Gamingforce Awards 2007 Nominations Rules and Discussion Thread!

Hey kids! It's nominations time for this year's Gamingforce Awards! YAY!

The awards this year are being run slightly differently than they have in previous years, hopefully in a way that will prove successful and popular. In the past the annual awards have had a tendency to be dominated by a small group of posters with those who are more well known winning awards that are perhaps better suited to someone else who doesn't neccessarily make so much noise around the place. In an attempt to bring some of these unsung heroes into the spotlight, we are moving some of the nominations threads into different, hopefully relevant forums in the hope that some different names might be thrown up by the regulars of each forum.

For example, the Most Community Orientated Member Award will now be nominated in Community Commons, the Kindest Member Award in The Quiet Place and the Best FTP Award in My Stuff. There will be an award in most of the busiest forums, tailored to the forum. Anyone is free to nominate in any of the awards of course but by splitting the threads about like this, we're hoping that forum potatoes who might not ever even notice the awards going on will see the nominations threads and suggest some suitable candidates.

As well as the forum specific awards, there remains a central core of awards in their own forum. You'll notice that a few awards from the past have has their focus changed a bit and some have been removed altogether. Whilt there's an argument that more awards is better, we felt that last year, some of the awards didn't get much attention due perhaps to the sheer volume and some had become pretty pointless awards. Where's the pride in winning an award if only 5 people voted after all?

Another change is the dropping of "Named" awards. With a few notable exceptions, the majority of members who have had awards named after them stopped posting here a long time ago and there aren't that many of us left who still post here who interacted with any of them. Dyhalto could put together a hell of a flame but how many of our regular members now could claim to have ever been on the receiving end of one? Those members who had an award named after them and still post here regularly are once again a suitable candidate to be nominated for and win the award they previously named.

So, explanations out of the way, let's have some rules and for those of you who are a bit slow and probably tl;dr'ing already:

HERE'S THE RULES, DON'T MAKE YOURSELF LOOK LIKE A TOOL BY NOT FOLLOWING ANY OF THEM.

1) You may nominate 2 people or events for any one award. You may only nominate 1 if you wish but 2 is definitely the maximum.

2) When nominating you must give a reason for your nominations. Simply dropping a name will not do and your post will be removed.

3) If you have been nominated for an award but do not wish to win it, TOUGH LUCK. Requests to be struck from the nominees lists will be considered but only under extreme circumstances will they be accepted.

4) The number of nominations one person receives will have no bearing on the voting round. In other words, SECONDING PEOPLE'S NOMINATIONS IS ENTIRLY POINTLESS. If you feel you can give a better reason for a nomination than has already been given then feel free to do so but please don't piss and whinge when your post gets deleted. Once the nominations process has ended, each nominations thread will only contain one post for each nomination. This is an attempt to stop people voting on awards they have no real opinion about on the basis of "Member X got loads of nominations so they must be popular and might win and voting for the winning candidate makes me feel part of some special club". There will be discussion threads a-plenty for you to put forward your case for a certain nominee, the nominations thread is not the place to do it.

5) If you want to campaign for certain nominees, feel free to do so but under the standard board rules for advertising and panhandling. In other words, keep it to your avs, sigs and journals and anyone putting stealth links to votes or anything like that will be banned from the voting threads and all their votes discounted.

6) You may self nominate if you so wish but that would be incredibly fucking sad and nobody will vote for you, trust me.

And that's about that really. Go forth, give the awards some thought and try not to nominate on impulse or for the sake of it. Above all, have fun and try not to take it too seriously!

Originally Posted by Shin

There will be an award in most of the busiest forums, tailored to the forum. Anyone is free to nominate in any of the awards of course but by splitting the threads about like this, we're hoping that forum potatoes who might not ever even notice the awards going on will see the nominations threads and suggest some suitable candidates.

Is there a way to link to all the scattered threads in one central place (i.e., this forum)? Otherwise, some of these awards are going to be even more overlooked than in the past. For example, how many people are going to wander into Laughs & Games to find the Funniest Member Award? Most of the funniest members don't even post in that forum.

Originally Posted by nuttyturnip

Is there a way to link to all the scattered threads in one central place (i.e., this forum)? Otherwise, some of these awards are going to be even more overlooked than in the past. For example, how many people are going to wander into Laughs & Games to find the Funniest Member Award? Most of the funniest members don't even post in that forum.

Seconded. Maybe just stick them all into one dedicated forum above all others, so that it's easily spotted.

Ah, I see no problem with it. Most everyone who knows about awards and regularly participates will have no problem going into different sub-forums to place their particular nominations, and Shin's idea for getting new participants is pretty dead-on.

After all, this is supposed to be a community event, right? By doing things this way the awards will gain more exposure and, hopefully, more interest and participation.

Yeah, but I dont feel like playing scavenger hunt trying to find this shit. Its counterintuitive. He could've just made a sticky post in the subforums telling people about the one area where the nominations were being taken.

You can't bitch about a lack of people getting involved in the awards - and then making it more difficult for them to make them. Cold, hard fact - some people are into the idea and others aren't; the ones that are interested are fewer and fewer.

Originally Posted by LeHah

I'm a lazy fuck.

I can't argue with that given the fact you won't see many nominations from me for that very reason. You might even be right about the stickey's, the point is I like that Shin is trying to get more people involved.

It has nothing to do with lazy and everything to do with bad management on Shin's part. Its a nice idea to get more people involved, but telling them they have to work for something when it should be all together is just going to get people frustrated and unmotivated to get involved.

I am dumbfounded. You're talking about a few flicks of the wrist and some quick clicks on the mouse. I don't see how it's work, but I can definitely see some people (myself included) being ridiculously lazy.

Then again, I can also see this quickly spiraling out of control into a petty argument that could easily win, "Biggest circle-jerk of 2007."

Originally Posted by Fresh Frank

You're talking about a few flicks of the wrist and some quick clicks on the mouse.

Well I won't be crying over the Best FTP Server Award since I don't chime in on that one. But as for "Kindest Member"? I do have a thought on that and I shouldn't have to go digging, based on some nonsensical idea that "kindness" belongs in The Emo Barn. You picking up what I'm putting down?

Fuck you guys and your new organization, means I'm going to have to possibly overhaul the wiki section for this shit. Again. ;_;

Glad to see the process is getting started though.

How about a compromise? A list of the threads gets posted in here and where they're located. That way for people looking for specific awards, there's less of a scavenger hunt and the whole intent of "awards go in the forum they belong in" isn't ruined.

The idea that theres even an "awards go in the forum they belong in" idea is foolish to start with. What if the kindest member has never even been to The Emo Barn? Is it still appropriate?

The idea that kindness can be demonstrated in ways other than giving token comfort to emotional basketcases is foolish to begin with. DUH Lehah.

Yay, LeHah is bitching after only a couple of hours, that's got to be a new record right?

The idea behind putting the awards in different forums is precisely so that different people nominate in them and nominate different people. To be honest, I don't want people who don't post in the Sewers nominating for the Sewers award and I don't want people who don't rape the ftps picking the best pirate. To put all the nominations threads in one forum would complete negate the point of having renamed them in the first place.

You don't have to nominate in every category and by making the threads take a couple of clicks to get to, I'm hoping to disuade people from nominating for the sake of it. Every year each nominations thread has Sass, Infernal and Blah listed twenty five times and no disrespect to those guys but a lot of morons here see those names listed everywhere and vote for them, even if they have no opinion on the award.

The voting threads will all be centralised so you can vote on all of them easily enough but the nominations threads are staying where they are, sorry.

Also, forgot to mention in the opening post, nominations will be open for two weeks from today.

I don't see how trying something a little different could hurt anything. I like the idea, and I don't see why it's so god-awful to separate nominations threads. Like Shin said, they'll all be in one place for voting.

If you have a specific person to nominate for a specific award, why not just navigate to that thread in it's appropriate forum and nominate from there?

Originally Posted by Sassafrass

Like Shin said, they'll all be in one place for voting.

So why arent they going to be split up for voting?

Originally Posted by LeHah

So why arent they going to be split up for voting?

Because voting doesn't take a lot of thought. It isn't forum-specific. The nominations are more important to be forum-specific because people know their locals. From there, we can vote for the local nominations.

It's a give and take.

Why do you take such issue with it?? =/

Although I agree that it is a little confusing at first to figure out how the new format is working, I have to admit this is a good attempt to try and get different input from the different sub-forums. Hopefully it works out. If it doesn't, then we can try something else next year.

For me, its too bad I haven't posted much in The Quiet Place, more people may have noticed me. Oh well...

Man... I know that I knew what you guys were doing. I know that I could've put in my two cents about it when it was still in the planning process. I know that it's quite possibly the worst time to stir shit up about it. And I know that to call this counterproductive would be doing my actions a favor... But I'm gonna do it anyway because it's in my nature:

FUCK YOU SHIN. YOU FUCKED IT ALL UP FOR US.

That's right... I said it. You ain't cut out for this son. TAKE A WALK.

I'm gonna go put in my nominations now.