It’s been brought to my attention that the Dragon Awards administrators have removed their rules page from their website. With any luck, they are busy revamping those rules for next year.
In the meantime, I’ll post the most relevant passages from the rules here for safekeeping. They can still be found online, but only as a cached page (see URL at the bottom of this page).
These rules clearly state that Dragon Con admins reserve the right to change any vote or make any award at their sole discretion, for any reason, with no appeal. In other words, they can do whatever they want with the awards and they have no accountability for the results.
“DRAGON CON reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to cancel, terminate, modify, or suspend voting[….] All decisions regarding the voting process or acceptance of votes shall be final and shall not be subject to challenge or appeal.”
“SELECTION OF WINNERS: All decisions regarding the voting process and selection of winners shall be made by DRAGON CON in its sole discretion, shall be final, and shall not be subject to challenge or appeal”
“DRAGON CON reserves the right, at its sole discretion to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend this Award and determine the winners from entries received prior to the date such action is taken, or as otherwise deemed fair and equitable by DRAGON CON. All decisions of the DRAGON CON and its agents regarding the administration of this Award shall be final and binding.”
“If DRAGON CON believes, in its sole discretion, that a violation of these Rules has occurred, it may edit or modify any submission, posting or e-mails”
“THE DRAGON CON GROUP DOES NOT WARRANT OR MAKE ANY REPRESENTATIONS REGARDING THE USE OR THE RESULTS OF THE USE OF THE MATERIAL, INFORMATION, SOFTWARE, FACILITIES, SERVICES OR OTHER CONTENT ON THE WEBSITE OR ANY WEB WEBSITES LINKED TO THE WEBSITE IN TERMS OF THEIR CORRECTNESS, ACCURACY, RELIABILITY, OR OTHERWISE.”
Their rules also never specificy that the winners will be chosen by majority vote — or, indeed, specify any method of determining winners, except for this disclaimer, as stated above:
“SELECTION OF WINNERS: All decisions regarding the voting process and selection of winners shall be made by DRAGON CON in its sole discretion, shall be final, and shall not be subject to challenge or appeal”.
So how do the winners actually get picked? Who knows?
Contrarius Est 