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I guess the answer to that depends upon how the judging panel works. If it is the case that the judges just read the sims, choose the one they think is the top sim and then vote on that, then they are doing nothing very different to whats being done now, except that there are fewer opinions in the equation. If however you are reading them sims and having a discussion about it then this is more time consuming. You must first read and decide which sim you think is the best and then justify it. The part that takes the extra time is that you must also take into consideration the others points. There is debate, and you may need to go back and look at things again. This is a good thing in a way, but more time consuming. It also depends on the judges themselves. If judges are simply selected from a random group of volunteers or whatever. People naturally have their preferences - some like action, some like mystery, others romance. Any panel of judges would need to be as fair as possible. For example. I believe the judges of the writing challenge produce good, high quality sims themselves. They are experienced and have been in the community long enough to tell a good sim from a bad or average one. We would need a panel like that. (That limits the pool of volunteers a bit.) I do believe that most people read all the sims before they vote, I believe that people who vote in the competition are actually interested in it and the sims that are nominated. There may be the odd person who only reads one or some of them and then votes but overall I think the majority will read them all. They don't all come in at once, they come in dribs and drabs over the course of the round. If you check in regularly it's easier and more manageable to keep up to date with whats been nominated. At the end of the day, the more people who get involved and take an interest in the competition then the less impact any little things like that would have overall.

I think Malcolm has a fair point and considering how many entries there are to some rounds of the top sims i'm in agreement that it would be too much work to do a judges panel for every round. I don't agree with ballot stuffing, I think the best sim from any round should win. I can understand the point about crew unintentionally stuffing the ballots but as I have gone through the rounds I feel that the votes (from all crews) have been spread out between all entries. I think, at least for the vast majority, people are in keeping with the spirit of the competition. I can't think of a single person who would try to stuff the ballots. I don't know why more people don't take an interest in and vote for the top sims. Perhaps a bit of PR, maybe a news snippet and a OOC point at it would draw people's attention to the fact it exists. I remember telling someone on my crew once that I liked their sim so much that I put it up for top sim and they had no idea what I was talking about. I think the first thing to try is to get activity up. I don't know what other ships do, but we often put out reminders to check out the top sims for whatever round is on, places of note of the forums, whatever it may be and it seems to be working as many have pointed out - we have an active crew, I think when you have people who are enthusiastic about these things it spreads around. I like the current system. I like the fact that the people choose. We have judges doing the writing challenges, so to have the two competitions and the 2 systems is great in my opinion. There might be the odd person who would be inclined to vote tactically, I believe they really are in the minority, the more people who actually got involved the less of a problem there would be all round.

^ I fully agree with Evanna. I think this is still a good discussion to have, but I also think she's right - the system as it is really does work. We just need to make sure more people are involved in the Top Sims process. I imagine there are a percentage of members in the fleet who don't regularly use the forums, and who have no idea about Top Sim aside from the announcements during Awards Ceremonies. I'm not sure how to get more people involved besides simply making them more aware, but maybe that would be enough.