January 20, 2001

RinkChat, CA - Although there is no fear of dangling or dimpled chads with this year's RinkAwards ballots, voters are still faced with the challenge of making decisions. With a total of 93 archives eligible for the the Best Archive category, narrowing it down to the top five is no easy task for voters.

"It's taken me several hours to get one-eighth of the way through voting for the RinkAwards," said RinkChat regular Ayako Kiyomizu, of California. "If this is the easiest [page], I'm in for a rough time of it."

Morris Cecil Glalet, another RinkChat regular from California, spent hours agonizing over the Best Archive category. After finally making his selections, he moved to the next part of the ballot.

"I know what my answers will be for some of [the categories], but I prefer doing things linearly, and Best Archive, the hardest one, is at the very top," Glalet said.

Both Glalet and Kiyomizu felt that it was important to reread the archives they were voting for, and this added to the amount of time spent on the voting process.

"I have to go back and read each archive for each vote I think I may cast," Kiyomizu said. "Hopefully, I'll have read some of them enough that they'll become imprinted in my brain, and I won't have to go back to read them yet again for more votes."

Glalet was taking a similar approach and also explained that he first narrowed down the choices and then attempted to rank the articles.

While Glalet appeared to enjoy the voting process, he was also relieved when he had finally made his selections for Best Archive.

"I very well might end up changing it around two hundred times later, but for now it's done, and I can move on to the next thing," Glalet said.