After last year's major success, the Traid Top Columinsts returned in 2005!
On September 10th, the Triads came back to 3 sites: TheWrestlingVoice.com, World-Wrestling.net, & the Wrestling Matters message board. Due to techincal difficulties and inactivity, WrestlingNewsWorld.com and WrestleZone.com were not apart of the voting and after a couple of rounds of voting, World-Wrestling.net and Wrestling Matters dropped out of the voting for those very same reasons leaving only TWV for voting this year.
Like last year, the interactive session began with a nomination thread. Each person could nominate up to five different columnists by supplying their name, column series name, and a link to their work. In the end, we received 106 nominations, a 25% increase from last year. Nominated writers were allowed to drop out of the voting if they wished and three writers did indeed drop out leaving the nomination list at 103.
After all nominations were in, people voted on the list. Next to each and every columnists, people voted whether or not that columnist belonged on the list or not. Each "Yes" vote gathered 4 points for that writer; each "Maybe" vote gathered 2 points for that writer; and each "No" vote gathered zero points for that writer. In the end, the list was gathered together, and the top 50 scores were welcomed into the Triad Top 50.
Unlike last year, columnists were not allowed to drop out of the list after the 50 were chosen as last year we had two columnists drop out which ended up in a top 48 list. For the sake of conformity, the Triad list was decided to be a top 50 list this year.
After the list was put together, twelve rounds of in-depth voting followed. For the first round, the whole list was put in alphabetical order. Ten lists of 5 columnists were made and each voter voted on each and every list, otherwise their vote was thrown out. People ranked each columnist in a list of 1 to 5. Each 1st place vote received 10 points, 2nd place received 8, 3rd received 6, 4th received 4, and 5th received 2. After the first round of voting ending, the list was organized by points with the person with the highest votes being first, and the lowest being last.
Starting in round three all the way to the end of the session, slots began to be frozen by intervals of 5. For instance, after round three, slots 46-50 were frozen and were not voted upon anymore. The rest of the list was still voted upon, but the frozen slots remained intact.
Voting went smoothly from September to January with many voters chosing the best of the best in writing today. Unlike last year, no tie-breaker voting rounds were needed so the Triads remained on a weekly schedule until January 21, 2006 when the final list was posted marking the return of the most accurate, in-depth wrestling columnists list on the 'net today.
