[daveharty]

I realize I'm a couple of weeks tardy, but anyway...I've often thought there should be some sort of semi-official recognition given to those who are noteworthy in their contributions to the BBO Discussion Forums. In the spirit of the movie/music awards season which is just around the corner, I therefore call for nominations for the 2011 Posty Awards (unless someone thinks of a better name). I suggest the following categories be recognized:

Thread of the Year (to be awarded to whomever initiated the thread)
Individual Post of the Year (could be instructional, funny, whatever)
"Bridge in the Real World" Award (for the BBOF poster with noteworthy bridge accomplishments in the real world)
Newcomer of the Year (to the outstanding poster who made their first post in 2011)
and the big one....Poster of the Year.

What do you think? If there is sufficient interest, I would be happy to sort through nominations and create a poll. Nominations could be posted to this thread, or sent to me privately. The winners would have bragging rights until next year, and would forever be able to precede their name with "Posty Award Winner."

[y66]

Second your proposal.

Recognizing contributors and making it easier for readers to find good threads seem like good ideas to me, especially if someone is volunteering to do the work.

[32519]

You may need to break your awards down further. The Non-Natural System Forum and the Advanced-Expert Forum contain threads/posts that are beyond the understanding (or the interest) of most BI. Create a separate award for these two forums. Nominations can come from the posters in these two forums.
I will cast the first vote here…(drum roll, followed by clashing symbols)…hrothgar

Then create another separate award for the poster who provided the most constructive/helpful advice for the BI. There are plenty of threads seeking help/advice on a wide range of topics. The BI should vote for whoever they believe was the most helpful. This is tougher than you may think. Outstanding advice was received from plenty of (regular) posters. By if you want me to select one…(no offense to the other posters)…then here goes…Zelandakh

[daveharty]

My first thought was to split the "Thread of the Year" and "Post of the Year" into two categories each, "Instructional" and "Non-instructional". Then I thought that five total awards was a nice easy-to-manage number, and that it might be more interesting to let issues like that sort themselves out through the nominations and subsequent voting. If people disagree, I would certainly bow to the will of the majority.

I do think it's impractical to have, say, a different award for each forum category. That being said, I do think that an award along the lines of "Most Helpful Poster in B/I" would be worthy, and if a lot of people agree with you, I would be happy to add such an award.

[TWO4BRIDGE]

32519, on 2012-January-14, 11:06, said:

You may need to break your awards down further. The Non-Natural System Forum and the Advanced-Expert Forum contain threads/posts that are beyond the understanding (or the interest) of most BI. Create a separate award for these two forums. Nominations can come from the posters in these two forums.
I will cast the first vote here…(drum roll, followed by clashing symbols)…hrothgar

Then create another separate award for the poster who provided the most constructive/helpful advice for the BI. There are plenty of threads seeking help/advice on a wide range of topics. The BI should vote for whoever they believe was the most helpful. This is tougher than you may think. Outstanding advice was received from plenty of (regular) posters. By if you want me to select one…(no offense to the other posters)…then here goes…Zelandakh

I ... 2nd the nomination for Zelandakh .

[Free]

I'd like to nominate lurpoa for newbie of the year, euh sorry, newcomer of the year.
For all other categories: Justin I guess.

[barmar]

Justin for the "real world" award.

[JLOGIC]

gnasher for poster of the year

[awm]

I'll nominate rogerclee and jdonn for "real world" award for winning the blue ribbon pairs.

Justin's accomplishments are amazing and obviously better on an absolute scale... but we probably could give it to Justin every year and the clee-donn win was more surprising (to me anyway).

[JLOGIC]

awm, on 2012-January-14, 23:38, said:

I'll nominate rogerclee and jdonn for "real world" award for winning the blue ribbon pairs.

Justin's accomplishments are amazing and obviously better on an absolute scale... but we probably could give it to Justin every year and the clee-donn win was more surprising (to me anyway).

I agree totally with this. My favorite moment of the year was honestly clee and jdonn winning the blue ribbons, and I honestly mean that. It was a great moment for their bridge careers, it was clee's first big success, and jdonns biggest success easily, and they did it together (forum members, friends, basically first time partners), and to me they are two of the really good guys in bridge (ethical, actively ethical, and just nice people). It obv depends how you describe "best results" but they should definitely be in the running. I would like to think their accomplishment would be better than, for instance, fred being 2nd in the vanderbilt, even though freds result would be better in the absolute sense. Not that I am saying I am anywhere as accomplished as fred, but I do like that point.

Frances Hinden should also obv be in the running for this award, she had great results last year. I do not know how the english tournaments compare, but I do know she binked the biggest one in her country, and had at least one more great success.

[JLOGIC]

Does Antrax count as a new member? I think eh joined in 2011 but maybe had an account before. If he does, def nominate him, large volume and not afraid to speak his mind/look stupid/go against the grain, but also not a jerk.

[BunnyGo]

JLOGIC, on 2012-January-15, 00:11, said:

Does Antrax count as a new member? I think eh joined in 2011 but maybe had an account before. If he does, def nominate him, large volume and not afraid to speak his mind/look stupid/go against the grain, but also not a jerk.

Second

[BunnyGo]

I'd nominate Inquiry for the B/I award. He started (and continued) the B/I defensive problems which seemed quite popular.

Clee-jdonn get my vote for off-line success (in a very successful year for lots of posters).

poster of the year I vote for jlogic as I usually learn from (or laugh at) everything he writes.

Need to go back and think about other categories.

[daveharty]

Nominations I have received so far:

Newcomer of the Year: Antrax, Lurpoa
"Real World" Award: JLOGIC, jdonn/rogerclee partnership, FrancesHinden, fred
Thread of the Year: flametree's "Most hopeless/clueless comment?"
Individual Post of the Year: no nominations yet
Most Helpful Poster in B/I: Zelandakh, Inquiry, hrothgar
Poster of the Year: gnasher, JLOGIC, hrothgar

I will take nominations for a few more days and then create a poll. Remember, you aren't voting for a winner at this point, only making nominations; feel free to nominate multiple posters/threads. Ideally I would like at least five nominees for each category, certainly no fewer than three.

I know that the "Thread" and "Individual Post" categories are a little tricky since it requires either a good memory or some diligent searching back through the last year's threads. If I don't get enough nominations for them, I will leave them off for this year; I think it might be a good idea for future years (yeah I'm thinking big) to create a "nomination thread" to which people can easily post possible nominees throughout the year.

[BunnyGo]

daveharty, on 2012-January-15, 09:39, said:

Nominations I have received so far:

Newcomer of the Year: Antrax, Lurpoa
"Real World" Award: JLOGIC, jdonn/rogerclee partnership, FrancesHinden, fred
Thread of the Year: flametree's "Most hopeless/clueless comment?"
Individual Post of the Year: no nominations yet
Most Helpful Poster in B/I: Zelandakh, Inquiry, hrothgar
Poster of the Year: gnasher, JLOGIC, hrothgar

I will take nominations for a few more days and then create a poll. Remember, you aren't voting for a winner at this point, only making nominations; feel free to nominate multiple posters/threads. Ideally I would like at least five nominees for each category, certainly no fewer than three.

I know that the "Thread" and "Individual Post" categories are a little tricky since it requires either a good memory or some diligent searching back through the last year's threads. If I don't get enough nominations for them, I will leave them off for this year; I think it might be a good idea for future years (yeah I'm thinking big) to create a "nomination thread" to which people can easily post possible nominees throughout the year.

I wanted to nominate the B/I Defensive problem "series" as "thread of the year" too.

[cherdano]

I nominate Jallerton for "poster-who-should-post-more-of-the-year" award.

[Vampyr]

I am surprised by all the nominations for hrothgar; perhaps no one else has noticed his tendency to call people he disagrees with "you loathesome diseased cunt".

[kgr]

I nominate Mikeh for poster of the year.
(For me it is in fact jlogic, but mikeh certainly deserves a nomination)

[Phil]

Clearing the cobwebs on a Sunday morning, but this something new, right? Before we start into nominations, shouldn't there be categories established? Or is the intent to have categories like the Espies that sometimes change frequently?

If the Posty's are 'of the year', sorry, but JDonn hasn't been active for about 'two'(?) years now, although Clee is clearly eligible. Jlogic gets it for overall live performance. If these Postys are retroactive, then, sure JDonn gets mention. Gnasher + Frances at least get honorable mentions for Gold Cup. I also think there should bementions for lesser events. Didn't MBodell win (maybe 2nd) this year in a 0-1500?

+1 for Antrax for the posting style, but Jillybean also gets the nod here. Without a flood of good hands, even if some of these hands seem WTP?, the forums would die. On a more advanced level, I like MrAce's and Fluffy's threads. They both contribute a lot of good material for comment, and their skin is thick enough to say, yeah I pooched this but I thought this was a good hand to share. So I think two categories should be "Best Thread Starter - B/I and A/E'.

Best thread starter should separate than "best poster", who is clearly Jlogic, although Jlogic does not start a lot of threads. I would think the best poster is defined as someone who you read first, and it has to be someone who posts enough to matter.

Best Technician - I would like to nominate RHM. When he speaks, I listen.

[Vampyr]

It looks as if there will be enough categories that everyone will win one.