SMA
OnLine News Magazine a free community-run nonprofit
public service, written FOR and BY the expatriate residents, in our attempt to
meet needs not being met elsewhere 
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contests
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Rules for our second contest: 6/14/04 - because of problems encountered in the last contest (no names are being named at this time although a felony may have been committed). this second contest and the possible third contest are on hold as of this moment. To enter: The two awards: An award for your favorite writer and another for the provider of the most useful information will be made based upon the votes by you, our readers. The Michael Paul Wein Charitable Foundation will award two us$600 prizes for writings in two categories involving and relating to San Miguel that will have appeared (between May 16th and August 31st) in this online newspaper. The winners will be selected by the readers of this paper, themselves, in voting that will take place between now and September 5th of this year. These awards aim to bolster the concept of volunteer work in this entire community. In keeping with the concept of non-monetary volunteer work, the two $600 awards will be paid in a check payable to the local organizations chosen by each of the two winners, and not to the winner himself or herself. More information can be found at the foundation's website at http://smanumber1.tripod.com/toc.htm How to vote: 1 - all votes must be by email, addressed to mpwinsma@cybermatsa.com.mx, and must bear the following information (see everything in blue below) so that they can be easily tabulated:
b state exact date, title, and author of either an "a1 writing" or "a2 information" that you are voting for - we will accumulate the votes by author so that too many writings or too much information will NOT cause any author to be in competition with himself or herself. The only separation is that of the two categories for voting (see a1 or a2 above). c state the voter's (your) name and address in San Miguel d include a comment, suggestion, criticism, etc. that makes it look like you really read some of the other articles and/or information that you did not vote for. See #4 below. 2 - Anyone may vote for BOTH an a1 and an a2 category. But, in order that no one gets to pack the ballot box, only one vote from each email address in each category will be counted. And for those who have multiple email addresses (such as @hotmail and/or @yahoo and/or the like), only one vote per person per category at their main email address will be counted. 3 - the votes must be received at the above email address by the the cut-off date of 5pm on September 5th or earlier. The votes will be tabulated immediately and the winner announced and the $1,200 in awards will paid by the middle of September. 4 - while the writers receiving the most votes will be designated the winner in each category,, the next 4 highest vote-getters in each category will receive public notice as to their runner-up status. In cases of ties or suspected chicanery (a comment that makes it look like you really read some of the articles and/or information would deflect this kind of suspicion), fair and impartial judgment will be applied. 5 - articles by or about the publishers of this web-site news magazine are not eligible for awards. ---------------oooooooooooooooooo----------------- For those of you who like early starts, start looking for errors (not grammar and not spelling or such and not self-correcting errors like a local events error that will go away itself in a few days) in the links and concepts and physical structure of our web-site. We will have one us$500 award and two $250 awards donated on behalf of the 3 people who find the most errors that we later correct (defined as errors in the structure itself that we are able and choose to fix). The rules (how to enter: just send us an email with the details - see below) (the awards: see below) will be similar to the above contest. The purpose, obviously, is to have correctable errors brought to our attention as soon as they are noticed (e.g., links that don't connect at all or don't connect to proper destination, bad http:// addresses, conceptual errors, etc. all creep in and are caused by human oversight). As far as any one entry of "error caught" and the time cut-offs for credit are concerned, each person sending an email describing (in usable detail) exactly where an error is located (page name and where on the page it occurred), what the error is, and what it was supposed to do, will receive one credit for each such "catch" (it is possible that there will be multiple credits for one error if others catch the same error before it is corrected, but the issuance of credits cease as soon as the error is corrected on our MS Frontpage software, even though additional time will be required before the corrected item is uploaded to the web-site and is noticeable by readers.
Results of our first contest: We are pleased to announce the winners of our first contest for favorite writings. These were articles published from the date of our inception through May 15th. We have another contest (see above) for all articles that will have been published from May 16th through August 31st. We do think that getting your article in early adds to the number of readers and that the greater number of readers adds to the votes that you might accumulate. For your information, the rules for the first contest appear below. The award for the most favorite article goes to Patrice Wynne who received the most cumulative votes for her articles (notice that everything is going to be in alpha-order from now on) "Running with the Bulls in San Miguel" in nonfiction and "Virgin of Guadalupe, Goddess of the Americas" at spiritual and "what I'd like to see included in your paper" at letters As soon as she informs us of her decision, we will pass on the information to you as to which organization will receive the us$1,000 prize. As of June 9, 2004, we are still awaiting a response from her. And the runner-ups are:
And, yes, we know we said there would be 4 runner-ups, but the votes were so close, we thought we would list all six runner-ups.
Objective of this page: to explain the rules and procedures for any contest sponsored by this web-site |
