For the past 15 years, people have asked me if we were going to do some kind of “best of” reader contest. My typical response was, “Yes, someday, when we can do it right.”

I have witnessed many reader contests over the years. Every newspaper I worked for did one. But there were always things about those contests that bugged me. Too many of them were prone to manipulation, such as ballot box stuffing. You don’t really get an accurate picture of what your readers like if you allow people to vote more than once. 

Sometimes contests allowed people to vote once a day over a period of time. This isn’t done to achieve any kind of accuracy, but instead is designed to create web traffic. 

So with our Carson Now’s Local Favorites, we try to limit people to voting one time only. One person, one vote. We know there will be some who try to get around this restriction, but we will do our best to weed out the extra votes. 

Another area we wanted to correct is the nomination process. We want all nominated entries to be presented to the voters, not just the few top choices. Unless all nominees are given an equal chance, then you don’t have a fair contest. 

We hope this will give us the most accurate results that represent the opinions of all of our readers. 

Our first version of Local Favorites focuses on Carson City, and will limit nominations to this area. For this, we are defining Carson City by the official boundary lines, with one exception for the Topsy Lane area. Many of the businesses here have Carson City addresses, even though they are in Douglas County, so it seems better to include them. 

We plan to do the next contest for Carson Valley in April, followed by the Dayton area, and Lake Tahoe. 

Nominations for the Carson City Local Favorites contest begin Feb. 21, and will stay open through Feb. 28. Voting will begin on March 7, and will run for two weeks. 

This is our first try at this sort of contest, and I’m sure we will see things along the way that could be improved. If you spot something out of place, or you have ideas on how to make the contest better, please email me at: kc@carsonnow.org. 

In the meantime, have fun with the contest and thanks for participating.

— Kirk Caraway is owner and publisher of CarsonNow.org.