About UWSAG and Our Programs

An Introduction to the awards community

The staff of UWSAG would like to thank you for visiting us. We appreciate your time and would like to make you feel welcome and at ease while browsing through our site. We understand that this might be your first time visiting us so we want to take this time to familiarize you with the awards community.
A brief history of web site awards and their purpose is to recognize and reward merit in overall web site construction including: layout, content, and design, while building web site promotion.  As you browse various web sites, you will notice wide range of skill in design, presentation, and reputation. If you are just beginning as a new web site, you often consider how well you are doing and wonder where you can receive constructive assistance.
The awards community is a good source for site development and providing valuable feedback that can help you refine your web site and improve overall presentation. In general this community is a collection of skilled designers, writers, and business people who are willing to offer their advice or talents freely.

The benefits of applying for an award can offer you a sense of accomplishment, recognition, and link promotion. Throughout the awards community, you will notice that awards are issued in three basic groups. Some owners choose to offer only one level award with it being the highest honor, however more difficult to earn in most cases. The other two can be classified as 'Tiered Programs'. A three tier program will generally issue Gold or an equivalent award of excellence, Silver, and Bronze, with the additional award being Merit that forms the four tiered program.
At UWSAG and other select award indices, we provide a rating level for each award program and have organized them in an easy to browse Halls of Awards. The introductory level begins as Alpha rated member and then increases from level 1 to our highest rating of level 6. You will notice that with the increase in level rating, the criteria, guidelines, and quality of the award program also increases. If you are just beginning to apply for a web site award, you might want to begin at the lower end of the spectrum and work your way up as you gain experience to improve your efforts.
We hope this summary of the awards structure and what the ratings and award levels mean, helps, as you consider applying for awards or starting your own awards program.

Welcome to UWSAG

If this is your first time visiting UWSAG, you can easily find your way around by using our menu to the left.  Our rating levels section provides the specific scoring system that we use to honor award programs beginning with a level Alpha rating up to a level 6 rating.  The criteria section provides a detailed set of guidelines in each level that we use for our rating service.  We offer a self test to help you prepare and of course an area to request a rating review.
You will find that we offer a very attractive badge for our members and a detailed individual listing for each award program in our Halls.  Along with offering an award program rating service, we provide a membership listing for any web site that is actively seeking awards from our rated members.

Who we are

The UWSAG Board is comprised of a minimum panel of 4 members.  Currently we have 3 Board Members and 5 evaluators.  UWSAG is owned by Earl Machen our General Manager.  We all as board members have various skills and strengths that we feel unify us as a Team.  We maintain close working relationship and our focus is on ways to improve our efforts as an indice and to set a standard for our members that helps them to achieve their highest potential.
UWSAG does expect more from our members and we don't think we would be providing a just service if we had it any other way. We have an open door policy about asking for help through our contact section and also openly in the UWSAG Forum.  Because we take our rating seriously, it is not given out lightly.  We expect you to do your part and we will do our part by giving you an honest review based on our openly available score sheet and criteria.  With each evaluation, you have the opportunity for advancement but we will also expect you to seek improvement by adhering to our set criteria and point system.  Without enforcing our criteria, we would have failed in our mission.
An UWSAG rating is not a 'time served' honor, it is a reward issued on increasing merit while adhering to our set guidelines.

What we do

UWSAG is based on the concept that both award giver and award seeker should work together to improve their efforts by providing, and expecting a higher standards in workmanship as well as common courtesy.  To achieve this requires hard work on both accounts.  UWSAG has spent many hours refining our criteria to be an example of quality and provide the framework to assemble a productive award program.
Our aim is to offer simple, concise, and manageable standards when designing an award program.  We feel, through our collective experience, that the guidelines we offer will provide you with the right path to excel in your efforts.

As an award seeker, UWSAG has a true desire to help bridge the gap between the award program and to give you quality advice, instruction, and recognition from the award programs that are listed with UWSAG.  While we cannot insist on how an award program should operate, we do reward and acknowledge any award program that goes the extra mile to assist its applicants.
We have recently provided in our Hall of awards a new icon directory to help you easily identify award programs that aspire to help their applicants through feedback or are consistently recognized as a select award program.

Our programs

The Incentive Programs are meant for both sides of the award giving process, the award seeker "Seal of Approval Nominee", and the award giver. Our Award Givers are targeted towards building integrity and commitment to respecting the award seeker. We believe that as an awards program owner, you should be considerate of those who apply for your award and treat them with courtesy. Any award program that is rated above level 4.0 by UWSAG is required to participate in the SOA program. This is something you should consider before requesting a rating with UWSAG. We established this program to offer an additional incentive hat recognizes award applicants who consistently respect the award program owner by following their criteria and set guidelines when they submit an application for review.
By following instructions as provided by any rated UWSAG award program, the award seeker is given a special token of appreciation by UWSAG when the rated member submits a vote for you as a member of UWSAG SOA Incentive Program. All you have to do is register as a Award Seeker member, apply to UWSAG rated programs, and adhere to their set criteria as an applicant. If you would like to learn more about these programs, please visit each section for more details.

UWSAG wants to make your experience here a pleasant one and we encourage you to take a look around.  Feel free to contact us with any questions you might have.  We invite you to visit our Resources and take advantage of the many resources we have listed for you.

On behalf of UWSAG, we thank you for visiting us and hope to be of service in some way.

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