Yup MannyF is working on sorting out the front page blog tool for me, I have an update ready to go up there.
Chris here…
Posted the info to my Facebook profile, had to be diplomatic because Angie is one of my FB friends, but did basically encourage people to vote for ThunderCats Lair! 
I also took the extreme liberty of posting a link to the art-based poll on the FB page that Kyle set up for fans of his artwork (as opposed to his personal FB page), just in case Kyle was too modest to push for it himself! (j/k!) I’d desperately love to see him win in each category because the man is such a total legend! 
This is just the start of my full-frontal assault here!
Take care…
Hey Mark whats the status on votes
Voting has been much more active this year than in the past. Where categories would get 7 to 12 votes each, this year there has been more than 40 votes under the sites area and more than 20 in the fanfic and fan art area.
We should still be encouraging fans to vote, and where we’re comfortable, to vote for us. I’d feel badly about revealing results at this stage to the team here as I’ve decided to not share the results publicly until after the voting ends. In the event that TCL wins I want to be sure nobody has any reason to think I acted unethically and if I were to say where we stand right now only to our team I think that would cast doubt on the process.
Voting continues until the 24th (midnight EST).
I totally understand Mark…it is encouraging to hear that it is more active this year
Chris here…
Reading between the lines - that means we’re losing to EOT.net! The result I always expected - for some reason, that site with its chronic lack of content based all around its forums evokes fanatical devotion from its patrons, who are as a rule the most active ThunderCats fans on the Internet and so the people most likely to vote in something like this.
To be honest, it’s why I don’t put a hell of a lot of store by this fandom awards, because, again being honest, I feel that they’re only as good as the people who can be bothered to vote in them. It’s not about the best site, but the one that evokes the most fanatical loyalty, hence why EOT always wins the Best Site award each year! 
Take care…
A thing like these fandom awards is only as accurate as the voters bias. On a purely objective level I don’t think any rational person can look at our site vs. any other ThunderCats site and say we’re not the best one on the net. The more we encourage regular fans to check out the nominees and vote the more accurate the results will be. Someone like Queen Lynxana or Nine Tiger will always vote with EOT. Someone who is interested in new stories, a site that is easy to navigate and has good new content will vote for us.
I took a look at Angie’s records of the awards since 2002 and here are the winners up until 2008. You’ll note that EOT is a relative newcomer, not much older than us but they have indeed won the last three years in a row.
2002 - Best overall - Cheezey’s TCats Zone (Purrsia voted best new)
2003 - Best overall - Cheezey’s TCats Zone
2004 - Best overall - Guardians of Thundera (EOT voted best new)
2005 - Best overall - Purrsia (TCL nominated for best new)
2006 - Best overall - EOT (TCL nominated for Best overall)
2007 - Best overall - two way tie between EOT and Purrsia (TCL nominated)
2008 - Best overall - EOT (TCL was NOT not nominated). Note that there were six total votes and EOT had three of them. Cheezey’s site had 2 votes which is just plain stupid.
Chris here…
Just seen the results on Facebook, and all I can say is…holy freaking hell!!! 
SITE AND COMMUNITY (70 voters participated)
- Best in Decade Over All Website: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Most Improved: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Most Informative: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Best Maintained: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Best in Decade Designed Site: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Best Toy Archive: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Best Fic Archive: PurrsiaThunder.org
- Golden Scanner/ Multi Media Award: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Best Fan Art Gallery: EyeofThundera.net
- Best Episode Guide: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Most Original: EyeofThundera.net
- Most Interactive: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Most Fun: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Community Award: ThunderCatsLair.org
- Golden Post Award for 2009: LadyLeanna
- Golden Post Award - Best in Decade: Two way tie: LadyLeanna and He-Fan
- Contributor of the Year: LadyLeanna
- Ultimate Webmaster/mistress Award: The team at ThunderCatsLair.org
- Best Pro Site: HardHero.com
At the end of the day, out of 70 votes it doesn’t mean a hell of a lot, but…it’s a nice feather in our cap! And, we managed to win Best Episode Guide despite only having pages for 45 episodes online! (And despite me voting for Angie’s site in that category!) LOL!! 
I feel like bouncing around right now - WHOO-HOO, we’ve FINALLY cracked it!!!
Take care…
Pretty sweet result. Great work everyone rallying the voters to action this year. By the way, 70 voters is a pretty big sample if you look at how hard it is to actually move someone to action based on posts in forums, messages to e-mail etc. In advertising it called a conversion rate and given that we have about 944 e-mails (many would bounce or go to trash etc.) I reckon thats a pretty high return rate.
I found that messaging people on facebook worked best, I’d say one in three that I messaged would go and vote, so next year I’d say we should canvass that way again.
Now I’m just waiting for the backlash from people who are going to claim this was all rigged in favour of TCL
It wasn’t at all, I was ethical as hell and I voted once and threw a number of votes at Purrsia and EOT in categories I felt they still beat us in…
We won because we asked our visitors to vote for us, and they did. Plain and simple… we’d have won if Azmom ran the awards for our section, I have no doubt of that. Check out the link to our results to see how overwhelmingly we took the categories:
Chris here…
That’s an impressive graphic! :eek:
Take care…
There’s going to be backlash for sure but the truth is that the areas we won, we won them by landslide.
12/19 is not bad…we should be proud of ourselves
Its gotta be 13/18 because we can’t qualify for the pro section and Chris was tied for first place under “Golden Post of the Decade”. So a 72% win rate. Very proud indeed.
We’re also the winners of a Mumm-Ra statue… which we can do whatever we want with.
I know it goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway. I think it is important that we are gracious winners in all of this and that we don’t get caught in arguments with others about the awards… some people are likely to say some obnoxious things, lets make sure we don’t participate.
I’ll need to defend the awards process if anyone makes accusations but if anybody starts getting nasty let’s just let them embarass themselves. In the words of Ron Burgandy… Stay classy TCL…
Chris here…
Yeah, I agree with all of the above - I don’t think anyone would have the brass neck to attack us on these forums (well, maybe Queen Lynxana but not many others! ), but there may be some sniping on other forums. Let’s not descend to that level - I don’t think there’s any harm in someone from the team saying “Well, as far as we’re concerned, the voting was conducted fairly and squarely”, but I agree about staying away from flame wars.
Take care…
Coolio Chris, and congrats on your win! You were one vote shy of tying for 1st in Golden Post for 2009 also. Well deserved my friend.
Chris here…
Thanks Mark - I can’t quite believe that I’ve won Golden Post of the Decade!! The voting for that section was a bit tighter, but nonetheless, still really chuffed that people thought my posts were good and interesting enough to vote for me!
Take care…
And Nick almost almost won Contributor of the Year too… even though I think his last posted interview was in 2008…
We completely rocked it this year guys, and I think we were easily the best site of the decade…
And we’re about to enter the process to relaunch this site so that we can claim the same title in ten years too. I for one am very excited about our future.
Sure was. December 2008 was when I released that interview. Good lord. I’m thrilled that people voted for me and the website - those interviews, despite being rather old and the editing was kinda shabby (admittingly), really were unique. Doing my podcast now and having interviewed lots of people, I’m happy to say that I’m still very proud of those interviews.
Well done, guys.
Yay we won best toy archive (with 73% of the vote!! )
The only result that is odd (Chris also touched on this) is winning best ep guide as it’s not complete! Though I guess it was judged on work so far (which is excellent!)
Well done everyone. I feel we have accomplished what we set out to do all those years ago when 4 guys from He-man.org banded together to take over the Thundercats fandom “mwahhhaahaa!”
Seriously, I feel that we now have a He-man.org type site for Thundercats Infact (forums aside) I think we have surpassed He-man.org in quality of information and content
Looks like the rest of this fandom was nothing but supportive and gracious about our wins this year. At least so far that has been true. Pretty cool of them if you ask me.