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| Jason Strobehn is a board member of the GCHoF |
On Wednesday I posted the feelings of frustration and concern regarding the Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame election process for new inductees. Off-line I also emailed Jason Strobehn, a board member of the GCHoF, and voiced my concerns. I mentioned the blog post from Tuesday.
Jason left two extensive comments explaining how the GCHoF works, why it does it that way, and defines some areas where the Board feels they can make things better.
Instead of having those comments be buried in a place where most of you readers will never see them, I thought aI would make them a post here on the blog. In fairness to the GCHoF, I think it is the least I can do. So following this is the entirety of those two comments from Jason. I'll follow up behind that with a few comments. Here are Jason's words....
Hey Mr. Ted. Captain of the Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame here.
Really
appreciate the feedback from your article and email to me directly of
your feedback. Going into year 3 of the GCHOF, we have made drastic
changes every year to make this process as good as we possibly can. Our
goal has been to make the entire process as democratic as possible from
nomination to voting. Who's to say us 7 board members should have the
power to choose at will who is in or out? Certainly not me. So before
going any further, we do listen to feedback and have already started
having discussions for changes to fix some of the things you are worried
about. So thank you for the constructive criticism that will allow the
board to do better in the future.
Some points to clear up. We as
a board actually do go through the nominations and weed out as much as
we can. Trust me, there are WAY more horrible nominations than were
presented to the elector. "XYZ is the best". "XYZ needs no explanation".
And ranges of rant-filled nominations that don't really say much about
the person being nominated to lala land stories that don't make any
sense. Maybe in the future we as a board narrow the nominations down
even further? Down to the top 25? Or top half? The reason we haven't
narrowed down nominations further than we have is we don't want to be
the Kings and Queens that restrict someone's stories. Maybe a nominee
resonates with the electors more than it does with the board and then
that person doesn't get in because 7 people instead of over 50 didn't
like it.
You also mentioned the vagueness of qualifications of
who you should vote for. That's intentional. Hall of Fame means
something different to every person. Every hall of fame from the Rock
and Roll to NFL is a point of controversy and discussion every year and
that's one thing that makes them great. There are amazing humans in
every hall of fame that people feel are snubbed for decades before
getting inducted. There may be others that never get in that probably
should. There are also countless examples of arguments of someone
getting in too early or jumping the line. Every elector, every fan,
every board member has a different interpretation of who should be next
in line to the GCHOF. It's a big reason we have stuck with rank-based
voting so that you don't have to pick one person. Every elector gets to
pick a range of nominees they feel should be the next class. And as a
group of electors you all decide the fate. I do agree we need to do our
best to ensure it's not just a popularity contest every year. You are
correct. And we've done our best to choose electors who have a broad
perspective of the sport of gravel. Not just midwest promoters or just
athletes or just old-school gravel guys. So thank you to you and all the
electors who have taken their own perspectives and experiences of
gravel and voted their own conscious to what they believe is deserving
to be in the GCHOF.
Last I'll say this. The great news is the
GCHOF isn't going anywhere. We're just in year 3! This year will only be
15 (overall total) people to be inducted. We have so many more years to induct the
incredible humans of this sport who have inspired us. And even more
exciting is there are so many stories being written write now that will
be celebrated many years from now. There will no doubt be controversy
and debate every year of who should of been or shouldn't of been in and I
look forward to those conversations.
Love and appreciate all you have done and are doing for our sport.
Jason Strohbehn
Captain of the Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame
Comments: Okay, first of all I want to thank Jason for popping into the comments and posting these comments which help illuminate for us what the GCHoF has to deal with and where they are at with future tweaks. Jason didn't have to do that, as he, (and LeLan Dains of the board) explained to me where they were coming from and where they hoped to go with this in private email exchanges with me. There was a bit more said there, but as I stated, those emails weren't meant for everyone to read.
So, as I have stated here on these pages, and on my podcast, how the nominations are written is the biggest problem. Jason states above pretty much the same thing. I don't see a solution to that since the format is so wide-open. Thanks to the Board for weeding out the really bad ones for us. Which brings me to the next point.
Jason mentions that the Board hasn't narrowed down the nominations further because they don't want to be "Kings and Queens" regarding which nominations get looked at by electors. But here's the thing - they already are doing that and it is 100% necessary. As I stated in my article on Wednesday, Halls of Fame are by definition very discriminatory, exclusive, and somewhat arbitrary. even Jason admits to this facet of Halls of Fame later towards the end of his statements above. So, while the Board wants democratic principles to be employed, they must also be comfortable at the same time with drawing hard lines and making discriminating choices. It's the nature of these things.
I'll close out by saying that I agree that this Hall will have its growing pains and that things will evolve with not only the nomination process, but I suspect and hope that things will evolve with the GCHoF in general. LeLan and Jason, and I assume the five other Board members, are open to change, criticisms, and they want to have this succeed. I applaud their efforts so far, and my aim is, in whatever way I can, as small as it is, to help the GCHoF succeed.
Again, massive thanks to Jason Strobehn and LeLan Dains for listening to this dusty old codger rant and for their willingness to respond to me here and off-line. It is appreciated more than you know.
If you have
any comments for the Gravel Cycling Hall of Fame I would encourage you
to contact them via their contact page which you can navigate to by
clicking HERE.
2 comments:
I submitted my suggestions direct to GCHOF but I’m also posting them here.
The first is to put a word limit on the nominations, both a minimum and a maximum. It forces nominators to actually justify their submission but also avoids long essays. That helps both the initial screening and the voting processes. Second is to require a minimum amount of time since the candidate first became relevant. That helps reduce fads and gives the voters some perspective of time to see if that person really was influential and whether that was a positive thing. My thought was that 7 years is sufficient.
Those two changes would not keep anyone out (at least in the long term) but would certainly help with establishing some basic process improvements. It doesn’t address the question of what makes someone worthy of inclusion though.
@Nooge - Yeah, I like those suggestions. thanks for posting them here.
I also suggested that the GCHoF could keep a running tab of those already nominated so that you don't get the same submissions over and over again. Those names could be kept on a list on the GCHoF site and nominators would have to refer to that list before nominating anyone. Also, if the people on that list are not elected for inclusion over a certain period then those names get purged from the list. Similar to what many Pro halls of fame do.
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