Welcome to the Deskthority Awards 2015!

[webwit]

Welcome to this year's Deskthority Awards!
During this event, the members of deskthority vote for the best in a number of input device related categories, and for a main award, the Deskthority Award, which is an open category for what was extra special in 2015. Additionally, as this is the fifth edition, this year features the Deskthority Lifetime Award. Award winners will get a special Clack Factory Wingnut Trophkey. By voting you can win various prizes provided by our sponsors.

The complete list of categories is:

Best commercial keyboard • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best commercial alternative or other input device • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best vintage keyboard • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best input device project • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best input device innovation • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best keycaps • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best keyboard switch • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best keyboard company or brand • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best relic or discovery • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best input device photo • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
The *Ping* Award • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
Best deskthority contributor • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
The Deskthority Award • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results
The Deskthority Lifetime Award • Go to Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, Results

Timetable
Like in previous years, there are three rounds.

First round (27 Nov - 2 Dec)
In this round you can suggest nominees for each category. All suggestions will make it to round 2.

Second round (3 Dec - 8 Dec)
Vote for the suggested nominees from round 1 so that the top 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 (9 Dec - 14 Dec)
The finals. Vote for the winners in each category out of the top nominees from round 2.

Vote & win
Voters in the final round 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 14 December 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:
The Keyboard Company, Cooler Master, Matias, 7bit, Input Club and FalbaTech.

The Award winners
The winners will be announced shortly after the vote closes on Monday 14 December 20:00hrs UTC by our special guest star, The Keyboard Oracle. The winner of the *Ping* Award will be announced by our guest star The Demongolator.

When a category winner is a deskthority member (except for the *Ping* Award), he or she 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 ever getting one of these keycaps. The winners of the main awards, The Deskthority Award and (this year) the Deskthority Lifetime Award, will get a golden Wingnut. If a winner is not a deskthority member, this winner won't actively be tracked down and contacted so a Wingnut can be shipped - however, the Wingnut may be claimed until Juli 1st 2016 by contacting webwit at deskthority.

Spoiler:

The DTA Clack Factory Wingnut Trophkeys, waiting to be shipped to the winners, and commanded by the golden Wingnut for the main award.

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.

[webwit]

One more day to suggest nominees
Round 1 will end in one day. Please consider the following ordered list and try to give some love to categories with a small number of nominations:

Award                                                    Nominations

Best commercial keyboard 2015                             5
Best keyboard company or brand 2015                       5
The *Ping* Award 2015                                     6
Best deskthority contributor 2015                         6
The Deskthority Award 2015                                6
Best commercial alternative or other input device 2015    7
Best input device project 2015                            7
Best vintage keyboard 2015                                8
Best input device innovation 2015                         9
Best keycaps 2015                                         9
Best keyboard switch 2015                                11
The Deskthority Lifetime Award                           21
Best input device photo 2015                             29
Best relic or discovery 2015                             32

Want to help and need inspiration? Browse through the last year of subforums related to the categories you want to add nominees for. Or check the top topics last year.

[Muirium]

Not a bad spread of nominations so far, actually. Although about 20 of the best input photo nominations were my own doing, and about half of those are all Madhias! Let's give him some competition…

[webwit]

Round 2 has started
You can now vote on the suggestions from round 1 in round 2, Vote for nominees. The vote closes in 6 days.

Help needed for Round 3
In the next six days, I need to prepare nomination posts for a total of 64 nominees for the final round. Check here how it looked like last year. Or, for an example:

Spoiler:

IBM industrial Space Saving Keyboard
The IBM Space Saving keyboard is an 84/85 key Model M keyboard. The iconic design of the standard version is only topped by the rare industrial version of the same board.


Nom nom nom nom nom nom nom.

So the format is [title][short description with links][photo][photo legend, links optional].

Even if I only take 5 minutes per entry to research, collect links, find a good photo, and think of a nice text, it still takes me almost 5.5 hours. Or 11 hours for 10 minutes. All entries need some love. Want to help prepare some nominee entries? If you can take 5 or 10 out of my hands, it would be much help to me. In 1 or 2 days, most final nominees will be clear, as the bulk of the votes will be cast in the first days. So we can prepare most entries a couple of days in advance. If you have over 50 posts on this forum and want to help, please send me a PM.

[Muirium]

You know I'm good for a fair few of them.

[webwit]

Great! I also know you might have been busy with other things... (contributions, preparations for vacation maybe...)

[Muirium]

Yeah, but these are quickies. The real work is writing up good blurbs for the final round.

Whoops. Just been picking through the best photos nominations. Feels like several rounds to go there! Anyway, I'll do what I can. Gimme the stuff you know I know already!

[webwit]

Round 2 has closed, thank you for voting! The final round will start within an hour...

[Chyros]

How do you know who has voted?

[chzel]

He is root.
He is duck.
He knows.
Everything.

[webwit]

The final round has started!
The nominees have been decided. You can now vote on your winners in round 3, Final vote. The vote closes in 6 days.

[Chyros]

He is root.
He is duck.
He knows.
Everything.

Damn, I didn't know phpBB allowed you to see who voted what in polls Oo .

[E3E]

Being shy about really diving into the DT forums, I had no idea there were annual award systems (didn't even know there were tabs to cycle through the different sections). I love it! The writing is so catchy and humorous at times while driving the point home for all the nominees. I loved reading about every entrant in each category.

When you say that every nominee need some love, you aren't kidding. There's genuine enthusiasm for every single one!

[7bit]

Am I the only one who can't see the votes anymore?

[Muirium]

No. Same here. And I'm glad we can't, honestly. The temptation to meddle was strong!

[webwit]

For the last days, these are now hidden for everybody, including admin.

[chzel]

^^Webwit, The Leveller.^^

[webwit]

You can now test drive the wheel of fortune for the voter prizes which will be drawn later by The Keyboard Oracle:
http://deskthority.net/giveaway4xL93m.php
It will show different results on each reload.

Sponsors and admin have been excluded from the draws, and you can only win one prize.

Source:

Code: Select all

<?php
/**
 * Draw winners for the Deskhority Awards 2015 Voter Prizes
 */

define('IN_PHPBB', true);
$phpbb_root_path = (defined('PHPBB_ROOT_PATH')) ? PHPBB_ROOT_PATH : './';
$phpEx = substr(strrchr(__FILE__, '.'), 1);
include($phpbb_root_path . 'common.' . $phpEx);

// User ids of admin, sponsors and award ceremony guest stars to be excluded from
// draws
$sponsors_and_guests = '2,55,71,78,55,394,1672,1924,2025,3533,3838,4905,6835';

// Store winners so that can only win one prize
$winners = array();

// Draw winners of <title> for polls <poll ids> with optionally <number> of
// prizes (defaults to 1).

draw_winner(
    'Store credit of £100 from the Keyboard Company',
    '12296,12308'
);

draw_winner(
    'Quick Fire Rapid SI and RGB mouse from Cooler Master',
    '12301,12305,12309',
    2
);

draw_winner(
    'Ergo Pro or a Secure Pro keyboard from Matias',
    '12304,12307'
);

draw_winner(
    'Hyper PCB, switches, Teensy and more from 7bit',
    '12298,12303'
);

draw_winner(
    'Assembled Infinity 60% keyboard from Input Club',
    '12297,12299'
);

draw_winner(
    'ErgoDox PVC and carry cases from FalbaTech',
    '12300,12302',
    3
);

/**
 * Gets contestants from db, shuffles them five times, picks random winner(s)
 *
 * Winners are drawn from voters in the given topics, excluding sponsors and
 * previously drawn winners.
 *
 * @param string $title Title of prize(s)
 * @param string $topic_ids Comma separated list of poll topics
 * @param int $nr_of_winners The numbers of winners to draw, 1 by default
 */
function draw_winner($title, $topic_ids, $nr_of_winners = 1)
{
    global $db, $sponsors_and_guests, $winners;

    // Gets all unique voters in the right topics with at least 10 posts,
    // except sponsors, earlier selected winners, admin and award ceremony
    // guest stars:
    $sql = "
        SELECT
            distinct(b.username)
        FROM
            phpbb_poll_votes a
        LEFT JOIN
            phpbb_users b
        ON
            a.vote_user_id = b.user_id
        WHERE
            a.topic_id IN ($topic_ids)
        " . ($sponsors_and_guests ? " AND b.user_id NOT IN ($sponsors_and_guests)" : '') . "
        " . ($winners ? " AND b.username NOT IN ('" . implode("','", $winners) . "')" : '') . "
        AND
            b.user_posts >= 10
        ";


    $result = $db->sql_query($sql);

    $contestants = array();
    while ($row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result)) {
        $contestants[] = $row['username'];
    }

    $drawn = 0;
    while ($drawn < $nr_of_winners) {
        $drawn++;
        echo "<b>Deskthority Awards 2015 - $title Prize Winner"
            . ($nr_of_winners < 2 ? '' : ' ' . $drawn)
            . "!</b><br />\n<br />\n";

        show_contestants(count($contestants) . ' entries: ', $contestants);

        for ($i = 5; $i--; ) {
            shuffle($contestants);
            show_contestants("<br />\nShuffling... ", $contestants);
        }

        $winner = mt_rand(0, count($contestants) - 1);

        echo "<br />\nDrawing random winner: <b>" . $contestants[$winner]
            . "</b><br />\n<br />\nCongratulations!<br /><br /><br />\n";

        $winners[] = $db->sql_escape($contestants[$winner]);
        unset($contestants[$winner]);
    }
    echo "<hr /><br /><br />\n";
}

function show_contestants($title, &$contestants)
{
    echo $title . implode(', ', $contestants) . "<br />\n";
}
?>

[scottc]

Why have I been omitted? Because I paid for DT club membership? That doesn't seem right to me...

[Compgeke]

Seems I'm not there either.

[Nuum]

I'm not in either!

[webwit]

Probably a bug, let me check it some more.

[Halvar]

I see a lot of duplicates in each shuffle, too, e.g. KRKS in the screenshot above.

>> b.group_id <= 4 ?
-> Club members have ID 11 I think. donation 9. Is everyone in one group only?

[webwit]

Try again. Group_id <= 4 used to be admin only, but that changed last year.

[scottc]

Alright, I'm on there now along with ramnes who I used for testing earlier since I know he's a club member. Cheers!

[Halvar]

Nice, looks good!

[7bit]

I'm still not in the list, please re-write the script!

[webwit]

You're the most excluded, both for being admin and for being a sponsor.

[photekq]

Yeah, I'm only showing up under Keyboard Co and Coolermaster..

[7bit]

You're the most excluded, both for being admin and for being a sponsor.