Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards: Difference between revisions

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== Awards ==
== Awards ==
The Awards are held mostly annually, with only the years of <time>2011</time> and <time>2017</time> either skipped or rolled into the next Awards respectively. The voting and results are usually posted some time between January and March in the year following the year covered by the Awards.  
The Awards are held mostly annually, with only the years of <time>2011</time> and <time>2014</time> skipped; <time>2017</time> was also skipped, but ended up being rolled into the 14th Awards with 2018. The voting and results are usually posted some time between January and March in the year following the year covered by the Awards.  


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Latest revision as of 16:38, 1 July 2021

The Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards are accolades given to members of the Oddworld Forums based on the votes of other members. The Awards were started in by Wolfpac, who ran the awards for their first five years. Wolfpac started the 6th Annual Awards but was unavailable to present the awards, so this was handled by Wired. Wired continued to host the awards until the 9th Awards. The 10th to 12th Awards were run by STM. The 13th and 14th Awards were hosted by Nepsotic and Varrok respectively.

Mirroring the migration of most regular Oddworld Forums members to the Oddworld Forums Discord server, the 15th and 16th Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards were hosted on Discord rather than on the Oddworld Forums, and were organized by Oddey.

Procedure

Two threads are used for each Awards: the first is used to announce the categories and inform members that they can now start voting, the second is used to announce the winners. A basic narrative is often used to introduce and conclude the initial post of each thread, typically taking the form of a fictional awards ceremony; earlier Awards use several Oddworld Forums members, and occasionally Oddworld characters, in these skits.

Once the categories are listed and—where appropriate—explained, members may begin casting votes either by posting publicly in the first thread, or by privately contacting the organizer. Although there are no explicit rules about splitting votes, member will often vote for two or three nominees for the same category; in these cases, the nominees will each receive only a half or third of a vote.

Members are not allowed to vote for themselves or tell other members whom to vote for. They are also not allowed to disseminate progress updates based on public voting. Failure to follow the rules is punishable by removal of the member's eligability to receive any awards that year. As of the 7th Awards, it has been made explicit that members are only eligable to receive awards if they have posted in the preceding calendar year (with the exception of ‘Dearly Missed Member’ for which the rule is reversed).

Winners are announced in the second thread, which remains open for members to share their congratulations and thanks. Winners do not receive any tangible reward, but out of 20 winners of the award ‘Member Who'd Make a Good Moderator’, eight did go on to become moderators.

Awards

The Awards are held mostly annually, with only the years of and skipped; was also skipped, but ended up being rolled into the 14th Awards with 2018. The voting and results are usually posted some time between January and March in the year following the year covered by the Awards.

# Year Voting Results Categories Voters Host Venue
1st 22 18 Wolfpac Oddworld Forums
2nd 22 16 Wolfpac Oddworld Forums
3rd 23 31 Wolfpac Oddworld Forums
4th 23 21 Wolfpac Oddworld Forums
5th 23 24 Wolfpac Oddworld Forums
6th 23 20 Wolfpac, Wired Oddworld Forums
7th 29 28 Wired Oddworld Forums
8th 28 28 Wired Oddworld Forums
9th 28 19 Wired Oddworld Forums
10th 29 26 STM Oddworld Forums
11th 29 18 STM Oddworld Forums
12th 30 16 STM Oddworld Forums
13th 49 Unknown Nepsotic Oddworld Forums
14th / 14 Unknown Varrok Oddworld Forums
15th 15 Unknown Oddey Oddworld Forums Discord
16th Upcoming 15 Unknown Oddey Oddworld Forums Discord

Categories

Each Awards contains a number of different categories—between 14 and 49 but usually between 23 and 29—that members vote in. Occasionally categories are renamed, especially when a new host begins running the Awards, but their subject remains essentially the same. There have been 78 different categories across the 16 Awards, not counting those that have been temporarily divided into two sub-categories; 42 of these categories have only been used in a single year of Awards.

History

The most long-lasting categories were established by Wolfpac in the 1st Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards, which contained 22 categories. For the 2nd Awards, Wolfpac solicited category recommendations on the Oddworld Forums.[1] Only one new category was adopted: ‘Most Missed Member’, which was suggested by oddguy[2] and has been used every year since. The ‘Insane Poster’ category was dropped in the 2nd Awards, but returned in the 3rd Awards before being dropped permanently along with ‘Most Respected Poster’ in the 7th Awards. These were the first Awards not run by their creator, Wolfpac.

The 7th Awards, which were run by Wired, split ‘Best Artist’ and ‘Best Writer’ into Oddworld and Non-Oddworld sub-categories, and otherwise introduced five new categories that were suggested by Forums members after Wired asked for recommendations.[3]

The latter three of these only lasted a year and were removed in the 8th Awards, which also recombined ‘Best Oddworld Writer’ and ‘Best Non-Oddworld Writer’ into a single category. Three new categories were introduced.

For the 10th Awards, host duties were assumed by STM, who removed ‘Best Role-Player’ and added two new categories that have continued to the present Awards.

The 10th Awards were also the first to have the prefix ‘The Oddworld Forums’ dropped from all categories except ‘The Oddworld Forums Unofficial Mascot’. The 12th Awards introduced two new categories, although neither has been used since.

The 13th Awards marked a radical change from the usual lineup of categories, with new host Nepsotic saying he would create the Awards ‘from scratch.’[10] Nevertheless, 11 of the previous year's 30 categories ended up being used, one of which (‘Most Changed Member’) was split into two subcategories—‘For the Worse’ and ‘For the Better’—and one of which (‘Best Artist’) was recombined from its Oddworld and Non-Oddworld subcategories at the recommendation of kjjcarpenter.[11] Of the 37 new categories, some were inversions of previous categories (such as ‘Most Unwelcome Return’ and ‘Worst Artist’) while others, significantly, were the first awards designed to be awarded not to individual (or pairs of) members but to memes, events and other content.

Of the 37 new categories, only one was used again in subsequent years, in the form of the ‘Best Meme’ category. The 14th Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards under new host Varrok took the opposite approach to categories, plummeting from the all-time high of 49 to the all-time low of 14. 11 of these were continuations of existing categories (though just 5 had been used in the immediately preceding 13th Awards), with 3 new categories completing the reduced lineup, all of which were designed to be won by something other than an individual member of the Oddworld Forums.

These new categories reflected the migration of many regular Oddworld Forums members to the Oddworld Forums Discord. The following year onwards, the Awards—now hosted by Oddey—were held entirely on the Discord. Four long-standing categories from the 14th Awards were dropped in favour of alternative pre-existing categories from the 12th and 13th Awards, and a single new category, ‘New OWI moment’, was introduced.

Winners

145 recipients have been given at least one award across the 15 completed Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards, with 120 of them being registered members (although some of these may have been ‘multis’, a ‘multiple account’ registered to the same person as an existing member). The 25 award recipients that are not registered members of the Oddworld Forums range in nature from memes, emojis, events, celebrities, fictional characters, groups, brands and other media, as well as family members of registered Forum posters.

Although votes can be split between nominees, awards are not split between winners, as all nominees who receive equal highest number of votes in any category receive the award in full. This is also true of all individuals who win the ‘Best Couple’ award, even when it goes to multiple couples, although if the same winner is in two winning couples, they still receive the award only once that year.

Most Awards

Ten members have won more than 10 awards in total.

Most Consistent Awards

Wil is the only member to have won the same award, ‘Member with the Greatest Oddworld Knowledge’, for all 12 years the category was live. The next greatest such consistency amongst winners is to have received the same award for 6 non-consecutive years or 5 consecutive years.

Winner Category Wins Consecutively
Wil Member with the Greatest Oddworld Knowledge 12
OANST Funniest Poster 6
Nate Best Staff Member 6
OANST Most Accomplished Troll 5
Abbey Oddworld Forums Mascot 4
Alcar Oddworld Forums Mascot 4
Nate Most Dedicated Member 4
Nate Best Advice Giver 4
Nepsotic Most Changed Member 4
Splat Best Writer 4
Varrok Best Couple (albeit always with a different partner) 4
Wolfpac Best Thread Creator 4
Xavier Most Respected Poster 4
Xavier Most Dedicated Member 4

Most Years

Having won ‘Member with the Greatest Oddworld Knowledge’ for 12 years, Wil is the member who has won awards in the highest number of Forums Awards, although seven other members have been winners in at least seven Awards.

Most Awards in a Year

The most awards won by a single member in one year is ten, which was accomplished by Nepsotic in the 13th Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards, the year he was responsible for running the Awards. The same year featured several members winning higher numbers of awards than in any previous year, including Vlam, Alcar and Varrok winning 7 awards each. It should be noted that the 13th Awards featured 49 award categories, much higher than in any other year. The year with the second highest number of categories was the 12th Annual Oddworld Forums Poster Awards, which had 30 categories.

# Member Awards won Categories that year
2nd Wil 4 22
3rd Alcar 4 23
6th Hobo 5 23
7th Bullet Magnet 4 29
8th Nate 4 28
8th Disgruntled Intern 4 28
9th OANST 4 28
10th Wil 5 29
10th Nepsotic 4 29
11th MA 4 29
11th Nepsotic 4 29
12th Nate 4 30
12th OANST 4 30
12th Varrok 4 30
13th Nepsotic 10 49
13th Alcar 7 49
13th Varrok 7 49
13th Vlam 7 49
13th Xorlidyr 6 49
13th MA 6 49
13th RoryF 5 49
13th Xavier 4 49

Most Categories

The member to have won awards in the greatest number of different categories throughout the history of the Awards is Alcar, who has won at least one award in 16 different categories, although a number of members have come close to this amount.

Appendices


References

  1. Wolfpac (). ‘The 2nd Annual Oddworld Forum Poster Awards... Need A BIT of help’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  2. oddguy (). Post 3 in ‘The 2nd Annual Oddworld Forum Poster Awards... Need A BIT of help’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  3. Wired (). ‘Insert your opinions here (OWF awards)’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  4. a b Killy (). Post 18 in ‘Insert your opinions here (OWF awards)’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  5. Bullet Magnet (). Post 71 in ‘Insert your opinions here (OWF awards)’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  6. hobo (). Post 24 in ‘Insert your opinions here (OWF awards)’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  7. a b GrigtheSlig (). Post 7 in ‘The 2nd Annual Oddworld Forum Poster Awards... Need A BIT of help’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  8. Kimon (). Post 46 in ‘Insert your opinions here (OWF awards)’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  9. Mac Sirloin (). Post 14 in ‘Insert your opinions here (OWF awards)’. Off-Topic Discussion. Oddworld Forums.
  10. Nepsotic (). Post 12 in ‘An Opportunity for OWF's Rebirth’. Forum Suggestions & Help. Oddworld Forums.
  11. kjjcarpenter (). Post 11 in ‘An Opportunity for OWF's Rebirth’. Forum Suggestions & Help. Oddworld Forums.