Deskthority Awards 2015 - Request for Comments

[Muirium]

Best vintage find

Although snuci would win that easily.

HaaTa traditionally opens the doors on the best new finds of his collection, right around the cutoff date for the DTAs. This year, it'll be a lively contest!

[bhtooefr]

Relic or Discovery includes vintage find. Good catch on review, and I like project. So, revised list of my suggestions:

Best New Keyboard
Best Keyboard Innovation
Best Keyboard Switch
Best Keycaps
Best Pointing Device (should this be new, or in general? It should definitely include regular mice IMO)
Best Input Device Project
Best Relic or Discovery
Best Company or Brand
Best Input Device Photo
Best Input Device Review
Best Deskthority Contributor
Deskthority Award
*Ping* Award

[Muirium]

Best Input Device Innovation would give new pointing devices a chance, along with the keyboards. So that, for instance, I could nominate the new Magic Trackpad and get booed off stage…

The health of any given award lies in how many nominations it can score. As we have seen! Photos was huge in 2014. Fullsize keyboard was tumbleweed.

[webwit]

Since this is the fifth edition, what about a special once-every-five-years super-duper lifetime achievement award?

[webwit]

Best review: I don't know. Did you ever hear about the Best Book Review or Best Movie Review? No. It's Best Book or Best Movie.

[002]

Maybe we could start doing reviews of the reviews?

[Muirium]

I'd prefer that to Like buttons.


@Webwit. You want kicked off the committee, buster?

[andrewjoy]

Best Input Device Innovation would give new pointing devices a chance, along with the keyboards. So that, for instance, I could nominate the new Magic Trackpad and get booed off stage…

And i can nominate the new magic mouse for a ping award

[Muirium]

Of course. And it will win.

[bhtooefr]

No, Deskthority gets the ping award, I thought we all agreed on that?

[webwit]

Disqualified. Deskthority cannot win its own awards.

[bhtooefr]

What about naming Deskthority's userbase?

[matt3o]

I tell this every year, but in my opinion this should be held every other year, not annually. There are not that many news in the mech world and after all we are not a huge community.

[Muirium]

Not even the photo award?

I get your point, though. I think it's best handled by a smaller number of tightly focussed prizes. No need to hand out an uncompetitive award every year, or ever. How about a minimum number of nominations required to run a given prize that year?

[Muirium]

No, Deskthority gets the ping award, I thought we all agreed on that?

A year is a long, long time ago. Was this about last year's best new fullsize keyboard award? The problem there was lack of good new fullsize keyboards!

[seebart]

How about a minimum number of nominations required to run a given prize that year?

Makes sense, but how many? Or based on the number of entries?

[Muirium]

Hmm… having a look at last year's nominations, my cunning cutoff wouldn't work. The notorious Best Fullsize Keyboard 2014 contest — basically the test case for "award we don't want to go that way again!" — actually picked up 8 nominees:

http://deskthority.net/call-nominees-f8 ... t9192.html

The trouble wasn't the number, but the quality. People nominated total junk! And I don't mean the Colonel's keyboard, which won fair and square… (well, almost, the Ducky Shine 4 was okay but not strong enough to fend off that ignominious fate.)

If only Topre had a new fullsize model out that year. Would have been a whole different contest. Give us fanboys something to rally around, and it is done!

[seebart]

Enforcing any kind of quality standart for entries is going to be difficult. We all know there are a lot of lousy and mediocre mechs out there that can qualify as an entry. How are we going to tell someone not to enter their MX Board 6.0?

[Muirium]

Well, I'm not entering mine! I still need to fix the damage I did to it trying to mod the switches…

Joking aside, the key is to have a few really competitive awards. I don't think Matteo's idea is the right way to go about that. Best fullsize of 2013/2014 could still have been won by a fast food joke keyboard! It's a weak category. Kill it.

I think Matteo's in the unusual position of being the community's automatic top pick for an award, himself. We need to rig, uh, I mean "optimise" the categories so his various projects don't put him in pole position as much. Fortunately, HaaTa isn't nearly as shy about filling up a whole keyboard with Wingnuts — you know what his bombardment is like when he lets a whole year's finds hit the Photo section all at once! — and we can keep the Archaeology prize exactly as it has always been. With the added lucky bonus that HaaTa has some real competition on his hands this year from someone just as serious.

[seebart]

I don't like the idea of killing categories. Best fullsize is a rudimentary category. So what if the market is filled with RGB unicorn vomit. Still mechs.

[Muirium]

I wonder if McDonalds or Burger King made a joke keyboard since the last DTAs. There's a Wingnut with their name on it!

We already fixed the Best Fullsize problem with the simple redefinition of the size classes. TKLs add a lot more competition to that contest. And there's plenty of fight amongst the smaller boards anyway.

Mind, I'm also in favour of merging the classes into a much more clearly prestigious award: Best New Keyboard.

[mr_a500]

We can just merge them all into ONE award: Best Keyboard/Keycap/Photo/Contributor/Project/Relic/and/or/Ping.

That way webwit would only need to hand out one wingnut a year.

[seebart]

We can just merge them all into ONE award: Best Keyboard/Keycap/Photo/Contributor/Project/Relic/and/or/Ping.

That way webwit would only need to hand out one wingnut a year.

No no that's too extreme. Categories are good, but not too many.

[Muirium]

No kidding, I think we could make things good and fierce with, say 5 or 6 categories instead of 10+.

Best Switch is bullshit. Best Brand, even more bullshit. And things like innovation can be applied across hardware categories to spice it up.

How about:

Commercial Awards

Best New Keyboard
Best Input Device Innovation

Community Awards

Best Project
Best Contributor
Best Relic
Best Photo
Best Review

And for everything else: The golden Wingnut.

Looking at them that way, I see the point about review and photo seeming a bit much. But! I bet both of them get great nominations. Weren't there more photo nominations last year than for EVERY OTHER AWARD combined? It felt like it!

[seebart]

Looking at them that way, I see the point about review and photo seeming a bit much. But! I bet both of them get great nominations. Weren't there more photo nominations last year than for EVERY OTHER AWARD combined? It felt like it!

Overall good, but don't merge review and photo since both are very srtong categories themselfs, photo being on of the strongest imo.

[Muirium]

Looks like I forgot the ping award. Would I be the only one around here pleased to see it go?

[matt3o]

photo and review don't make much sense to me. let's do best post eventually.

[mr_a500]

For some reason, the Deskthority Awards reminds me of this:

(...and incidentally, when I left my house I noticed I was on film)

[Muirium]

photo and review don't make much sense to me. let's do best post eventually.

That would be HaaTa's second annual award all wrapped up! He posts a lot of pretty decent pictures, of pure unadulterated unobtainium, all in a single post. Beating that? Only Julle's occasional madness threads have a chance!

[seebart]

Right and a proper review is a lot more work than posting the finest pictures.