Why Nominations? Did They Work?

[fred]

First of all, I want to clear that this is not a criticism of Grimmas or anyone else involved in organizing this year's balloting. I know this kind of thing takes a lot of work and I would never disrespect that. I think GWE is a tremendously valuable project, and I hope that it will help me and others learn a lot about the history of wrestling and different great performers.

 

I've been thinking about the nomination process since is why it requires someone be nominated before they can receive points in the polling from their votes. The most concrete answer in defense of is that I've seen is that it encourages involvement in the process and helps people be aware of candidates they may have forgot.

 

I think that simply relabeling the nomination threads as discussion threads, and removing the requirement that there be such a thread for someone to receive credit for votes, would accomplish the same goals.

 

Do you think the nomination process works? Is there a better way to accomplish the goals that we hope it fills?

[Reel]

The original impetus, I believe was to guard against troll votes. I believe some WCW best matches poll got a #1 vote for some Rip Rogers match, which had never been brought up or discussed.

I think nominations are good, and I know there are wrestlers people would like to vote for, but if no one thinks about nominating them, or can’t give 3 match recs and a sentence explaining the nomination, then how Great can they be. 

 

[Ma Stump Puller]

20 minutes ago, fred said:

I think that simply relabeling the nomination threads as discussion threads, and removing the requirement that there be such a thread for someone to receive credit for votes, would accomplish the same goals.

Nominations are there for mainly two reasons;

#1 It encourages forum discussion (why did you nominate x, what matches do you recommend etc etc.)

#2 It's much more democratic than a free-for-all

Like I had a couple of people asking "why nominations?" It's because it allows people who want to make their unique or interesting takes to make them properly and get more coverage as opposed to just turning up with a list that says Toru Yano at like #8 and not elaborating. The way we have allows people to get interested in wrestlers or styles they would otherwise not even sneeze at normally which is always a cool thing, I know from experience that my nominations led people to watching and eventually becoming fans of said nominates which wouldn't be possible otherwise.

There's also the matter of logistics, we have over 700 people nominated (!!!) all with individual pages, if there was no requirement how would we handle making new pages? It would still involve people having to say "hey does x have a discussion page yet?" and having to manually add them to the pile. It's not like the process is extremely tedious as it is when all you need is a name and 3 matches to recommend. You don't even need to be on the forum to do it, in fact a good couple were added via other outlets like Discord.

 

 

[BackToBionic]

I'm really glad the nomination requirement exists. Even with it people have been wondering if some of these votes are trolls. I'd assume if it was lifted people would really have to mull over whether the person voting 1)Roadblock 2)Steve McMichael or whatever, was serious. (Although that person would be very interesting to talk to at least)

[Matt D]

I like the three match rule since this thing is based on footage not rep or drawing or anything else. If that can be enforced without nominations, I don’t care as much.

[ohheylook]

Yes and I think the process should be more rigid tbh 

[Control21]

Just now, ohheylook said:

Yes and I think the process should be more rigid tbh 

100%

[HeadCheese]

I think having a form of nomination is good neutral.

I think that it could have been open (maybe through google forum, blog post or comment thing).

I think Pro Wrestling Only being difficult than most message boards to join and the Discord not being as shared made it more difficult though.

I think nominating helps discussion and helps keeps things organized. There's wrestlers who made my list that I wouldn't know unless they were nominated  

[Reel]

The name that sticks out to me as people wishing was nominated, and I'm sure there are many more, but this is the one that stands out, having seen it a few times, is Sherri Martel. I can see the case for her, I can see people voting for her, but what would she have finished, given what we've seen so far? 328? I don't think nominations did any real harm, and as many have said, having a, hopefully permanent or at the very least stable, home for the discussion of wrestlers and a way to enforce the footage requirement is much more of a plus than any minus that comes out of the nomination process. 

[SirSam]

My thought on nominations is that it is a good thing to have for the reasons mentioned above however it can take months for applications to join this forum to be approved and be able to make nominations.

For me, I found out about this project in March but didn't have my membership approved until a week or so ago, when I somehow found the Discord, mentioned it in there, got a reply, then DM'd someone who ticked a box in the background.

That is quite a while for it to sit in lieu and is prohibitive for new voices to enter and make nominations.

In summary while nominations are good there needs to be a more consistent and lower barrier to entry into the forum so nominations can be made as there are some deserving wrestlers that didn't get nominated.

[ohheylook]

The rollout and the consistency of the project was the problem, not the nominations imo. 

 

[BackToBionic]

Ok, just to get a feel for what kind of non-nominated stuff was voted for, I investigated the list of non-nominees to receive votes because I only glanced at it before and some surprising names were there, on both ends of the quality spectrum. But Corey Maclin getting at least one vote really drills home the need for some kind of protocol.

[Jetlag]

Looking at some of the names people tried to vote for, yes I think the nominations were a good barrier.

 

Also, if a person can't even make the effort to get a name nominated, what business do they have making a Top 100? It's supposed to be high effort and take several months of preparation.

[Tetsujin]

5 hours ago, ohheylook said:

Yes and I think the process should be more rigid tbh 

I kinda think the same, but then it's like... How do you make it more rigid? Who decides what makes a wrestler worthy of being nominated? I feel that could get the project into dangerous territory, and if the alternative is letting people nominate non conventional wrestlers like Lulu Pencil or no wrestlers at all like Kauffman or Vince, well, they're not gonna get enough support to make an impact on the discussion nor the final ranking anyway, so whatever.

[NotJayTabb]

The nomination process is easier now than it was in 2016, where you actually had to provide match reviews for 3 matches for your nominee, I think we're about right with the current requirement to just list 3 matches. I keep thinking back to the rogue Terri Runnels vote, what 3 matches would be brought up to nominate her? If there aren't 3 matches, then she doesn't deserve to be in consideration, respectfully.

[El McKell]

I think the way things played out in the end is evidence to me that the nomination process was flawed and would have been better if it were handled differently.

 

The fact that there were wrestlers who received multiple votes who don’t appear on the list due to not being nominated is a weakness of the system. These were not troll votes. People who were voted on but not nominated include wrestlers with strong reputations: AR Fox, Bad News Allen, Bandido, Big E, Billy Kidman, Blue Demon Jr. BxB Hulk, Edouard Carpentier, El Hijo Del Vikingo, K-Ness, Kzy, Magnum TOKYO, Starlight Kid, Takeshi Rikio, Tiger Mask IV.

People sincerely wanted to vote for these wrestlers, they are not outlandish picks by any stretch of the imagination. So, this is a weakness of the process that you can decide for yourself is offset by the strengths of the nomination process. I’ll make a bit of a case below why I don’t think it is.

People in this thread are making arguments about whether or not the nomination process actually served as a barrier to entry for legitimate candidates or not. Saying things like: “It's not like the process is extremely tedious as it is when all you need is a name and 3 matches to recommend “ Or “if a person can't even make the effort to get a name nominated, what business do they have making a Top 100”. The counter against these arguments is the simple fact that so many wrestlers got votes without being nominated. The barrier to nominations was clearly real and people have brought some of those up in this thread, that this message board is a nightmare to sign up for, that discord invite links die (the one in the pinned thread called links, literally doesn’t work), not acknowledged is that if you encounter this project on Xitter or reddit or whatever how do you know what the nomination process is or how to find out about it, what about the highly knowledgeable people who chose to vote only when the ballot opened up, your Alan4Ls, Rich Kraetch, Jesse Collings or Liam from You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me and I’m sure many more. If were going to do outreach to get in as many ballots as possible we should ensure that anyone these people might want to vote for are eligible.

Matt D said something I partially agree with in this thread: “I like the three match rule since this thing is based on footage not rep or drawing or anything else. If that can be enforced without nominations, I don’t care as much.”

I too like the three match rule because it means we vote on footage and not rep. But that rule was not enforced on the nominations. Frank Shamrock got nominated with 1 pro-wrestling match and 2 MMA fights, Muhummad Ali got nominated with 2 worked wrestler vs boxer contests and one shoot wrestler vs boxer contest, Gus Sonnenberg was nominated based on incomplete matches (14:20 out of 31:45 with no finish, 21:03 out of 107:35 and 15:20 of literally slowed down, silent, grainy, blurry footage of a 22:37 match), Jim Londos was also nominated based on three incomplete matches. (I could also make the case that Ken The Box and Andreza Giant Panda shouldn't be valid nominees because we don't know who's under the costumes. Like how do we know Andreza Giant Panda isn't a different person every time, how do we know Ken The Box isn't the same person as every costumed Survival Tobita opponent?)

Having the nominations did not keep out these theoretically ineligible candidates but it did serve to keep out Kzy & Tiger Mask IV.

 

Some people are suggesting it encourages discussion or it prevents non-brought up or discussed wrestlers from being voted on. But there were 114 nominated wrestlers with zero replies in their threads (around 12% of all nominees). You don’t have to be a discussed wrestler to be voted on.

The nomination process as implemented largely just punished voters who didn’t pay attention to or know about the nomination process.

[ohtani's jacket]

I have mixed feelings about this. I don't think including ineligible votes would have made much difference to the final list. On the other hand, there were a number of ineligible workers who deserved a vote  I don't think the nomination process created a ton of discussion, at least not on this site. There were a large number of nominated wrestlers who received zero comments. Not sure how that makes them better than write-in votes. I don't think you can blame anyone for the lack of discussion, though. How are you supposed to sustain conversation about the GWE for ten years? It's not like critics and film directors spend ten years prepping for the next Sight and Sound poll. I think it would be better off as a five year poll, especially with the way wrestling fans cycle in and out, but if you open the poll up to as many people as possible then you're bound to end up with 100s of last minute ballots that don't take into consideration the years people spent trying to push individual wrestlers' cases. Either you make it invite only, which I assume nobody wants, or you only allow people to vote who you know have been actively involved in the discourse.

Ideally, you want the discussion to be centralized the way the GME project is. I get why people left this site for Twitter and Discord, but it's hard to follow the discourse when it's spread over different platforms. 

You're not going to get a perfect list, and you won't please all of the people, but I think you have to plan for the volume of voters that you want to generate. If you want a big inclusive list, then yeah,, do away with nominations. 

[El McKell]

I definitely don't wanna do this every 5 years. Every 10 years is good, but we definitely should like not be trying to sustain conversation about the GWE for ten years. This time we had a kind of ceremonial reopening of the process in April 2021, but 5 years before the ballot was way too fucking long of a time. I think we got it exactly right in 2016 when everything started 18 months before the ballot was due.

[SirSam]

Ten years makes it feel very special and gives time for true shifts in the wrestling landscape which makes the comparison to previous lists more interesting.

[Control21]

6 hours ago, El McKell said:

I think the way things played out in the end is evidence to me that the nomination process was flawed and would have been better if it were handled differently.

 

The fact that there were wrestlers who received multiple votes who don’t appear on the list due to not being nominated is a weakness of the system. These were not troll votes. People who were voted on but not nominated include wrestlers with strong reputations: AR Fox, Bad News Allen, Bandido, Big E, Billy Kidman, Blue Demon Jr. BxB Hulk, Edouard Carpentier, El Hijo Del Vikingo, K-Ness, Kzy, Magnum TOKYO, Starlight Kid, Takeshi Rikio, Tiger Mask IV.

People sincerely wanted to vote for these wrestlers, they are not outlandish picks by any stretch of the imagination. So, this is a weakness of the process that you can decide for yourself is offset by the strengths of the nomination process. I’ll make a bit of a case below why I don’t think it is.

People in this thread are making arguments about whether or not the nomination process actually served as a barrier to entry for legitimate candidates or not. Saying things like: “It's not like the process is extremely tedious as it is when all you need is a name and 3 matches to recommend “ Or “if a person can't even make the effort to get a name nominated, what business do they have making a Top 100”. The counter against these arguments is the simple fact that so many wrestlers got votes without being nominated. The barrier to nominations was clearly real and people have brought some of those up in this thread, that this message board is a nightmare to sign up for, that discord invite links die (the one in the pinned thread called links, literally doesn’t work), not acknowledged is that if you encounter this project on Xitter or reddit or whatever how do you know what the nomination process is or how to find out about it, what about the highly knowledgeable people who chose to vote only when the ballot opened up, your Alan4Ls, Rich Kraetch, Jesse Collings or Liam from You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me and I’m sure many more. If were going to do outreach to get in as many ballots as possible we should ensure that anyone these people might want to vote for are eligible.

Matt D said something I partially agree with in this thread: “I like the three match rule since this thing is based on footage not rep or drawing or anything else. If that can be enforced without nominations, I don’t care as much.”

I too like the three match rule because it means we vote on footage and not rep. But that rule was not enforced on the nominations. Frank Shamrock got nominated with 1 pro-wrestling match and 2 MMA fights, Muhummad Ali got nominated with 2 worked wrestler vs boxer contests and one shoot wrestler vs boxer contest, Gus Sonnenberg was nominated based on incomplete matches (14:20 out of 31:45 with no finish, 21:03 out of 107:35 and 15:20 of literally slowed down, silent, grainy, blurry footage of a 22:37 match), Jim Londos was also nominated based on three incomplete matches. (I could also make the case that Ken The Box and Andreza Giant Panda shouldn't be valid nominees because we don't know who's under the costumes. Like how do we know Andreza Giant Panda isn't a different person every time, how do we know Ken The Box isn't the same person as every costumed Survival Tobita opponent?)

Having the nominations did not keep out these theoretically ineligible candidates but it did serve to keep out Kzy & Tiger Mask IV.

 

Some people are suggesting it encourages discussion or it prevents non-brought up or discussed wrestlers from being voted on. But there were 114 nominated wrestlers with zero replies in their threads (around 12% of all nominees). You don’t have to be a discussed wrestler to be voted on.

The nomination process as implemented largely just punished voters who didn’t pay attention to or know about the nomination process.

The Inoki-Ali match is so important to the story of pro wrestling. Thumbing your nose at it is a bit silly. Regardless of whether or not it was a shoot (pro wrestling started as a shoot).

Regarding the Shamrock nomination, there's a very good argument that Pancrase can be considered pro wrestling. It was mostly a shoot, but it was also contested under pro wrestling rules. Early Pancrase was more or less treated as a branch of pro wrestling by the Japanese press. It was included in the big Tokyo Dome show for a reason. You can't just automatically think "shoot = MMA" that has no relevance. I actually posed this question on Twitter a few years ago, and Grimmas told me they didn't have a problem with it. I know people have strict definitions of pro wrestling, but this project is all about grappling with the many definitions it has taken over the years.

[Control21]

3 hours ago, SirSam said:

Ten years makes it feel very special and gives time for true shifts in the wrestling landscape which makes the comparison to previous lists more interesting.

Agreed

[ohheylook]

To be fair, we only did this for 5 years.

good posts in the last few, much I agree with. Even though control and I are aligned on a lot of things, I actually do agree Ali and Shamrock and probably some of the others brought up shouldn’t have qualified (I did vote for Londos though - and high - but this was because while there aren’t fully matches, there are about 40 clips over a long period of time to give a decent picture imo - it’s still my biggest stretch)

fwiw I think I’ve sort of settled more so that I Think the actual requirements to vote should be more strict, though not disqualifying or with unapproachable actions. Some sort of prolonged participation or some sort of proven work in the greater wrestling discussion. Not sure how that would be accomplished without really odd elitism.

 

[Control21]

31 minutes ago, ohheylook said:

To be fair, we only did this for 5 years.

good posts in the last few, much I agree with. Even though control and I are aligned on a lot of things, I actually do agree Ali and Shamrock and probably some of the others brought up shouldn’t have qualified (I did vote for Londos though - and high - but this was because while there aren’t fully matches, there are about 40 clips over a long period of time to give a decent picture imo - it’s still my biggest stretch)

fwiw I think I’ve sort of settled more so that I Think the actual requirements to vote should be more strict, though not disqualifying or with unapproachable actions. Some sort of prolonged participation or some sort of proven work in the greater wrestling discussion. Not sure how that would be accomplished without really odd elitism.

 

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, but I think there is enough grey area in what Frank Shamrock did between U-Style and Pancrase to make him eligible. 

[Matt D]

I am devastated we lost Sebastian's paragraph about Bill Longson. I don't see it anymore.

Oh wait, it's in the other thread. 

Quote

Bill Longson
'Bill Longson' is such a generic name that it could be everyone and no one, like someone you remember seeing in a dream. Is he a territory guy? A guy from the pre-footage era who somehow got a vote from a historian or 80 year old man from Texas that happened to find his way to the project? Indy wrestler doing an ironic cowboy gimmick? Everything is possible with this Bill Longson.

Quality work from @Jetlag

[HowtobeaMark]

How about a system where a nominee name could be put forward but would require 5 "ayes" to make the nominees list proper but a wrestler can also become eligible if they receive 5 votes in the final poll?