This is a pretty cool thread.
I guess I'll throw in my two cents:
I think the only winning once a year is a decent compromise between the two possibilities; it also seems like the rate at which we garner new members who stay for a long time has decreased over time, which is rather natural. We also have old members pop up over time after they've been away for so long, which is kind of like having new members I guess. If you're going to do it this way, I'd say that we start a new tradition of listing the 12 people who can't be nominated at the beginning of each thread.... much like the long list of previous winners, which got rather long as was pretty neat that we kept track of it for as long as we did.
That said... I don't know if a lot of POTM activity has declined because of POTM becoming ridiculous (it should at least be a little bit ridiculous), or specifically because of the rules being thrown out and people winning a bunch of times. I think only like 3 people have won thrice, and a handful have won twice... many of them not winning twice in one year, but a few newer members winning multiple times in one year. I wouldn't mind seeing a breakdown of that specifically in this thread (weiner plz?). Personally, it seems that it usually takes a decent amount of time for people to win; this was more true when we had the rules set in place, but that was pretty exciting. I think only one or two members won very shortly after they joined, and one of them was because they brought new information of Futurama to PEEL, linking to videos of the movies if I recall. That's not really the norm though. If the once a year rule were in place, I find it unlikely that we'd have twelve people win over and over again each year because new people come and old members do sometimes go.... so as I said above, I think it's a reasonable compromise.
As for three nominations and no repeat nominating... we've broken so many rules, but I did like the old standard tradition and makes people think about who they're actually nominating.
As an additional rule, I think making only one POTM thread each month would be good. This has become customary recently, now that with PEEL 2 we have the ability to open polls in old threads and change them, etc. However, making it an actual rule and reflecting it in the wiki is what I'm getting at.
As for a new board in the vault. It's a pretty neat idea... but has at least one drawback: you will never know explicitly that a new post has been made there, since the light up icon doesn't work on the vault board specifically because it has sub-boards. It's not a huge problem to ignore, but it might detract people from going to the POTM board, but not necessarily so. It might even be incentive for people to visit other parts of PEEL on a semi-regular basis.
If you're going to do a new board, I think two moderators would be nice. One could suffice... however, I think it would be best to have the option of making new threads open to all members... that way anyone who feels its time to make a new POTM thread can and will.... first come first serve like the rest of the forum. This will lighten the workload of the POTM moderators, and then they can just moderate the board like normal, and if they want to form a secret organization to update the wiki about POTM then that seems swell.
As for the wiki updating; I think the proposals so far are pretty cool... making an official list with avatars included even the old ones would be pretty neat.. a little bit of work, but anybody could do it, and they could do it right about now. I think for the POTM page, it would be nice to see an outline of the history of POTM, including the original norms (which were not technically rules), the revamped norms which weiner changed (I told you what would happen.
), and the new standard rules once those are generally accepted. Updating the wiki on a regular basis with POTM would, in my opinion, make the wiki more exciting for users and become used by more people, so all of this in theory sounds positive.
If any of this stuff is approved by [-mArc-] and we move POTM to the Vault, then I propose that this thread and all POTM threads be retroactively moved to the Vault as well. This would require work, possibly by the moderator(s) who head up the POTM board. They may not have the ability to move threads out of offtopic, so another moderator might have to do it, if this idea were to be undertaken. I'm not absolutely certain how mod powers work for side boards anymore. I think it would be neat to have one place to look up all the previous POTM threads and quickly see through the rich history of this tradition as we've established it; most of the work would be spent looking up all the old threads, which may not be possible anymore to fulfill to 100%, but even getting close would be rather interesting.
The list that tnuk suggested of possible people for POTM moderator sounds pretty good to me. Obviously, since we're only discussing an idea, anybody who wanted to do it could certainly throw their hat in the field. With the proposals I suggested (ie, letting anyone make threads in the POTM board) I think that everyone could feel more involved even without being moderator, and anyone is already free to update the wiki if they feel like spending a little time learning how. As for myself, I don't have a huge inclination to be a moderator on the POTM board. My reasoning is that sometime in the near future, I don't think I'll be as active on PEEL as I might like to be. I spent most of the last year and a half without internet, just as an example. I deliberately didn't participate in the PEELie councils at least the last two years for these reasons as well, and I think the people that have filled in the gaps have done a wonderful job, both last year and this with those traditions. I am very happy to see that so many people care about this place as much as I do.
I will probably send an email to mArc about this thread in the next few minutes and wait to see if he responds positively.
A Response to Mr./Ms. FreeHotMeal:
I believe the balance of old posters versus new balances itself out very well for POTM. It happens frequently enough that anybody in recent memory can have a good possibility of at least ending up on the poll, which even without winning is a fine place to be. Arguably, I think it's better than winning... hell, even though I've been an advocate of no winning repeatedly (and I hope never to win again), I will admit that I smile a little if anybody happens to nominate me for it. Anyways, as I said above, I think it's highly unlikely that we would see 12 winners repeat each year, or even close. Weiner might be right about DrThunder88 winning once a year, but he's pretty awesome and totally posts awesome consistently and continuously; there are a couple of people that come to mind that fit in that category as well. The economic powers that drive such a contest will ultimately compel people to vote for different choices. It took a long time, over a year for throwing out the rules before we could even begin to see the actual results of what that would do. I know this sounds weird coming from me, being the advocate for keeping the original rules all along, but I think it could certainly have been more ridiculous. Something like someone winning for 3 months in a row or more; having
some rules in place would make sure that that doesn't become the standard, would allow for more people to win the award on a more deserving basis, and would let everyone feel that the "contest" was fair, thus enabling people to enjoy it more.
Your list of possible candidates is also lacking... there are actually a lot more members than that who would be possible candidates even if we went by the old standard. It's very hard to notice all the members of PEEL, and not all of them post mostly in Offtopic, and that's something I very much enjoy about POTM. I have seen people who aren't necessarily Offtopic specific get recognition that I might not necessarily notice at first that they rightly deserve. So for me... other than being just a popularity contest, POTM can and should be about getting to know our fellow PEELers.
I don't think we need to set a specific time before you can win POTM. It makes things more complicated, and the nature of the system generally weeds out these possibilities anyways. As above, I'm certain that no more than a handful of people have won POTM for the month they joined, or even shortly there after. Most POTM winners won after several months and even years of being here, very much including myself. Furthermore, most POTM winners stayed here for years, even after winning, although I can think of at least a few that took off shortly there after.
I can see that you were joking about the Poland thing. In fact, I think most of us can see that, but it feels like you're actually upset that it seems like a small group of people is in control of everything and that they want to keep from disclude you. I think a lot of people have certainly felt that way on PEEL, including futurefreak, and apparently everybody loves her! However, you've been here for 5 months now FHM, and I can assure that things change and the group dynamics do as well. If you stay here long enough, you'll have more than enough opportunity to be included. Secondly, tnuk is very overt about proposing new things; that's his nature, and it's neat that he does; he's done a very good job with the PEELies this year, for example, which I happen to know is a lot of work. It took me loads of hours to count up nominations and votes in a little notepad sheet, and I was totally out of league with it, but I think it was worth it. This forum is really only about people who like Futurama talking to each other and spending time together... it's not about work, and you should be happy about that. For the record on the PEELies council thing, I'm pretty sure that no one has been on a PEELies council that hasn't been here for years. Furthermore, the PEELies are not something that we're guaranteed to have every year... we went without one for one year, but it's something that we like to do because Nixorbo is the greetest.
Since you want to be a moderator on a POTM board... or maybe you just want to get involved... you might try emailing mArc about the moderator thing. I'm being really honest with you though; the answer to that will probably be a no. mArc doesn't talk to us that often anymore, and this is his (and slimmy's) message board. When he does give out powers and favors to PEEL, he usually bestows them upon us through people who have been here a ridiculously long time and have gone the extra mile to help out PEEL in various measures. However, if you want to be involved in POTM, if my proposal works, you could start the POTM thread whenever you get the chance, you could nominate in the POTM, you could vote in the POTM, and you could certainly edit the wiki. These are all things that you could do right now if you wanted to though.
I know that last bit was a sarcastic joke too. However, you shouldn't quit a job to post on a forum more regularly. I know you probably don't like your job right now, and you're more qualified than me to get a better one. A lot of us do spend a ridiculous amount of time on this message board though.... that's probably not necessarily a good thing, and in fact, I've seen at least one person ban themselves in an attempt to stop being so compulsive about it. As with most of these things, you should just enjoy it because it's nice to have. As for myself, I rarely have a phone.... when I did last year, it was one of the few ways I could post on PEEL, and it certainly wasn't a smartphone, nor did I do it very often... except that time I was watching Speed Racer.
To bring my point to a close: you should lighten up FHM. You seem like a decent person and you really want to be included here. I don't see a reason why you can't be, especially since I know most of these people and I find them rather reasonable. However, if you get upset about the little things, people tend to natural throw it back at you, and that's probably the biggest reason you got nominated for
negative awards. Also... note that it took me years before I won POTM or a PEELie, and although I made trophies for myself for both occasions, I don't really think they're all that important; I'm just glad that there's a place like this that I can come to and relax.... and it really has been a home away from home for me when I needed it.
Edit since new posts came up while I was typing:
@hobbitboy: the proposals to change POTM as stated in this thread may in turn make it more like a best poster of the month. However, POTM has never actually been about best poster of the month, and it has always been a popularity contest. I stated reasons above why that's actually a good thing with a small portion of rules. It brings us together to recognize somebody we like, and it used to be exciting and fun; that was the spirit of POTM and that's why we should have it.
@Svip: I've already tried that. It doesn't work. The reason it doesn't work is because there are thousands of posts made each month and it's very difficult for
anybody to cull through their memory and think of the very best ones. Eventually, since we all have such short attention spans, it will just die off on its own. If you happen to disagree with my analysis, you can do what I did and start your own Post of the Month thread anytime you want. That's also an interesting point.... that both this and the PEELies started out just because someone started them... there was no authority or governing body, somebody just decided they thought it would be fun to do and then we all did them and they were cool so we kept doing them. I may be incorrect, but I think the ratio of female POTM winners to male POTM winners is ridiculously high for the past year.... which would make this, in fact, not a penis length contest.
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