…like Most Pointless Thread, Biggest Trainwreck, funniest post, snappiest comeback, and I’m sure some of you folks can come up with other fine categories.
I suggest we call the awards Dopies.
Perhaps it will improve the quality of our discourse. Or perhaps not. Maybe it will just be fun picking the winners, or maybe those threads will end up as the biggest trainwrecks of all.
Wouldn’t this be a nice little statue for your award shelf?
No. It’s a popularity contest.
Oh, I think in principle at one time there was some merit to the idea. The practice has a long history of board drama and anger, dating back to before I even started on here. IIRC the first one exploded into a long-galloping and braying Drama Llama which led to legal threats and bannings. There was another attempt later on which I believe turned into another round of bickering as it essentially became a contest of “screw anything with fighting ignorance or the Straight Dope, who are the most popular MPSIMS posters.”
It could be done by a dedicated individual or group; I’d hate to see folks just give up without trying at least. But just be aware, few things like this can work with a community like the SDMB. It would be a monumental task to winnow down the categories, nominees, etc. and to keep things balanced which reflect both the Straight Dope and the Board culture. The ability to use polls would at least simplify one part of it.
I believe it was the second (maybe the third) attempt where one poster decided to take it over and organize a set of star-chambers where a small group of posters would sit in judgment of everyone else.
When people started saying “I don’t want to participate–don’t even nominate me” the poster had a semi-melt-down where he told about how his dead brother died after getting a blue ribbon or something (I’m messing up the story) and everyone cheered–there was no bitterness that his dead brother’s winning meant others lost. And how his dead brother would be ashamed ASHAMED of us lowly people for not recognizing the elite here. His DEAD BROTHER! DO YOU UNDERSTAND?!
The big problem is that any of these contests come down to a group of self-appointed “cool kids” deciding who to let into their clique. Can you imagine any posters who’d give a positive award to, say, Carol Stream for funniest comeback or best rebuttal even if s/he deserved it? Human nature being what it is, popular posters and posters who share the philosophy and ideology of the ruling council will get the good awards and I doubt that the mods would allow attack awards (“worst poster”, “most annoying poster”, etc) outside of the pit…if even there*
So…no. Bad idea.
*An “attack award” strikes me as being too close to the verboten “Let’s you and him fight” type post.
It could be fun, but people here would take it too seriously. Of course it would be a popularity contest, but people will take not being popular as a really horrible thing.
This sort of things works best with friends who know that everyone is appreciated.
Then again, even TVTropes can pull off a ForumOfWin without anyone giving a care. People get that it’s just “This is cool, so I wanted you to read it.”
Even amoung friends it doesn’t always work – can we say “Slam Book?” Remember those?
I tried doing factual ones (named PUGAs), but I never really liked the name “PUGA” and couldn’t think of any other name to call them by, so I stopped doing them.
If anyone could think of a better name…I might start them up again.
(Just search topic titles with the word PUGA. It got up to VII or so. They seemed to be sorta well-liked)
Don’t like “Dopeys”?
No awards.
It would cause excessive bad feelings.
Well, I’d hoped that was just a problem with being immature in (junior) high school.
But, yeah, it can still go bad with friends.
Instead of “Dopies”, call them “Dopers” and use this as the prize:
http://hightimes.com/userdata/277/images/277_ogstonerjesus.jpg
Could we make them “virtual”? I have limited space.
[ol]
[li]Why do we NEED post / poster awards?[/li][li]How would we prevent awards from becoming a popularity contest?[/li][li]What will the OP do to guarantee I win a major award?[/li][/ol]
Waitaminute. . .people have award shelves?
You guys say popularity contest like it’s a BAD thing…
Considering that the Fickle Fadboys and Fashionistas of the SDMB would make Charles Mackay himself weep with having to write another 1,000 pages to add to his monumental work, yeah, they are bad.
Yes, I think it can only work if everyone get’s a prize, and the prizes are in silly categories, e.g., “Mostly likely to be confused with a librarian on a TV series about vampires”.
Well, leaving aside the fact that modesty forbids me from accepting the nominations from my loyal and fervent SDMB followers (snort), I’d say that it might be fun, but that in general my experience with this sort of thing is that it leads to train wreckage of epic proportions, so proceed with caution. Most likely what you’ll get is basically a popularity contest in the end, so maybe you should just orient it as a poll for each category, and request that people simply vote and not make comments. As a preliminary, you could have a series of threads where people simply submit names (again, no comments) for the categories, then compile the entire list of names into a polling thread that will run for a set time then post the results.
It will be a ‘who’s popular’ contest, but as another poster said, nothing wrong with that.
I’d suggest that you break things down by forum (pass the proposed list of thread topics by the individual forum mods first to get their approval so they won’t shut them down or move them)…otherwise you won’t get a broad representation of 'dopers who frequent some forums but not others.
Good luck! Hope it works out.
-XT
I remember seeing this once before, possibly before I joined up. I recall one of the categories being “person most likely to use the Dope as their blog” or something.
I don’t remember it getting ugly though.
Just to add an additional thought, you could also do a Most Interesting Thread, Most Informative Thread, Funniest Thread, etc etc by forum as well…get people to post the links for their nominations for each, then compile those into a poll as well and take votes on them too (again, I’d stress, no comments…just votes) and then compile the results into your final award thread.
-XT
