:) That prize, seriously man... Goldplated. 

FYI for y'all who haven't clicked through to the site yet: snaut is also posting some short retrospectives of past cool maps. I like reading 'em.

Thumbs up to the idea of an awards site as a way to give more attention to great Quake stuff. Any particular person getting a "virtual trophy" is fine, whatever, but the best part is making a collection of awesomeness that other folks can see. I mentioned elsewhere that I love the Cacowards both as a way to find maps to play and as a general celebration of fantastic Doom work still being done in the 21st century, so I'm perfectly ok with the idea of Quake trying to have something similar.

I think it can be done well and not divisively. (I do like the idea of rewarding some set of maps rather than a specific ranking.) Of course nothing from me is up for consideration here so I'm just speaking as a spectator. 

None of the shambler-reference suggestions are made because a user named Shamblernaut started this. They come to mind, because the Shambler is the most iconic monsters from Quake; much like the Cacodemon is in Doom. It makes sense to use a name like that for its iconic value alone. Quake Awards sounds very generic, and some of the other names suggested here are downright terrible. 

I agree with the post above. Shambler is a name that immediately evokes Quake 1, while Spawn reminds me of that comic book superhero :P 

Yeah, the Shambler is the perfect mascot. Would kill any confusion people had about which quake game the awards were for. 

BTW, I know this was discussed above but I'm not 100% sure that the point came across or what the resolution was...

There are a lot of maps that fit in neither of the two "best map" award categories as currently described. I.e. maps that neither are vanilla-compatible nor do they user BSP2.

One of these categories should be reworded so that it is just "everything that doesn't fit in the other category". 

I'll change it to "not vanilla compatible" 

By having what sounds like "the quake community awards as organized and voted on by the quake community" - you are basically turning what is currently a small user-base, pretty chilled-out hobby into a competition. Now, every single release a mapper puts out is essentially going to be considered a competition entry, whether they like it or not.

Is Mapper A better than Mapper B? I guess we'll know officially now! The judges have spoken! Awww, didn't make the grade? better luck next year (scratch my back and I'll scratch yours, if you know what I mean, wink wink!)

Mappers outnumber non-mappers like 10-1 here, so I can't see how this can be anything other than an exercise in self-promotion, with probably equal amounts of favoritism and ostracism going on. 

I'm not afraid to go on record as being uncomfortable with the process. The idea of the awards is great. I am aware of who the judges are and I do agree that they are a good selection. I also know that Shamblernaut has nothing but good will here and he wants to strengthen the Quake community.

I get all of it.

There is a continent of people in the community that abhor the negativity in parts of this community and want to mitigate it in their own way.

I get that too.

But I also have the experience of just having participated in the 100b4 jam and what #49 says in his post is pretty much spot on for that experience. If I had known the maps were going to be ranked, I would not have participated in that event. I guess I wasn't around for 100b 1-3 to know how this worked going in. I just figured there would be a first prize map and everyone else had the honor of participating. Instead we had a new mapper from a different community come in dead last with a map that followed the rules to a T and had a wonderful aesthetic. But it featured trick jumping.

So now with this award, a small subset of that community will be selecting, ranking and awarding "bests". That's not a community award that's a small group of "influencers" giving their opinions at best. Good people, no doubt - but it doesn't matter who it is: ranking creative endeavors with participants of varying skill levels is wrong minded in my book.

My real concern is that this was just decided upon announced - and not brought up to the community for input from the start. At least not here.

So I am uncomfortable I think for good reason. But I would guess I am in the minority. I fully expect a torrent of anonymous taunts and ridicule from this post but fuck it - hitting submit. 

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.