Nominations open for the 2015 Trippies, Hurry up and Nominate "The D"

** Warning, this is kinda a personal rant post about the Trippies ****

Well another year has come and gone, and the 2015 Trippies Nomination forms are up at the slowly dying VegasTripping.com website.
For those unfamiliar, The Trippies used to be a relevant Las Vegas online reader poll for VegasTripping.com, where visitors to Las Vegas would nominate
hotels, places, shows, and vegas personalities in various categories. It used to be a very creditable source of opinion on Vegas and contrast to las vegas review journal best of las vegas awards.

It has IMHO in the last few years become an online homage to Derek Stevens and "The D" in various categories due IMHO to the close relationship VT authors and visitors to VIMP have with the The D.

While I respect and appreciate the efforts Chuck and the team at VT have put into it the survey in the past, I sure hope the nomination and voting improves this year. There were obviously biased selections last year
that made the survey appear pretty bs and non objective. I for one am abstaining this year. However if your interested in nominating you can follow the link here:

http://www.vegastripping.com/trippies2015/nominations.php

 

I know what you mean about last year, but I don't think it has anything to do with the Vegas Tripping guys.

Instead its like how every year the question comes up here "Why didn't Vegas Message Board win for best community?" and thats if this board even gets nominated at all - there is no active campaigning here, like your post is more a rant about The Trippies, but it is the first one on this site that even mentions nominations are open.

Going back a few years the members on Las Vegas Advisor used to push The Trippies pretty hard and the group as a whole were big fans of Steve Wynn so each year Steve Wynn, Wynn and Encore would win pretty much everything because thats where the votes were coming from.

Last year the biggest pushers for The Trippies was the Five Hundy by Midnight podcast and being that they are huge fans of The D and Derek Stevens many of their podcast listeners, Facebook followers and VIMFP attendees all stuffed the ballot box for The D - and it wasn't in a malicious or trying to rig the results kind of way, but instead they were just plugging the voting process over and over again and since they are huge fans of The D and Derek Stevens their fans voted that way.

And thats just how any kind of voting and polling like that goes: if you get one group with a strong bias really campaigning for a voter turnout then the results will reflect that. The only way for The Trippies to really become relevant again is if they can get a turnout of voters from all the different Las Vegas message boards, forums and social media groups to participate.

 

I kinda disagree in the fact that the VT guys set the rules and have some influence over the process. There has to be some objectivity or at least a warning of full disclosure in their relationship with Derek Stevens (eg Vegas Tripping received free blah blah blah, etc). Lest we forget the Trippies status has been used as marketing material by various Las Vegas entities.

For example lets say me and a shit ton of people decided to name Motel 6 as the Best Hotel Rooms in Las Vegas. One should know that a hotel room rated by multiple other outlets as two star should not be allowed in the same category as a 5 Star resort. It would be much more equitable to nominate based on other categories. Things like service, friendliness, gaming which are more subjective and can't be measured by photos, but by individual personal experience I would expect to complete against all other properties.

 

How can you take it seriously when O'Shea's is a nominee in the hotel category?

 

The whole point of a nominating phase is to avoid the type of things you are talking about it.

 

Yeah, but we still ended up with F'in 'The D' in multiple categories last year...

Hotel
Rooms
Service
Value
Downtown
Steakhouse
Best Restaurant
Bar
Casino

I mean it was f@cking sickening.

 

Well, when you know your best, not much point in trying to convince the world. I like FHBM fan page on facebook, but totally think some other sites / pages are outpacing them.
On my short list is always this site, VitalVegas, and VegasChatter.

 

For me thats how I got here: I was pretty active on a few other boards and then when VMB won that one year I was like "I had never heard of them before" and came to check it out and been here since

 

I don't really blame the VT guys. I actually still like looking at the editors choice picks as I do think they are a little more unbiased than average people.

I think the problem is that it simply doesn't get enough traffic or that the 5Hundy crown is simply too big. People vote for what they do and like. How many people on this board even stay at more than 2 hotels every year? How many even go to a steakhouse let alone go to more than 1 on a trip?



The one thing that did surprise me over the last few years is that while the D got a huge jump due to hosting VIMFP. Ballys seemed to get none of that when it was there. I'd be curious to know if that was simply because everyone had formed opinons on Ballys before that trip and The D was relatively new and unknown.


Either way, I doubt I'll care about the trippies this year ago. In years past there were always a few I questioned as to why they got on the list, but last year was just too much. When I question 5-10 of the results, the rest need to be put in question too. At that point, getting any sort of value(like suggestions on where to go) out of a poll like this is impossible.

 

Yea, last year was a little ridiculous! But, the sampling is a very specific group of people.. that's to be expected.

It's also hard to rate everything, when we haven't stayed everywhere and tried everything.

 

Are the Trippies any different than the yearly "Best Of" your local newspapers run. We all know those are done solely for advertising revenue.
At least Vegas Tripping isn't whoring itself for the same purpose.
Sure, they're biased, but give the guys at VT credit for putting this together. It does create some sort of interest and I think that is what their main purpose is.

 

The results don't match my perceptions, but I don't think there is any intention to skew, and if nothing else maybe it puts a little pressure on operators with better resources and assets to at least match The D and Golden Gate customer service mentality, which I find to be exemplary, I do laugh every year when VMB isn't best online community, which it clearly is by far.

 

Hey Chef, you are right on. My OP was more a commentary on the track that it has taken. Perhaps purely by readership, I don't know exactly. It just comes off as Pandering to
Derek Stevens. Like I said at least they should put a disclaimer up on the relationship. I think Jeff Simpson (RIP) was a really central voice there, and when he passed you could see
some changes to the content / tone of the site.

I followed the VT board for years, and the content by Chuck and team was really great, humorous, and informative. I really used to look forward to the Trippies, like the board's content decline
the last two years Trippies surveys were really way off the past two years. I mean some of the categories "The D" was nominated in were plain bordering on ridiculous. Its like nominating the Wynn
as the best budget resort on the strip, or Krystals at the best Vegas Restaurant. BTW I really appreciate everything the was over the years, I mean alot of Vegas boards / sites
have just gone by the wayside...VegasRex, CheapoVegas, VegasTodayandTommorow, etc It just feels like an advertisement board for VIMP now. The trippies is on it's way
become non-relevant and they need to tweak the survey rules a bit.

We know even here at VMB some efforts have been made to update things, although I'm ready for the green to go away.

 

From the I think ChuckMonster maybe lurking here files...

TFG!!!! Some adjustment to the horrific events of last years trippies!

A statement on the VegasTripping website says they have amended the rules for this years voting. Finally a limit the ballot box stuffing...
And I quote

"And now the business part. In response to anomalies in last year's vote we have decided to adjust requirements for participation. Previously, we allowed non-VT reader guests to vote in the final awards as long as they provided an email address, which was then validated. This year, we have limited voting to registered and active readers of VegasTripping. You must have a VT account and you must have posted a comment within the last year."

Maybe things are turning around....:banana::banana:

 

An interesting change of policy, which I think rules me out as I'm sure I've only ever posted once or twice to their forum and certainly not in the past year.