It has been brought to my attention that there are some unhappy voices in regards to recent BFA results.

It was brought also to my attention that friends stopped being friends over this issue.

This saddens me greatly.

The current BFA team with Pauline Raina, Joe Downing and unnamed judges is the best team we ever had.

These people are giving free, totally unpaid service to this community by running the vote each month, accepting nominations and judging the forums based on the criteria provided in the guidelines.

In addition to this, they are producing excellent monthly newsletter and help with bringing motivation and good spirit to this community.

I know these people for several years now and have found very few who would match their dedication, professionalism and fairness.

Accusing them of lack of fairness or anything dishonest is beyond my imagination.

If anybody doesn't like results of the BFA forum, consider this if I challenged you and asked to put yourself on the line and do all this for free.

1. Would you spend hours producing newsletter?
2. Would you spend hours ensuring that nominations are made?
3. Would you spend hours to monitor voting and follow-up with members?
4. Would you spend hours compiling result?
5. Would you spend hours chasing people to do the judging?
6. Would you spend hours to compile results of the BFA?


If anyone is ready to criticize the results, then consider that doing all this above for free requires a lot of time and dedication. That this is not just one time job. Current team is doing this over a year now and it looks like they are just warming up with new ideas.

But people who are doing this currently feel like they are being punished for offering free service.

But people who are doing this currently are being accused of lack of fairness, taking bribes and pushing their agenda.

I realize that $200 is good chunk of money, but I can't see that anybody would put their repudiation on the line for it being for years within this community and offering tons of free hours in free service to this community.

Those who didn't win this time, still have an option to win next month when the competition changes.

It is a nonsense to lose friendship over $200 and on top of this just because you believe you are right and then can be as many other people telling you otherwise.

Even if there is group of people who think you are right, there is exact group of people who doesn't agree with you.

Judging in this setting will be always controversial, particularly because everybody looks at things from their own prospective.

Popular vote is 1/5 contributor to the final mark and not agreeing with judges because person with popular vote didn't win is lack of understanding of principles of this award.


Continuing attack against BFA team in public and private manners creates disappointment and possibly opens doors to future leaning to results popular votes suggest just to avoid criticism and unhappy people around.

This is exactly opposite to what we wished.


I'm calling everybody to return to their business and respectful treatment of those who are offering service free of charge to this community.

If this people go away now, we might terminate the BFA entirely because I don't believe I can find better team that we have now.

Team any less than this one, would be subjected to even more criticism.

Bogdan Fiedur