Any competition like this MUST be "opt-in". The competition is announced, and mappers themselves decide whether they want to submit an entry (or a number of entries).

Call me a snowflake, but I just want to carry on making things for quake and not feel like I'm being ranked and rated against all the other mappers, in some official way. That sounds like the opposite of fun. 

Maybe that's what's meant by Nominations (on the website), but it doesn't give much detail.

Does the map author have the sole authority to nominate their own maps? Or can anyone nominate anyone elses? It needs to clarify.

Obviously the former is how I think it should work. 

Let me preface this by saying that you shouldn't have any concerns regarding posting with your nickname. You're entitled to hold your opinions and because you discussed it sincerely you'll get a sincere answer. If you share a worry with dumptruck about anon trolls by using your account, I would emphasise that nobody here really cares for that kind of behaviour.

Anyway, addressing your concerns as best I can:

1. I have gone to (I think) reasonable lengths to eliminate long term bias (with the award setup there may well be individual year bias, but I think that's pretty unavoidable). Have you read the things that I plan on doing?

2. If somebody makes something that people (and judges) like, then they deserve to win and be recognised for that. All this does is recognise it with a little pomp and ceremony. Map rankings are already available on Quaddicted, it would be quite easy to look at that and claim that some mappers are better than others. Winning an award doesn't mean that one person is a better or worse mapper than another, it just means that for that particular release, they did a better job (in the opinion of a few people).

3. These mappers are adults. I'm sure they can handle it if somebody makes a "better" map than them. I know there are already a lot of mappers that are better than me. Should I let that bother me? I can use it in order to have something to gauge my skills against. I can use it to improve.

@Dumptruck Fair concern regarding lack of input. The discussions regarding the awards were held with various people in private, not in public. My concern with things being held in public is that design by committee often becomes unmanageable. But I do see your point. I was already debating whether to rank the shortlisted maps or not... I think a winner and a bunch of unranked runners up works fine too.

"ranking creative endeavours with participants of varying skill levels is wrong minded in my book"

I can't help but feel that with this opinion, no matter what I say you won't be OK with awards from this community.

I guess your concern is that the community will tear itself to pieces over these awards? While I expect there will be some friction, I doubt that it will be serious enough to do long term damage to the community.

Honestly I don't think I can say much more than this. If you guys have concerns over the way its run or practical suggestions that I might be able to implement, then please make them heard.

I can't guarantee that I'll agree or implement them, but without being made aware of concerns nothing is likely to change. 

when the shortlist is announced you can opt out and somebody else can be moved into the shortlist. 

Unless we're having "Top 10 stinkers of 2018" what's the fuss about? We'll have a small selection of maps maps deemed worthy of special mention and that's about it. I'm failing to see the negatives. More hype and exposure for quake, plus extra stimulation for mappers to make and release cool maps. 

While I expect there will be some friction, I doubt that it will be serious enough to do long term damage to the community.

I agree.

And I should have added: "ranking creative endeavours with participants of varying skill levels [by a small group of individuals] is wrong minded..."

The Quaddicted comparison doesn't work for me here. If you rank a map in that context it's as valid as the next person's opinion. These Awards are speaking for an entire community.

I am still going to be supportive of these awards in the long run because I respect the people who are involved enough to give them a fair shot at this.

And the retrospectives on the site are great. 

The fuss is over the details not the overall concept. 

(btw dumptruck)

there was never any intention to rank maps first to last like the 100b comp 

for the clarification. 

Yeah I don't really see the issue with "every map is now part of a competition". Maybe I just can't personally understand the mindset that the existence of an end-of-year best-of list compiled by a handful of people would be such a huge deal that it might discourage someone from mapping *at all*. On the contrary, it might encourage people to learn to map and put in their best work. And anyway, how is the mere potential of not winning an award (that might be months and months off) more off-putting than possibly getting poor ratings on Quaddicted or comments like "your map is shit"? It's worth noting that some people cannot even handle constructive criticism.

The whole concept just seems incredibly useful, like how the Cacowards are a useful (but by no means exhaustive).

I do prefer the Cacowards format of having an unranked list, though.

I don't like the idea of the awards being opt-in. If the Shammies are intended to highlight some peoples' idea of the best maps of the year that should be what it's about. If people want to opt out that's fine but why would we punish someone who just released their map without paying enough attention to the whole community to have learned that the awards exist AND that they must opt in? I've been compiling my own private "top 10 of the year" Quake lists for the past two years and I've never had trouble filling it up. If you want that kind of trouble, narrowing your choices to a self-selected pool seems like a great way to do it.

As a final note, these kinds of awards are going to be biased. They will never not be biased. Clique-ness could be mitigated by allowing people to nominate releases for consideration (so the judges don't overlook things they might otherwise), which is how the Cacowards handle it, as long as this is advertised on multiple forums... but I'm sure Shamblernaut has alreay thought of that. The alternative (aside from abandoning the idea) would be to have any who wants to vote make a list and then aggregate those lists somehow, but aggregate data has its own problems imo. 

I posted the above before dumptruck's subsequent replies clarifying his position, so much of what I said is not relevant. I stand by my position though. It seems to me that an end-of-year list compiled by a few people does not, by definition, "stand for" the community. Maybe people will feel like it does, idk. 

*before I read dumptruck's replies 

There once were map review sites that were helpful in finding rare gems to play.

Spirit used to have a poll at Quaddicted at the end of the year where you could vote for the best maps.

Ranking maps isn't something new.

It is something old that needs to be resumed. 

Oh wait are you guys talking about the Shambler Awards? Been wanting one of those for ages. Um let's see, complaints here, good ideas there and there ... yup what Baker said. But mostly I just see this as a way to motivate mappers and get moar maps.

Off to see what goodies are in Ontranto. 

When will you be announcing who the judges are? It seems like you have already picked them, going by your mentioning of "I have competent people on board". Will the competitors know who will be judging their work when the competition opens?

Also, (for each category) are all the entries going to be ranked, or just an overall winner picked from a pool of otherwise equals?

Good to know you can opt-out. I think there's quite a few hobbyists in this community who don't want everything to be turned into a deathmatch. 

I'll be making a page on the site before the nominations close with some judge profiles. I was waiting to clear with them that they were all happy to be publicly known as judges. The concern of course is they they might get some heat if they pick maps that others don't like or don't pick a map that somebody else does like.

The categories will have an overall winner, two runners up and honorable mentions. If there aren't enough nominations for a winner / runners up, then the judges will make a small showcase showing off the nominated maps. 

I think most people are missing the point of the Awards. They are not for mappers, they are for new players! We have always had more (active) content creators than players and an award ceremony will give new players a chance to play the latest/greatest and hopefully move on to other content once finished.

Something like this will certainly upset a few people and even though we might not intend it, we all compete with each other to create the greatest maps we can. When I started the jam events I wanted them to be just a friend thing, but there is countless people in the community declaring winners of them!

As a community we have been judging maps for a long time. Pay a visit to Quaddicted and you will see plenty of people voting up/down, people trying to "fix" the top 10 list and people posting constructive/insults whether we like it or not.

I think everyone has to accept the Award process and if there are problems, try to be constructive and fix it for the next year. Regardless if individuals are upset, this will be a good thing overall for the community. We need more people to see the work that people (here) spend weeks/months creating and hopefully enjoy it. 

+1 to this being for players. I don't regularly peruse Doomworld, but when I am in the mood to play it, I hit up the Cacowards because I know I will quickly find something good to play. Quake would benefit from that. 

I want to agree with what sock and others have said in that the value of this type of thing is increased visiblity of awesome work, and celebrating what our community can make, not stroking egos or making people who didn't "win" feel excluded.

Some things I feel would help with that are:

- focus on the map, not the mapper. The map wins the award, not the person. Of course the mapper can be named but as a secondary detail.

- don't create rankings that make people feel singled out as losers. Having a top 10 and then everyone else is better than ranking everyone down to last place at #47. And, if there are only 13 entries, a top 10 implicitly singles out the bottom 3. So then you should have a top 5 or fewer.

- public voting instead of judges would make things feel more democratic, even well-meaning judges increase a feeling of an "in-group" that rewards other in-group people. (I realize public voting creates problems with verifying votes.)

I do like the idea of also honoring people too, those that did a lot of work for the community in other ways like streaming, releasing tools, making tutorials, writing long comments or recording demos for every map. This type of award shouldn't feel like a ranking, more like "here are some cool people that contributed in various ways" -- instead of "best streamer." Again, if it appears that not being chosen is an insult, then there is a problem. There should be a feeling of "there are lots of good people doing valuable work, we picked only 5 to honor, but those not chosen are also doing valuable work." 

Great input all around but especially #69 above from metlslime. I agree that the community should have more of a role than just nominating. Maybe next year?

And thank you Shamblernaut for the updates and clarifications. 

focus on the map, not the mapper. The map wins the award, not the person. Of course the mapper can be named but as a secondary detail.

This was always going to be the case.

don't create rankings that make people feel singled out as losers.

I've mentioned numerous times now that this isn't going to be the case

public voting instead of judges would make things feel more democratic

Regarding community participation, there is already a people's favourite award.

and again, I've taken numerous steps to make sure long term bias and conflicts of interest aren't long term. I really can't do much more than that. Also please read posts #15 and #17, this might help with some of your concerns regarding "in-group"-ness

I could allow in the future the community to shortlist, but any more than that and the awards become either unmanagable or another Quaddicted.... And Quaddicted is doing a great job, I don't want to make a clone of them, or step on any toes.

One thing that the judges do is differentiate these from the user scores on Quaddicted. Perhaps we can do a vote on each category alongside the judges comments next year.

here are some cool people that contributed in various ways

This was suggested to me very early on and I agreed with the suggestion then, there will be a page to thank community contributors. It's not on the site because it's not an award, same with new mapper highlights. 

I also should have acknowledged that you are already doing some of the things I said. I think those things i mentioned, that you are already doing, directly address the criticisms upthread. Really the only one you are not doing is open voting, and I can see the reasons (but it still has the negative I mentioned.)

BTW I believe a one-time vote would still be different from Quaddicted because it collects ratings over a large period of time, during which people's standards change, and during which the field of competing maps is ever-changing, and from users who have only been exposed to a subset of maps. A one-time vote would have a defined list of maps that all voters see, and their opinions are collected in a small space of time. 

Would this also be a good website to include a counter on the main page for number of maps released year to date in 2018 with a note like Updated on 6/28/2018 since it most likely wouldn't get updated every day? 

Thank you for the review. Most of all, I'm glad you liked the level. Gonna brag about it if you don't mind. 

Hey nominations appear to be open. (Now I just need to figure out which releases were vanilla-compatible, hmm.)