Welcome to the Deskthority Awards 2016!

[ohaimark]

Welcome to The Deskthority Awards!
During this event, the members of Deskthority vote for the best in a number of input device related categories. They also determine the winner of The Deskthority, a special open category. Award winners will receive an exclusive Clack Factory Wingnut Trophkey. Vote in the final round to win prizes from our sponsors.



Changes to The DTAs:
This year brought sweeping changes to the awards. Previous award leaders passed responsibility to other community members. The result is a writing team. Variations in writing style will be visible in different categories. In addition, categories were updated. We combined a few to streamline the awards and better represent their competitive nature. Finally, new rules were adopted for the Best input device photo category.

Category list:

The Deskthority • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
The *Ping* • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best keycaps • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best keyswitch • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best artisan keycap • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best relic or discovery • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best input device photo • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best "other" input device • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best project or innovation • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best vintage keyboard or cache • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3
Best modern keyboard or company • Go to Round 1 • Round 2 • Round 3

Timetable:
Like in previous years, there are three rounds.

First round (Nov. 20 - 26)
In this round you can suggest nominees for each category. All suggestions will make it to round 2 unless otherwise noted.

Second round (Nov. 27 - Dec. 3)
Vote for suggested nominees from round 1 so that 5 nominees in each category (or the top 4 or top 3 when there aren't a lot of choices) make it to the last stage.

Third round (Dec. 4 - 10)
The finals. Vote for the best in each category.

Vote & win:
Final round voters can win various prizes provided by our sponsors. The winners will be selected randomly from the voters in the third round, and will be announced on Saturday 10 December, 2016 at the end of the awards. You need a minimum of 10 posts on Deskthority before the vote ends to be included. See the sponsor announcements for details:
Cherry, Cooler Master, FalbaTech, Input Club, The Keyboard Company, Massdrop, Pimp My Keyboard / SP, Tesoro, WASD Keyboards

The award winners:
The winners will be announced shortly after the vote closes on Saturday 10 December 20:00hrs UTC.

Category winners (except for The *Ping*) will get a special Deskthority Award Clack Factory Wingnut Trophkey! We commissioned the most famous of keycap artists, clickclack, to design and produce these trophy keycaps for the Awards. DTA winners will be the only people who legitimately receive these keycaps. The Deskthority award winner will get a golden Wingnut; regular award winners will be awarded silver Wingnuts. If a winner is not a Deskthority member, that winner won't actively be tracked down and contacted so a Wingnut can be shipped. The Wingnut may be claimed until Saturday 1 July, 2017 by contacting chzel at Deskthority.

The DTA Clack Factory Wingnut Trophkeys awaiting shipment in formation.

Spoiler:

Important: only one Wingnut is awarded for each winner. If you're a group and win, you have to timeshare, vote, draw, fight or do whatever your group decides, but you'll only get one Wingnut. The reason is that this award is exclusive and expensive, and that the problem of someone possibly missing out isn't solved by raising it to 2 or 3 for a group winning a category - there will always be a bigger group and someone missing out.

The DTA team:
Chzel, matt3o, rimrul, seebart, webwit, and wodan made this event possible. Kudos.

Honorable mentions:
The DTA team cannot win awards, but leaving their accomplishments unrecognized would be unfair.

• matt3o - for the unique keycap sets and keyboards he brings to the masses
• seebart - for all his witty and friendly comments everywhere, even if they seem to be continuously edited
• webwit - for the work he does at DT
• Wodan - for his HADapter GB and recycler-to-member sales

[webwit]

And special thanks to ohaimark for being this edition's kingpin - he put a tremendous amount of work into it!

[ohaimark]

Awww shucks.

[002]

Well done, guys -- and props to all the sponsors
DTA has become part of my end of year wind-down. Hot weather, cold beers and good fun.

[webwit]

Meanwhile, in the Netherlands.

[ohaimark]

Not too different in Michigan. Heh.

[002]

One of the weird things about Christmas here is you will be in the shopping centre and they are playing music about snow and dreaming of a white Christmas and then you step out of the aircon into 40 degrees (celcius) heat and a brick wall of humidity and you basically have to swim through it to get to your car which has become a goddamn oven in the 10 minutes it took you to get your items.

[vivalarevolución]

Wow, seriously good sponsors this time around. I might have to participate for the first time in years....

[ohaimark]

I know. We have a great turnout in terms of sponsors. Cherry was, perhaps, the most shocking to me.

[e_l_tang]

How does one vote, and it is possible to vote in more than one category?

[002]

The votes come later when the nomination period is over. And yes, when voting opens you can vote in more than one category. You could vote in every category if you want.

[emdude]

The vintage banners are great! Looking forward to voting.

[seebart]

The vintage banners are great!

ohaimark did a great job, quite a bit of work involved believe me!

[ohaimark]

The vintage banners are great! Looking forward to voting.

Thank you for noticing. The graphic design this year has really been a labor of love for me.

I don't think vintage banners will be possible again for another ~10 years, as hi-res scans of vintage computing photos and ads are very scarce on the internet. Especially ones that work as banners.

[lot_lizard]

The vintage banners are great!

ohaimark did a great job, quite a bit of work involved believe me!

Couldn't agree more. The work involved to dig all of the material up, get the sponsors together, and orchestrate it all. Very impressive community effort all the way around.

One suggestion for a category next year (apologize if this has already been done), but to keep it fresh like the new artisan cap category does... we have the "Best Desktop" like our "Post your Desktop" thread.

[ohaimark]

If I run the awards again next year (which I'd be more than happy to do) I'd consider it.

It's difficult to keep the number of categories in the DTAs down to something reasonable. I think the ones we have this year are a good baseline.

Perhaps having one rotating category suggested/voted for by DT members on a yearly basis could be a fun way to mix things up.

[seebart]

If I run the awards again next year (which I'd be more than happy to do)

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[PollandAkuma]

This is like a festival, so exciting!!

[Hydra04]

This is the first time that I participate in this event. It's really nice to see a community award of this type, kudos to you guys!

[cookie]

I must say that ohaimark is doing a damn fine job, props to you!

[ohaimark]

Sorry for the deletion and subsequent repost. Had to fix a few things. Further edits may occur if DTA team members point out something idiotic.

Davkol brought a point to my attention. In the following categories, a rule that our team has been following will explicitly apply:

Best modern keyboard or company
Best artisan keycap (limited to keycaps created this year; different colorways make old designs qualify)
The *Ping*
Best "other" input device (limited to devices created this year)
Best keycaps (limited to keycap sets created or discovered this year)
The Deskthority

If an entity is nominated for X one year and wins, they cannot win another year with X.
They can, however, be nominated again for X if they don't win and still do X (or produce X, in certain categories) during the current year.
Lastly, they can always be nominated for substantive ∆X (change in X) or a new reason.

The remaining categories have different limitations on nominations:

Best input device photo: may only be nominated once during the year of posting.

Best vintage keyboard or cache: caches may only be nominated once during the year in which they were found, but vintage keyboards may be nominated multiple times until winning.

Best keyswitch: no restrictions.

Best relic or discovery: may only be nominated once during the year in which the relic/discovery was uncovered/made.

Best project or innovation: may be nominated until winning so long as the project/innovation is in production. That means hardware projects which have a single round of production will only be eligible in their production year. Software projects can be nominated until they win, but cannot be nominated after winning unless a completely new feature set is added.

[ohaimark]

In addition, anything that you'd like to recognize DTA team members for should be posted here. I'll add an honorable mentions section at the end of the news post above.

[kbdfr]

In addition, anything that you'd like to recognize DTA team members for should be posted here. I'll add an honorable mentions section at the end of the news post above.

[…]
In alphabetical order:
- seebart, for all his witty and friendly comments everywhere - even if they seem to be continuously edited,
- webwit, for all the work he has been and still is putting into DT (hoping he will excuse me if this is excessively ad hominem)
- Wodan, especially for his GB which has been a real masterpiece - and I don't mean just the caps.

[chuckdee]

matt3o - for the unique keysets and keyboards that he has been an integral part of bringing to the masses.

[ohaimark]

Nominations end today, so if you have things to add now is the time!

[ohaimark]

There was missed deadline and an issue with the Best input device photo category. Webwit is on the job.

It'll be fixed and up again shortly.

[WASD_Greg]

I just voted in a category and expected to be locked out from voting in the same category again after that. However, it seems like I can just resubmit my vote as many times as I want to.

Is that normal? Are all the resubmitted votes counted? That could really screw up the results ...

I going wait a bit before voting in the other categories just in case this is some sort of error in the voting system?

[webwit]

If you recast your vote it will just override your previous vote. I.e. you can change your mind until the end of the vote.

[ohaimark]

You're allowed to change your votes as many times as you want before the polls close. It's a feature, not a bug.

Each time you vote anew it overwrites your previous votes.

webwit ninja'd me.

[WASD_Greg]

Thanks, that's good to know. This had me a bit confused ... Gonna finish voting then.