If you're gonna pick a bunch of apples, you gotta have a plan.

last update: June 28, 2004

Over time (and with a bit of cajoling, poking & whining from some of the participants), here are the final "rules" for how we created & voted on The Apples Project.

1. Categories were chosen from a number suggested by The Apples Project participants.

2. Initial game lists for those categories were compiled by a small committee of extraordinarliy helpful individuals & myself. The aforementioned band of brothers consisted of:

• Kurt Adam
• Erik Arenson
• Joe Huber
• Larry Levy
• David Vander Ark

Any errors in the initial lists were entirely my fault... these guys worked hard to give me excellent input, but I had the final editorial authority.

3. The participants were sent these lists, with instructions to choose seven (7) games that fit the category. Write-in nominations were welcome. Each participant had 10 days to respond to the nomination e-mails.

4. Those results were compiled and the top 10 games in each category were selected to move on to the final voting round. In the case of the subjective categories (categories without an initial game list), approx. 15 games went into the final voting.

• I took the top ten nominations, plus any ties for the tenth spot, plus any games which are just a vote from being in the tenth place. This meant that some final voting lists were a bit larger than initially planned.
• I also "grandfathered" some games in that did not make the initial lists... either because of them being left off the initial game lists or a particularly strong game that escaped notice.
• Finally, I chose on occasion to remove a game from consideration, due to it's inadequate fit in the category.
• My hard & fast rule: I let myself do minor changes to the nomination process, but did NOT tamper with the final voting process.

5. The participants were sent the final votings lists, with instructions to choose five (5) games that fit the category. Write-in nominations were no longer welcome. Each participant had 14 days to respond to the voting e-mails.

6. Those results were compiled and the top 5 games in each category were selected to appear on this website.

• I took the top five vote-getters, plus any ties for the last position.
• Non-votes were counted. In a few cases, only four games made the final cut due to "no votes". They were tabulated by position... if only 3 games were selected, then that was no votes at the 4th and 5th positions.

That's it.

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