Originally Posted by
schley
I was going to put this in the Change, No Change question but it really is more appropriate for this thread as my though is an ADDITION and not a change to anything existing.
I would like to explore the idea of giving annual awards to posters voted on by the community. Each year the community could vote for the following (as examples):
1. Most helpful poster
2. Most knowledgeable poster
3. Most gracious poster to newbies
4. New poster of the year
5. Best Moderator (Yes this will be competitive)
6. etc etc.......
We could do it board wide or also add awards for the most active forums like UA, SPG, OMNI etc.
This would be something posters could be proud of and have it denoted in their avatar. Shooting for the stars with this idea but the awards could be given out at an annual DO. Randy could maybe give these award recipients either a free airline ticket to the DO it will be presented at or some type of GC, UG cert or whatnot.
This could be something the entire community looks forward to and help bring the board even further together.
I see problems with the implementation of this. First, you'd have to do something like this board by board -- some of us post only on one board and some very helpful people on one board (I'll use BA since I never go there and it's a very active board) would be unknown to many other people.
There's also the issue that not everyone is well-liked, even if very helpful and whether this well-intentioned idea would turn into a personality and popularity contest. And if there would be hard feelings (unnecessary ones) as a result.
Also, I wonder who would implement and run such a thing.
I think a more modest effort like acknowledging people in TalkMail or in forums themselves could be done, but something like this would have to be carefully considered with the possible positives and negatives completely considered. I'd be willing to have this conversation as a member of TB, but would hold my judgment on a vote on such a thing until such a conversation has fleshed out.