Award Program

Purpose

The Alcazarén Award is designed to recognize outstanding websites in their cultural and informative content. What is most valuable is their content (emphasis in content and not container), but their design should allow for an easy navigation and reading. Also with special consideration toward sites with theme contents similar to this one, related with towns, cities and regions.

The awards are of no cost and given since 2003-02-07.

Awards

There are three award types: Gold, Silver and Bronze. The score obtained in the evaluation will determine the type of award that a winner may obtain (see scoring below).

Only the Bronze type will be awarded in 2003, the other two will become part of the award in subsequent years. The reason being that additional experience is required to further define the criteria or the points quantification (minimum scores for the Gold and Silver awards).

To see samples of the awards and qualifications graphics hit: Graphics.

Qualification Table (Candidate Requirements) (1)

What is required from the websites that apply to the award is that, to be considered candidates and opt to it, as well as to keep it, they must qualify to be candidates, the following is the requirements qualification table:

	1.	The owner or webmaster age must be 18 years or older.
	2.	Does not contain or advertise the following: pornography, violence, astrology, occultism, satanism, racism, paranormal phenomena, discrimination, sects, political propaganda, or any other subject prosecuted by law.
	3.	Does not have links to websites with characteristics mentioned in item 2.
	4.	Does not contain text or graphics indicating that totally or partially the website is under construction nor it has more than 2 commercial banners per inner website window.
	5.	With a minimum of 4 standard or ISO A-4 pages of own content (non-personal, non-commercial and non-link). Part of the content is original.

Evaluation Criteria (2)

Awards requests are welcomed with the exception of those that do not meet the Qualification Table requirements (A-qua). The following criteria are used for the evaluation:

	Positive evaluation:
	Educational and informative content (introductions, summaries, etc.), original and based on investigation. Content related with towns, cities and regions.
	Documented references using links or authors bibliography (include sources).
	Data precision, if it is an approximation say explicitly, if it is variable, be precise in time or in the way it was measured.
	Uniform design in all the website without unjustified background changes. Moderated guestbook and forums.
	Attractive website design, not necessarily impacting. The advertisements, if necessary, should avoid as much as possible to be annoying (if they are, it will be considered negatively).
	Compatible with commonly used browsers latest versions.
	Conformance with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), or similar, recommendations and showing the validations.
	Website that one would like to come back.

	Negative evaluation:
	Content disturbing animated graphics or advertisements if they are not the window focal point, if they are, they should be the only content.
	Background music without a disable button.
	Broken links, images not shown.
	Pop up windows (the ones from free services ISPs are not considered).
	Automatic full screen windows and attention distracting cursor.
	Internal links in a new window.
	Flash, or similar, website introduction without a bypass button. Mouse right button disabled or other abnormal features.

	Comment: A more detailed evaluation criteria grouped in the 4 scoring sections can be seen in: Scoring.

Note that in the preceding table there are several negative evaluations related with details in design, in many websites those details may have been incorporated with some effort involved, so please excuse us for those negative evaluations. Pages with a minimum design are not negatively evaluated, if design is the webmaster main interest, there are other awards that do emphasize on it and are well prepared for that task.

Scoring

Websites are scored taking into account this Award Program purpose and the evaluation criteria if they meet the Qualification Table (A-qua) requirements. The scoring points are distributed in different sections: Design and Presentation (30), Contents (40), Navigation (20) and Theme and First Impression (10). The necessary score to obtain the bronze award is 60 points.

To have a deeper and detailed insight of the above sections and points distribution hit: Scoring.

Award Request

Due to evaluation process limitations, the applicant website language needs to be in spanish, english, portuguese, french or italian.

If the Alcazarén Award applicant website complies with the qualification requirements (A-qua), it's webmaster or owner can request the evaluation following the indications noted at the end of this section.

When an application is received, an e-mail acknowledge is sent back as an application reception confirmation and as a date tag, if the e-mail acknowledge is not received by the applicant within a week, please send again the application.

Within one month the applicant will receive the result of the evaluation. No response will be given to those candidates that don't get an award. The evaluation result is final. An evaluation status feedback can be viewed in the winners subsection. Apart from the winners list, the date of the last evaluated websites is given.

When winning any award, it's required, beyond maintaining the qualification and the quality of the winner website, to post in it the award graphic won.

This Villa de Alcazarén website thanks, in advance, those award winners that, as an option, incorporate a link to www.alcazaren.info in the award graphic, as there is no obligation to do so.

To request the evaluation and to apply for the Alcazarén Award hit: Form.

Re-evaluations

Re-evaluations can be requested after three months of a previous evaluation, this, if the website has undergone significant changes or if the award qualifications and purposes are updated. The re-evaluations will be performed as a new evaluation and it's result invalidates previous ones. It may happen that the intent of the re-evaluation (get a higher valued award) may be reversed and a less scored award be given (cannot keep previous one), or no award at all.

An award holder will remove the award from the website if a request is made to do so, the website will also be suppressed from the winners list. An award deletion may also be initiated by the award holder. If an award is revoked all its related information is destroyed.

Code of Ethics

The Alcazaren Award Program evaluators adhere to a Code of Ethics to ensure fairness to all applicants and to maintain the honor and integrity of applicants, evaluators and awards.

To see in detail the Code of Ethics hit: Ethics.

Privacy Policy

The information received for the evaluation (award request) is used in the evaluation process by the Award Program only, after the evaluation or after a one month period (maximum evaluation limit) it will be destroyed with the exception of: date of reception, website address (URL), website name and country. These four items are maintained for applicants statistical analysis and for the award winners list in this website. No information, or part of it, will be passed or distributed to third parties.

Writing and entering information in the guestbook (not required by this Award Program) is equivalent to writing in public.