CG Forum Awards

I just got the idea of creating annual CodeGuru Forums Awards (CGFA). We should come up with some categories, select the nominees for each, then vote for it and the most voted ones win.

Here are some categories that came to my mind so far (no special order):

• best C++ thread
• best .NET (including C++.NET) thread
• best VB thread
• best thread (can be, of course, one of the winners of the categories above)
• best post (most detailed explanation)
• best poll
• best FAQ
• best feedback proposal (best proposal for site improvement suggested in the feedback forum)
• funniest thread
• best breakthrough (new CG member with best contribution)
• best contributor (CG member with best contribution)
• free your mind award (should go to the member that proposed the most uncommon, out-of-the-box, yet correct solution to a problem)
• special award for most popular thread (the thread with most posts over the last year)
• best avatar

Of course the nominees can be proposed by anyone. The best solution would probably be the creation of a dedicated forum (I'm sure that's not a problem) for the awards. With two months before the awarding people can start make proposals for each category (there should be a thread for each). One month before, the proposals end and the nominees (5 to 10 for each category) are finally set. For each category, there should be a new thread with a poll that allows us to vote for the winner. Vote results should be kept hidden until the voting ends and the winners are made public.

The winners must provide an acceptance speach (of course anyone is free to decline the award).

I'm looking forward for your opinions on this.

Thank you.

:thumb: Cool. Sth like the Oscar awards. A Razzie awards forum could also be created for most boring thread (or maybe worst answer). :D

Good idea (if Admin accepts it!) :thumb:

That's a pretty interesting idea. I wonder how well the variations on "best thread" and "best post" would work out, though. How many people will see a category like that and think, "Oh, there was a really good explanation of [topic] about nine months ago..." It seems that categories of that nature would be heavily skewed towards recent goings-on, with many would-be contenders forgotten. Don't get me wrong -- this objection certainly isn't a reason to throw the idea away, as I think it's a good one. I'm just curious as to whether you have any thoughts on this.

I think it's a great idea Cilu. :thumb:

I also like yiannakops idea, although it could be difficult to pick a "winner" ;)

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Originally Posted by Smasher/Devourer

That's a pretty interesting idea. I wonder how well the variations on "best thread" and "best post" would work out, though. How many people will see a category like that and think, "Oh, there was a really good explanation of [topic] about nine months ago..." It seems that categories of that nature would be heavily skewed towards recent goings-on, with many would-be contenders forgotten. Don't get me wrong -- this objection certainly isn't a reason to throw the idea away, as I think it's a good one. I'm just curious as to whether you have any thoughts on this.

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You're probably right. At least in part. Most recent threads will take the glory. ;) But not necessary. For instance I remember 2 threads with some very interesting debates (one of which I would definitelly vote for the best), that happened months ago. And perhaps like me there are other people that remember a thread with really great explanations or debate a while ago.

Anyway, all categories are opened for debate. Only that I believe we should not exced 15, because we should keep it to a manageable level.

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I also like yiannakops idea, although it could be difficult to pick a "winner"

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Similar categories came to my mind too (not this one though). Then I thought we should keep this as a "best of" and not mix it with "worst of". Besides I don't want anyone to feel offended by winning the award for "worst thread", or "worst post" or "most boring thread".

At some point I thought of "best off-topic reply" award. And then I realize that's not a good idea since it can determine people to post creazy/funny/i-don't-know-what off-topic messages just to win the annual award for "best off-topic reply". And besides, off-topic messages, thought a vivid reality, are prohibited by the Acceptable Use Policy.

Shouldn't be there also the "Best article" ?

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Originally Posted by Mercantilum

Shouldn't be there also the "Best article" ?

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My proposal was for CG Forum Awards. Articles are not part of the forum.

Thats a good one Cilu..:wave:
This will definetly encourage people to contribute more to CG Forums..:thumb:

I would nominate this thread for
best feedback proposal (best proposal for site improvement suggested in the feedback forum)

//I think moderators should nominate the threads and posts.. What do u think abt that?

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Originally Posted by vb_the_best

//I think moderators should nominate the threads and posts.. What do u think abt that?

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Actually I was thinking of a "comitee" for the awards, a group of some people (not just moderators), that should take care of threads creation, and finalizing the list of 5 - 10 nominees. But anyone should be free to make proposals.

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Originally Posted by cilu

Actually I was thinking of a "comitee" for the awards, a group of some people (not just moderators), that should take care of threads creation, and finalizing the list of 5 - 10 nominees. But anyone should be free to make proposals.

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That sounds much better!!
I think we should start it ASAP..

//Mods & Admins-- Your comments please

No comments yet! We should wait for the superiors to take the first step.

But yeh, who will be the JURY :)

By the way, for those who don't know where is this Location: 55°50' N 37°39' E, it's here ...
Amazing the number of people using LL as a geographical reference ;)

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Originally Posted by Mercantilum

By the way, for those who don't know where is this Location: 55°50' N 37°39' E, it's here ...
Amazing the number of people using LL as a geographical reference ;)

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Please do not hijack the thread with way off-topic replies. Thank you.

Idea greate but, have you seen how huge number of threads and posts. I don`t talk about Boring thread or smth like that they are really huge, and about everything else greate, but what sites administration thinks about that? Anyway I like your idea

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Originally Posted by cilu

At some point I thought of "best off-topic reply" award. And then I realize that's not a good idea since it can determine people to post creazy/funny/i-don't-know-what off-topic messages just to win the annual award for "best off-topic reply". And besides, off-topic messages, thought a vivid reality, are prohibited by the Acceptable Use Policy.

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I thnk that has promise with some modifications. I remember one thread in the c# forum (which I think you were involved with Cilu) where the original question was something about appending an integer to a string or something like that. the thread starter got the answer pretty quick, but then a competition started on the most efficient way to do it. there ended up being some posts where the solution was (aparantly) super efficient, but you would never use that in your day-to-day programming. IMO, it became an "out of control thread", but was still very interesting and at times funny to watch.

I think having a CG Forum Awards is a great way of showing that CodeGuru recognizes members' efforts in giving/helping others find solutions to their coding problems/questions. :thumb:

Having a CGFA Committee is another great idea. But, I wonder who will delegate people as such? One way of doing this is by (a) having members nominate/vote who should be in this committee OR (b) ask a trusted Moderator and/or Admin to list qualified members to be a member of the Committee.

Anyways, first and foremost... I hope Moderators, Admins, and other CG superiors agree to Cilu's proposal/suggestion. :)

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Originally Posted by cilu

Please do not hijack the thread with way off-topic replies. Thank you.

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Just discovered the crazy Google maps and was curious to apply it to LL provided by a few members since it is the Feedback forum - Sorry for that cilu.

Good Idea, althou I'll never win :blush:

I'm waiting with impatience to hang my CGFAs near the PL/SQL Brainbench certificate (that was not the best but hardest to obtain for me)... :D ;)

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Originally Posted by ovidiucucu

I'm waiting with impatience to hang my CGFAs near the PL/SQL Brainbench certificate (that was not the best but hardest to obtain for me)... :D ;)

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Take it slowly, you're not a winner already. You're not even nominated. ;)

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Originally Posted by cilu

Take it slowly, you're not a winner already. You're not even nominated. ;)

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Yeah, but I must be ready for everything. :D

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Originally Posted by cilu

Take it slowly, you're not a winner already. You're not even nominated. ;)

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Lets stick to the original point.
But how come none of the admins has not posted his/her comments regarding this.

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Originally Posted by vb_the_best

But how come none of the admins has posted his/her comments regarding this.

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<I'm going to use ovidiucucu as an example in this post... no offense intended, just using him as an example>

Because of the issues this could causeand because of work this could require. Some examples:

Is it the thread that is awarded or is it a person that is awarded? In most cases that have been suggested it is a thread, so ovidiucucu wouldn't be able to take credit since a thread is multiple people's posts.

Awarding polls and such could lead to people posting simply to try to be recognized for their thread. I don't know that this is bad, but it doesn't necessarily seem to be a good thing.

If we award someone for the best job at helping people, and if ovidiucucu has a better reputation, larger post count, etc. then is he going to get mad or upset? How many other people will too? We've nominated people here for MVP awards from Microsoft and Microsoft didn't select them. At least one of those people now posts a lot less and is grumpy more often. Would we cause the same issue with these awards?

Who determines what criteria make a thread the best? If it helps with my problem and it is the most complicated problem I'm dealing with, is that the best? Everyone has different problems, so every 'judge' would have a different criteria. Or do you let everyone nominate whatever threads they want and the 'judges' narrow it down to the 'finalists' for voting?

Can the 'judges' have an item in a category that is being created?

I won't even begin to comment on what kind of noise the "free your mind award" could start causing in the forums.... (Sounds fun, but...)

What about articles. Should those be included too?

What about the "most reputable", "most rated", "most prolific", and other award type (These would be easy because they would be based on mechanisms already in place ;) ).

Also, what about the "best admin who is active on the board" award? Seems to me that there should be money, prizes, trips, and more associated with this specific award..... ;)

Having said all this....
I've actually thought about something similar in the past. I even looked for icons and goofed around with trying to set up the icon on the forum so that if we awarded someone they would have an icon showing. Now that the forum software works better, I need to try to do that again.

I'm not against doing awards and making it a yearly thing. What we need to determine however, is awards that don't get in the way of the forum. By that I mean awards that cause unwanted posts to be created. Additionally, we can award threads, but that type of award would go to the thread and not any individual within the thread. Finally, if doing something like this causes problems for several members, then we would probably disban it.

So now an admin has chimed in.... ;)

Brad!

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

If we award someone for the best job at helping people, and if ovidiucucu has a better reputation, larger post count, etc. then is he going to get mad or upset?

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Not much more upset than William Shockley who deserved three Nobel prizes and took only one (and that shared with other two people). :D

Thanks Brad for your comments. First, I don't want anything that would offend some people or create problems in the forums (like posting just to get an award). The list of awards that I have provided is just a proposal. Doesn't mean that I want to stick to it.

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Is it the thread that is awarded or is it a person that is awarded? In most cases that have been suggested it is a thread, so ovidiucucu wouldn't be able to take credit since a thread is multiple people's posts.

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No, the award is for the thread, not for the member that created it.

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Awarding polls and such could lead to people posting simply to try to be recognized for their thread. I don't know that this is bad, but it doesn't necessarily seem to be a good thing.

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Yes, there may be people that will try to create polls just to win this award. But how many polls would that be? If you look at the number of polls out of the total number of threads you'll see it's quite small. Personally I don't expect that number to increase significantly, to the extent of polluting the forums all over with undesired polls.

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If we award someone for the best job at helping people, and if ovidiucucu has a better reputation, larger post count, etc. then is he going to get mad or upset? How many other people will too? We've nominated people here for MVP awards from Microsoft and Microsoft didn't select them. At least one of those people now posts a lot less and is grumpy more often. Would we cause the same issue with these awards?

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Yes, that is something I would definitelly like to avoid too. I was trying to avoid categories that would led to that. Probably if we drop the best breakthrough and best contributor much of that concern should disappear.

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Who determines what criteria make a thread the best? If it helps with my problem and it is the most complicated problem I'm dealing with, is that the best? Everyone has different problems, so every 'judge' would have a different criteria. Or do you let everyone nominate whatever threads they want and the 'judges' narrow it down to the 'finalists' for voting?

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Well, basically there should be a criteria. I'll come back with some proposals for that too.

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Can the 'judges' have an item in a category that is being created?

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Who exactly would be the judges here? The awards winners would be voted by everyone that want to take part in the voting. If you refer to the members of CGFA group or "comitee" (as I called it) then I don't see why not. Just that one should be disallowed to propose for nominalization a thread/post/poll of his/hers.

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What about the "most reputable", "most rated", "most prolific", and other award type (These would be easy because they would be based on mechanisms already in place ).

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Well, all this categories should be avoided, especially those about rating. I don't want to see in all people's signature "If it helped, please rate me (to win the award)", let alone create any kind of trouble between members because of the rating. About categories like "most prolific"/"most posts" that is pointless anyway, because there is no competition here. Andreas doesn't have a challenger. :D

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Also, what about the "best admin who is active on the board" award?

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Well, as I already said (not exactly with these words) I was actually thinking at categories where would be some kind of competition, where everyone get's a chance to a nominalization, not something that would be decided before the voting or the proposal start.

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Seems to me that there should be money, prizes, trips, and more associated with this specific award.....

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:D Brad, that would mean to take from one pocket and put it in the other... ;)

I did not propose any prizes since I'm not in the position of offering prizes. And if the awards go to threads not to people, then who would take the prizes anyway?

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What we need to determine however, is awards that don't get in the way of the forum. By that I mean awards that cause unwanted posts to be created. Additionally, we can award threads, but that type of award would go to the thread and not any individual within the thread. Finally, if doing something like this causes problems for several members, then we would probably disban it.

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I agree with you.

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

Awarding polls and such could lead to people posting simply to try to be recognized for their thread. I don't know that this is bad, but it doesn't necessarily seem to be a good thing.

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That's exactly the problem, IMO. In the past, there have always been a few individuals who seemed to post any nonsense just to see their total post count go up. Since the reputation system has been introduced, that situation has somewhat aggravated: Although the reputation points honor quality (and not quantity), an increasing number of posters seem to post just for the sake of getting "those little green squares" (interestingly, the guys who have something like "if this helped, don't forget to rate" in their signature are often those who make the most useless posts - wild guesses or advice which is just plain wrong. So I don't know if an additional metric (like awards) will help increasÃ*ng the quality of posts, or rather attract more award hunters who will post anything just to get an award.

Well, I don't see these awards something that one is supposed to put in his/her CV (50 years from now one, when they will be as famous as Oscars or Nobels, yes, but not now :D). Nor to indicate the winners by another icons, gems or whatever, which probably would make people craving for awards.

Frankly, the first idea that I had was to have only funny awards, something that you see in the MTV movie awards, like: best action sequence, best kiss, best on-screen team, etc. (These are the MTV categories, not CG ;) ) Then I thought that we could do this something more serious, though not the Nobels equivalent.

I think it worths giving a try.

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Originally Posted by gstercken

That's exactly the problem, IMO. In the past, there have always been a few individuals who seemed to post any nonsense just to see their total post count go up. Since the reputation system has been introduced, that situation has somewhat aggravated: Although the reputation points honor quality (and not quantity), an increasing number of posters seem to post just for the sake of getting "those little green squares" (interestingly, the guys who have something like "if this helped, don't forget to rate" in their signature are often those who make the most useless posts - wild guesses or advice which is just plain wrong. So I don't know if an additional metric (like awards) will help increasÃ*ng the quality of posts, or rather attract more award hunters who will post anything just to get an award.

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Complete acknowledge. This is exactly why I have my reservations against reputation systems in general. It happened with the old rating system here as well...and after we installed the new forum software...suddenly they disappeared...

People who are attracted by that always try to find ways to increase their rating/reputation/whatever by any means. Games like "You rate me, I rate you' have always been played with these systems in place and will most likely always be played. It happens here, it happens on any other forum as well...short term for that is simply human nature I guess... ;)

Thus...the reputation of a member cannot be indicated by points, squares, stars etc. but always by looking at his/her answers...the longer one sticks around in forums the easier he get to know the real quality posters...reputation systems or post counts in any flavour can only be used as an indication... ;)

I am in complete agreement.

I have said this previously, in so many arguments that I can't even remember - even in the reviewer's forum.

I disagree with rating systems on a site like this.

This site is about helping people, and not about "getting an extra dot" on your posts.

Personally, I try not to care. However when I see people like Cilu etc with 5 green and 4 bright green spots, I have to think "how did they get those" and more to the point "are they just frequenting the forums which will give them ratings".

Of course I know this is probably not case, but there you go : exactly the effect I was trying to avoid. Helping people is helping people, and if they don't rate so what ?

I spend most of my time these days in the C# forum - and people don't generally rate here.

It makes me feel bad because I feel I'm getting left behind.

I fought against these darned things and they still went through : I think they should be removed and everyone lose this "competitive" aspect to the forums and just get on with what's important : helping people.

Anyway - I think the awards is a great idea, but I would think that a monthly basis would be better with yearly awards going from those.

Darwen.

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Originally Posted by darwen

However when I see people like Cilu etc with 5 green and 4 bright green spots, I have to think "how did they get those" and more to the point "are they just frequenting the forums which will give them ratings".

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Well Darwen, the only thing that I can say is that I never rated myself (yes, I know that's not even possible) and I never asked someone to rate any of my posts (as some people do, or put it in their signatures). Moreover, I can say I was the one that pushed Brad to remove the ratings from the Chit-Chat Forum (where, yes, I got at least a couple of dozens of points). And the most important thing, I never helped anybody to get rated. OK? I appreciate if people rated me when they considered I was helpful. And I also do rate people when I consider that their posts were helpful.

Now, I have the feeling that this thread is going on the wrong direction. More and more people are talking about the rating system instead of the awards. I understand the concern that the awards may have the same effects the ratings have on some people. But I would really appreciate if we ramain focused on the awards here, and if really wanted, discuss the rating system in another thread.

Well I agree with 'G'. This is the main reason I don't hang out here that much....guess I get tired of wading through 20 responses talking about the same thing.. also the reason why I asked to be defrocked since I do not feel like babysitting threads anymore (no longer a moderator).

But hey no big deal...you'll lose some and you'll gain some.

BTW: Brad I do hope your comments were not directed at me (user no longer posting here bla bla mvp bla) sorry I seem a bit paranoid but I think they were...so if so..you are so way off base...but then that's the norm...eh...

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Originally Posted by Mick

Well I agree with 'G'. This is the main reason I don't hang out here that much....guess I get tired of wading through 20 responses talking about the same thing.. also the reason why I asked to be defrocked since I do not feel like babysitting threads anymore (no longer a moderator).

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Defrocked is a new word for me, and to my surprize is not from the Micktionary. :D Anyway, I believe you are the first one that requested to be "defrocked" (I may be wrong, though). There are several moderators that haven't been active in a long time, but they still hold the position. ;)

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But hey no big deal...you'll lose some and you'll gain some.

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Good philosophy. :thumb:

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Originally Posted by cilu

There are several moderators that haven't been active in a long time, but they still hold the position. ;)

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That is on the 'admin' todo list...probably be still on the admin todo list next year ;)

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Originally Posted by cilu

Defrocked is a new word for me, and to my surprize is not from the Micktionary. :D Anyway, I believe you are the first one that requested to be "defrocked" (I may be wrong, though). There are several moderators that haven't been active in a long time, but they still hold the position. ;)


Good philosophy. :thumb:

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I think it would be better to say that Mick chose to hang up his "frock". Mick did a great job as a moderator. There are others, however, that were "defrocked".

Brad!

I hear Crow is in season right about now Brad...I make a mean pie...hungry???

Yo..nancy boy...are you going to man up and acknowledge the comment you directed at me :D

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Originally Posted by Mick

Yo..nancy boy...are you going to man up and acknowledge the comment you directed at me :D

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The comment was primarily about you, but not only about you, so the comment is still valid -- just not in regard to you.

I suggest hitting the brakes and backing up before you say something more that could irritate me.

Brad~

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

The comment was primarily about you, but not only about you, so the comment is still valid -- just not in regard to you.

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Yeaaaaa....

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I suggest hitting the brakes and backing up before you say something more that could irritate me.

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Ok...that made me chuckle...but considering how you came to that 'theory'..you deserved me poking fun at you.

:wave:

/Let me know if there is something specific I can say to irritate you...

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Originally Posted by Mick

Yeaaaaa....
..... poking fun at you.

:wave:

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Yes, but poking is best done in private -- messages.

Brad!
(See, I can have a sense of humor ;) )

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Originally Posted by Brad Jones

Yes, but poking is best done in private -- messages.

Brad!
(See, I can have a sense of humor ;) )

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Funny..maybe you should have heeded your own advice...

/Are we done yet? :D