"Concept Demo" Awards Program

I, Jonathan Hayward, owner of all Awards Programs held at the Jonathan's Corner web site, do hereby declare on behalf of myself and any other evaluator/s who may be contracted at any time by Jonathan's Corner to evaluate for any Jonathan's Corner sponsored Award Program, that we agree to advance and promote the website evaluator Code of Ethics in order to ensure fairness to all applicants and to maintain the honor and integrity of applicants, evaluators and awards.

We agree that all critiques given will be constructive in nature as positive comment is productive. We will refrain from criticism unless specifically requested by an applicant, and in such instances, will remain positive where possible in an effort to promote goodwill and advance the level of quality among Internet sites.

We agree to allow eligibility to all applicants who meet the posted online criteria of any particular award. We agree to be uniform in our eligibility requirements (criteria) and will fairly evaluate all sites/pages meeting our criteria which are submitted by any applicant. We further agree to clearly post these criteria.

We agree not to discriminate on grounds of race, gender, nation of origin, religion, profession, age, mental or physical handicap, or any other reason which is not globally viewed as an illegal trait or manner of conduct.

COPPA was written after websites targeted children with cartoon characters and the like, lured them into giving their email addresses, and sold the addresses to lists. So it made a very modest requirement: U.S. websites that:

Were geared towards children, or
Knowingly collected personal information from children under 13.

must obtain parental consent before collecting personal information from children under 13.

That's it. That's quite a modest claim. More specifically, it doesn't require any age verification from 99% of awards programs I've seen. The awards programs I've seen aren't geared towards children, nor (unless they ask age) are they knowingly collecting information from children under thirteen. But people have this vague idea of COPPA--linking to it without doing research on it, and something happens.

Some websites go above and beyond the call of duty and require parental consent for applicants under thirteen.

Others go further above and beyond the call of duty and require applicants to be over thirteen (if they don't have parental consent).

Others go still further and jack up the age to fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, or eighteen.

Somewhere along the line, the parental consent gets dropped, and in the end, if you're under eighteen, you can't submit even if both your parents sign and fax a letter saying explicitly:

Dear Web Awards Program;

We hereby notify you that we give our full consent for our seventeen year old Pat to apply to your award program. If you have any questions, please call us at the above number.

Sincerely,

Oh, and one more thing. COPPA is not an international law. It's a U.S. law affecting U.S. websites. COPPA has no jurisdiction over a Spanish site on a Spanish server. But just like parental consent drops out of the picture, any connection to the U.S. drops out of the picture. An overly sensitive reader could think that these awards programs assume that the U.S. is the center of the universe and the rest of the world is just the 51st state. (After all, they clearly assume that U.S. laws apply to everyone...)

COPPA is a fish story. Like "the one that got away," it seems to get bigger and bigger. COPPA gets bigger and bigger the more I see people trying to go above and beyond the call of duty. I'm trying not to think about a scenario a couple of years down the road when I try to apply to an award program and am told, "We're sorry, but some sociologists say that thirtysomethings are still basically like children, and in the interests of COPPA adherence, we can't allow you to apply to our program."

Perhaps you wouldn't feel comfortable deleting all age discrimination. But it might be nice to stay close to the law (parental consent for applicants under 13) instead of telling brilliant teenagers, "We don't care what the law allows! We're discriminating against you because of your age!"

We agree to set forth awards criteria and to adhere to same. Proposed time frames for changes will be posted for one (1) week prior to the final publishing of same with notices posted on site so all potential applicants can view and understand the proposed changes.

We agree to evaluate web sites under the criteria which were in place at the time of any and/or all application/s. If changes are made to criteria after application/s is/are received, the submitted site/s will be evaluated using the criteria that were in effect when applicant/s initially submitted the site/s.

We agree to immediately inform any criteria compliant applicant in writing, of a 'Refrain to Evaluate' if it is found that a conflict of interest would occur in evaluating their web site - e.g. Such may occur upon being requested to evaluate the web site of a good friend. We will offer such applicant a choice of evaluator taken from CEM/CEMA membership listing.

We agree to maintain a professional, friendly and positive manner in any and/or all correspondence and/or communication held with any applicant/s.

We agree to evaluate all submitted sites within ninety (90) days of receipt of submission. If this deadline cannot be met, we agree to suspend submissions until we can again work within this timeframe.

We agree not to divulge any information about any applicant to persons, groups, or agencies not directly connected to our Awards Programs, and only then for the purpose of evaluating submissions and notifying winners. All information received from applicants via e-mail submissions or submission forms will be deemed private.

We agree to encourage and promote the use of original material for Awards Programs criteria and evaluation processes. We agree to assist any person requesting advice concerning ethical evaluation for and disbursement of awards. Please note: The awards evaluation processes in use at CPSnet Web Awards are copyrighted material and written authorization is required for their use.

We agree to maintain any owned individual web site/s that includes Awards Program/s to a standard that meets the criteria of the Award/s given. In the case of any Award/s offered that is/are outside the main subject of our web site/s, any and/or all such web site/s will be maintained to a high standard of integrity in all its/their main areas.

We agree to maximum dimensions of awards given in courtesy of web sites that will use them. If the maximum dimensions cannot be adhered to then a text only link will be permitted for graphics larger than maximum size; maximum size dimensions offered from this web site are: no more than 80 pixels height and 100 pixels width.

We agree that there will be only one obligation for winning awards from this web site beyond meeting the criteria. It is not, and never will be, mandatory at this web site to sign a guestbook or to join a mailing list. It is a requirement that any awards granted from this web site must be linked back to our web site in a method that will be outlined in award notification e-mails.

We agree that we will not grant awards to, or in any other manner endorse or promote, any web site that endorses, promotes or contains content which is considered globally to be illegal or discriminatory against humans.

Another minor change. I've changed the ending, "...discriminatory whether same be against humans or wildlife." to "...discriminatory against humans." That means that I don't have to discriminate against Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, a good many atheists and agnostics, etc. who discriminate between humans and wildlife. (Even most strict vegans recognize that there is an important moral difference between killing a human and killing an insect. That's because they discriminate between humans and wildlife.)

I am slightly puzzled why "...whether same be against humans and wildlife." appears unaltered in so many awards criteria. Sometimes it's left me wondering if the awards program actually have actually read and thought about the ethics code, or just copied it and required me to read it. If you'll think a bit, this doesn't present the best image to applicants.

(But I'm nitpicking. I'll stop.)

We agree that we will not accept favors of any sort in exchange for preferential treatment of submissions. We will at all times maintain a high standard of honesty and integrity.

We agree that we will take all measures necessary to maintain the honor and integrity of our Award Program.

We agree that we will use an application process that respects the applicants' time.