The 'Shroom:Issue LIV/Awards Committee Commentaries

Awards Committee Commentaries

What did the Awards Committee go through during the planning of the Fifth Awards Ceremony? What did they feel, and what did they want? What do they think should go down next year? Well, read through all of the commentaries below and find out!

We will start with a break-down of the entire ceremonies with Ralphfan (the Awards Director), as well as his hopes and opinions for next year. Then the responses from each of the other members that chose to participate will be presented.

Who are the members of the Awards Committee? Here is a list (with some additional information) for reference:
 * 1) Mason (talk)
 * 1) Mason (talk)
 * 1) Mason (talk)
 * 1) Mason (talk)
 * 1) Mason (talk)
 * 1) Mason (talk)

Ralphfan
Now that the dust has cleared, and it's been a month since the 2011 Anniversary and Mario Awards V, I think it's safe to say the event was a huge success. We broke just about every record that we could. Voter turnout increased across all the categories and the activity on both the chatroom and forums dramatically increased.

The ceremony itself was a blast. The threads were nearly twice as active as they had been in previous years, and all 60 presentations were finished on time. SMB hosted the Userpedia Awards, Tucky hosted the 'Shroom Awards, Gamefreak hosted the Fail Awards and I hosted the Mario Awards. My three counterparts did a great job staying in contact with me and posting all the scripts on time.

We also had three excellent events to go along with the awards: a guessing contest, a Mafia game and a Brawl tournament. Wayoshi started the guessing contest in 2008, but not enough interest was garnered to get contestants. He tried again in 2009 and I entered along with Stooben and Tucayo. I narrowly edged out Stooben to win by 10 points. In 2010, I won by a considerable margin over Tucky, Gamefreak and SMB. This year, we had an unprecedented 11 contestants and BMB edged out Gamefreak by just 2 points to win.

The Mafia game was a new addition to this year's festivities. Stooben brought Mafia to the forums in April 2010 and the game stuck. From one forum game to a whole child board of games, Mafia has become a fixture of the community. I hosted this game along with Stooben Rooben. This year's Awards Mafia game had 37 players as well as three mid-game replacements for a total of 40 players, a MarioWiki record. Though the Mafia were poised to win the game, a hidden faction, the Werewolves, got incredibly lucky and ended up taking some of the Mafia members to their side to eventually win the game.

The Brawl tournament was a new event, hosted by BMB. In 2009, Wayoshi hosted a Mario Kart Wii tournament, though there was no tournament in 2010. MST3K won the tournament. The event was very popular and it looks like there will be more game tournaments held next year.

Even with all the great events this year, there is still room for much more. A poll held shortly after the Awards by the Poll Committee showed that nearly 80% of the users hadn't even heard of the awards! Next year, the Awards Ceremony will hopefully shatter all the previous records we set.

Until then, you may be wondering how you can get involved. In February, the Awards committee will be formed. The members of the committee meet in the chatroom from late March to June from 8-10 PM Eastern time every Friday night to pick the awards and nominees that will be voted on. Being a committee member is a very serious matter and regular attendance and insightful contribution to the meeting topics is expected of all committee members. If you want to join but may be busy on most Fridays, don't worry. The meetings are also open to non-committee members who wish to drop in sporadically.

I'd like to take this opportunity to finish my section by once again thanking all the committee members, all the presenters, all the participants in the events and all the voters (except the ones that voted SPM) for such a great turnout this year. Hopefully next year's show will be even bigger and better!

Baby Mario Bloops
Being on the Award Committee is quite eventful. You party every friday, and then at the end, you pull from a hat and decide what will be in the polls! No, in all seriousness, I felt like I helped the community out greatly. Each member WAS eventful, but in a good, business-like manner. There were many arguments, yes, but there were also many fun times I had. I think it is a great way to help out and make our wiki better every year. If I was an active user, I would say that they should definitely join us on the committee or just simply help out later on by doing some award presentations!

Gamefreak75
I liked being on the Awards Committee. It was a fun experience, most of the time at least. I think everything went smoothly, seeing as how we got a lot of progress and were even able to expand without having to do back-up scripts (except for one special case). In the future, I hope to see non-Mario awards, like NIWA Awards or something. I’m not exactly sure where I’m going with this, so yeah.

Lindsay151
I say it was a good opportunity for me to participate with other users to discussing about what decent subjects on wiki should added to Award. In my opinion, everything about it went quite great.

Mason
I had a great time! I thought Ralphfan would be an unjust leader but he only made us pay 50 dollars to use the restroom! I thought the meeting room was a little crowded though, and several times I was tempted to throw some of the non-AC members out the window. The biggest issue I had was trying to get all the Super Mario enemies to agree to go up on stage for the ceremony. I didn't think we'd get that Whomp in but after a few Mini Mushrooms he barely squeezed in the door. The Boo was really hard to keep quiet. He wasn't supposed to know his result until I announced them but he was behind me while I was preparing my cue cards. Sneaky thing covered his face and turned invisible when I turned around! I do think he conducted himself pretty well around the Koopa Troopa and Shy Guy, but boy were they disappointed about not getting the top spot! Next year I think they should provide more donuts in the AC building's lobby, but other than that, it was great!

New Super Mario
Being on the Awards Committee this year was a very fun experience. Even though it's a lot of work, it's a great way to get involved with the Wiki and the Forums and decide something nearly 200 people will vote on. I would suggest anyone to join it. It's a lot of fun, as long as you're free for chat meetings on Fridays. Most of the meetings were smooth, but some were a little out of hand. The first month was more insane until we used the chatroom's mute feature which made things a little less rambunctious. Plus, for some of you who thought that you didn't get to present the one you REALLY wanted to, by signing up, you get one reserve sign up! I plan to join this year again as well. Thank you for a great year AC!

Smasher 101
Although I wanted to punch myself in the face during some of the meetings, being on the Awards Committee was a fun and enjoyable experience. The people I worked with were great, and I am pleased with the work we got done. Ralphfan also did a great job leading us. Overall, I loved being on the Committee, and will definitely want to join it again next year.

Super Mario Bros.
Hello everybody, SMB here.

What can I say? I believe this year's awards were great. Most people that did their presentations put in a lot of effort, we had a decent amount of voters this year, and we had wonderful side-events as well (the tournament, the games, the chat party...).

I did not have a lot of time to help out this year during the planning, but I am happy with what I did contribute: I participated in the efforts to expand the Userpedia Awards, the Fail Awards, and The 'Shroom Awards (out of which, only the push to expand Userpedia was unsuccessful), and also participated in several decisions with the list of Awards and nominations.

As like I did last year, I did four presentations this year (one from each ceremony), participated in the Awards Mafia game (winning the "Mafia MVP" and "Overall MVP" titles), and hosted the Userpedia Awards for the second year in a row. It was an extremely fun night, and almost everybody that attended was pleased.

What should we do next year? I feel we should cut out five Fail Awards and add five Userpedia Awards. This would help balance out the amount of Userpedia, Fail, and 'Shroom Awards Ceremonies and would be fair to everybody that likes the UP Awards. Besides that, I don't really think much else should chance, although I do hope that I can be more involved.

But yeah, thank you for reading. Hope to see everybody participatingin the Sixth Mario Awards next year!