as it once did a year or two ago.

However, the award of crowns remains to be a hotly contested issue. For those newcomers who may not be familiar with the system, crowns are bonuses that are given to the cream of the ops and are awarded every Thursday. The lucky recipients are given an extra 1500 miles (contrary to the subject title of this section) for each op that is crowned, or £1.50 in monetary terms.

Arguably the four most debatable issues on crowns regard who should be able to award them, who should receive them, how much they should be worth and what should be eligible.

Currently, crowns are still officially awarded by Dooyoo. However, given the resources that Dooyoo have, much of the ‘talent-spotting’ is done by the guides. Each guide has to submit to Dooyoo the ops that they believe should be crowned. It is then up to Dooyoo (or Katie, who seems to juggle more balls than Cherie Blair and the Moscow State Circus put together it seems) to make the final decision. There is also a ‘nominate this crown for an opinion’ button that every reader can use, although I’m not quite sure just how this affects crowning decisions.

There seems to be a growing number of people on the site who feel aggrieved about not having received a crown despite all of their efforts, and that the odds of receiving some shiny headgear are stacked against them. This is mainly due to t
he feeling that only guides get crowns, because they all nominate each other.

The reality is that any decision to award a crown is going to have to be made at some point by someone. Whether this is strictly Dooyoo management making this decision, just the guides, all readers, or a combination of the three, many people will feel that their opinions are better than some of the ones that have been stuck on the pedestal.

However, a quick look at the people who have written opinions will demonstrate that there is a mixture of guides, established writers and new faces who are awarded crowns. It’s also interesting to note that since crowns have been awarded weekly, nobody really seems to be getting more than a crown a week, so nobody is gaining more than £1.50 a week in extra cash – surely this is to represent fairness and diversity rather than to put things in favour of established writers?

There also seems to be a perception that all guides just work for each other. Whilst it may be that I'm the leper of the guides over here, and don't collaborate with people as to how to screw everyone else out of the value of a book of stamps, it is probably reasonable to say that from my experience, there no Masonesque dealings when it comes to nominations. Sorry conspiracy theorists out there. Guides nominate the ops they think best, no matter who wrote them - full stop.

Also, people tend to write opinions of the same standard each time. If they have received a crown, the chances are that they will go on to do so – this is not due to the presence of bias, merely the fact that they are good writers.

In any case, you would probably expect guides to have a greater number of crowns than other readers. This is because in order to become a guide, you must have written dozens of ops and been awarded a number of crowns – therefore it stands to reason that they will continue to receive crowns after they beco
me guides.

Having been a guide to

Unlike on Ciao, whose Premium Fund system lacks transparency and relies much more on being well-known rather than writing quality opinions, it isn’t necessary to have hundreds of reads to be considered worthy of a crown. Ops have been crowned before with barely more than 10 reads after they have been recommended by a guide. Therefore, having a system where guides nominate must be preferable for non-established writers compared to a numbers game which favours those writers whose opinions gain the greatest volume of reads.

In terms of reward, many argue that they should be done away with. Well, after initially saying that the reward for a crown was to drop to 1000 miles it has stayed at the same level. This is about right, as any increase in this level may result in a dropping of payment per read a la Ciao, whilst any decrease may render them pretty meaningless.

Perhaps the biggest reform that’s needed of crowns is to pinpoint exactly which products are eligible. Since last Summer, certain items have become uncrownable, including TV shows, Speaker’s Corner debates and ‘My Experience’ pieces. This is unfortunate for two reasons. Firstly, some of the best writing comes in Speaker’s Corner, whilst the My Experience pieces can often provide invaluable advice and information to people with the same situations. Secondly, there are many crownable items which aren’t purchasable – surely a well-written lengthy piece on dealing with cancer is of more use than a throwaway one of Eartha Kitt’s website? This isn’t to say that useless and badly written things are being crowned, merely that it might be better to allow all categories to have the potential to be crowned, or to limit eligibility to defined sections rather than the halfway house that we have at the moment.

I can understand the discouragement that many writers have if they
have never had things crowned. I felt the same way after 100 opinions, all rated VU and not even a sniff of a 'jagged bunny'. However, I don't think that there is any bias that exists in the awarding of crown, and there are no barriers to any writers being awarded one other than between what's in their head and what they choose to put onto keyboard.

Ultimately, I think that crowns add more to Dooyoo than take away. There’s nobody who misses out if they don’t receive one, they are merely bonuses. Notwithstanding maybe needing to tweak the categories you can receive crowns in, I think the system should stay as it is...


Feel free to leave a comment, and let’s get a debate going about whether the system should be changed, or stay the way it is!

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