It's the most wonderful time of the year! That's right, its Simmania People's Choice Award (SMPCA) season. For three years, this event has been Simmania's biggest extravaganza, where members get to put the spotlight on other members of their good deeds, great achievements, and contagious personalities that make Simmania what it is.

Over the last two years, we've doled out 21 awards and received 68 nominations, most of those nominations being from 2010. We're hoping to go bigger than ever this time, but we need your help, as these awards are for you, but they are BY you.

WHAT'S DIFFERENT THIS YEAR
We're doing things a little different than we have in the past. We're going to have a slightly more sophisticated form to handle nominations this year, and we're going to be utilizing the twitter to keep updates on our nomination count. Also, we're going to be releasing the awards before Christmas this year. Last year, the SMPCAs were embarrassingly behind schedule, and we ran back the deadline in 2010.

This years deadline is SUNDAY, DECEMBER 16 at 23:59 GMT. Again we're planning a release before (or possibly on) Christmas Day.

NOMINATING
DO NOT SEND A PM TO ANYONE! We're using a new system this year; please use this form for nominating users. Under "username" write your username. Under "nominee" write the username of the person you are nominating. Use the actual username, not a real-life name or nickname (we might get confused).

THE FINE PRINT
With every major event like this, a few key rules need to be laid down. The SMPCA committee does not have a ton of rules, but we will be enforcing the ones we do have. You have the time to read these, so please do.

• This is not a political race. Do not nominate yourself or tell others to nominate you. If you hear anybody "campaigning" for an award, please don't listen to them. The administration would appreciate any reports of this happening.
  
• Do not create an account (or worse, accounts) for the sole reason to nominate you. All of your nominations will be discarded and the second account will be indefinitely banned. You will also be ruled ineligible for awards due to the concern this brings up. We're obviously not expecting this to happen, and because we have a pretty good idea of who is active and who isn't active here, we're not expecting anybody to try it and get away with it either.
  
• Don't nominate here or on twitter. Also, don't send a nomination via PM like you may have done in the past. The form you should use is linked to above.
  
• Do not nominate yourself. This is non-negotiable and your nomination will not count. We will ask you to send a new nomination.

CATEGORIES
The SMPCA committee would like to stress that if you have an idea for a category, that you post the idea in this thread or in a tweet to @SimmaniaForums. If we add categories to the form, we'll make a tweet and a post about it.

The categories that are currently on the form are as follows:

• The Pro Gamer | Over half of Simmania’s posts are from forum games. This award is awarded to the community’s favorite forum-gamer.
  
• A Newbie's BFF | Most people who register and stay around at Simmania mention the welcoming community. This award goes to the member who is the friendliest in showing the new members around.
  
• The Community Center | The Community Activities forum (amongst others) are a unique place with many events for members to take part in, from contests of the best picture, to sports leagues to compete in. This award goes to a staple of these occasions.
  
• Teacher of the Year | Everybody in the world is open to learning. This award goes to the exceptional mentor in the Tutorials forum.
  
• The One Who Can't Shut It | One of our favorite awards over the last three years, this adequately-named awards goes to the biggest yapper in the forums and in the chat.
  
• Employee of the Year | Simmania has had a lot of staff shortages this year, and is running stronger than ever. A special member of this exclusive team is to claim this very prestigious award.
  
• Developer Diary of the Year | The Developer Diaries are the heart of Simmania, and all the other city simulator fansites. The writer of this standout developer diary this year will earn this coveted award.
  
• Most Aesthetic Developer Diary | Developer Diaries have to flow and work well to be great. Often considered a runner-up award to the Journal of the Year award, this award will go to the DD with the most pleasing updates.
  
• Most Helpful DDer | The only thing better than an awesome Developer Diary is a helpful writer who gives advice and answers the questions they get. This award will go to the most helpful and inspiring Developer Diary writer on Simmania.
  
• BAT Team of the Year | The Simmania File Cave is under development, a long-anticipated project here. This award goes to the BAT team on Simmania with the most qualitative creations.
  
• The Year's Best BAT | With all of the exchange talk on Simmania, many people have started creating BATs. The most exemplary creation will earn its creator this newly created award.
  
• BATer of the Year | In January, SimCity will be a 10-year old videogame. Most are obsolete after this long, but SimCity is still going very strong, mostly because of custom content. Our most inspirational and creative BATer will claim this award.

WE KNOW THAT'S A LOT
If you've got any questions about anything, we strongly encourage you to ask about it. Thanks for your support. And remember that a nomination count will be on Twitter, and that nominations close on December 16.

I'm very exited about People's Choice Awards this season. I think this is going to be a great round, and I'm really looking forward to the results.

Wow the year went by so fast

@30: No kidding.

111222333444 wrote:Wow the year went by so fast

I don't have any nominations from you 30

I just saw this now of course I'm still checking out the site

To clarify, can the same person win more than one award in the same category, or at all?

Oh yay I hope I get awards... :p

I feel a need to reply to this because I nomed someone, so... Hi!

submitted 2! More to come!

(Wait there is no space for descriptions)

I've submitted my first 2 sumbmissions... and so should everyone else!

@K50: Hope you don't mind, I've borrowed your signature image advertising the SMPCA's.

CoastRunner wrote:To clarify, can the same person win more than one award in the same category, or at all?

Each category has one award (i.e. There's only one winner for each award). But theoretically one person can sweep every award, there's no limit. Our record is three awards for one person, that was in 2010.

111222333444 wrote:(Wait there is no space for descriptions)

We've never done that

Submitted 3 nominees!

Sent 3 more More on the go!

Also, can we nominate multiple people?

Can't believe it's this time of year again, it seems just like yesterday the SMPCA's were first thought of.
I've submitted a couple

I've submitted three so far. More to come.

Also, can I nominate more than one person for the same category?

You can nominate more than one person for one category, yes. But I'd rather have 5 nominations for 5 different categories than 5 nominations for 1 category, it makes tiebreaking a lot easier

Also, on a side note, we already have more nominations than we had all year last year, so thanks for all the support Keep those nominations coming!

K50 wrote:Also, on a side note, we already have more nominations than we had all year last year, so thanks for all the support Keep those nominations coming!

That's awesome... what's the overall record? Maybe we can beat that.

2010 had 39 nominations, and we have 32 now. I'm hoping we get more than 2010 and 2011 (which had 29) combined, which would be 68.

I think we can EASILY do it if everybody does their part

I think we can reach that too. I have only submitted 2 so far but I am planning on nominating for all categories.

Let me get cracking on my nominations

We're at 36 nominations folks!

And again I'll try to keep updates going on the Twitter, we're are at @SimmaniaForums

May I add a humble suggestion for next year? As a relatively new member of this site I find the nominating process difficult as I don't know all the members or their work well enough. Maybe having the site owners nominate four or five people for each category first, and then having us vote would make the process easier. I know I could see the nominations and then go and look at each person's work. Just a suggestion.

elavery wrote:May I add a humble suggestion for next year? As a relatively new member of this site I find the nominating process difficult as I don't know all the members or their work well enough. Maybe having the site owners nominate four or five people for each category first, and then having us vote would make the process easier. I know I could see the nominations and then go and look at each person's work. Just a suggestion.

It's not incredibly difficult in my opinion. For example, for the Developer Diary awards (there's three of them), you can look through the DD's and ask yourself "who's is the most qualitative?", "who's is the most visually pleasing?", "who is the most helpful DDer?", etc. You can kind of plug in question x for forum y for most of these awards

Is that any helpful or not really?

I need some time to think over my choices for this
When is the dead line for Noms ?

Thanks, Brian