zompist bboard

The time has come to crown this year's winners of the ZBB Awards! I have tabulated the votes, and it is time to give our recognition where it is due. All red-texted winners below are links.


1. Best Conlang - The winner, as you may have guessed, is MisterBernie for Baranxe'i. Congratulations on a job well done! MisterBernie received 8 votes out of 15 cast.
Honorable Mention: Salmoneus, for the very interesting Rawang Ata, which got 3 votes.


2. Best Morphosyntax - The winner is... yours truly, for Dimana Lokud, getting 3 votes out of 7 cast.
Thanks!


3. Best Phonology or Diachronics - Whimemsz pulled way ahead of the competition with Rehta, receiving 10 votes out of 15.


4. Best Script - Jádyndár wins this easily, for his Pékrif script for Gomain (PDF), with 7 votes out of 12.


5. Best Conworld - Observer clearly wins, with 3 votes out of 8, but for which conworld? We'll say Kćeća Ora gets it, as it got two votes, but there was also 1 for a different world of his, Sayre.


6. Best Conworld Element, Written - Eandil's Theory of Magic won, with 3 votes out of only 4 that were cast.


7. Best Conworld Element, Graphical or Physical - This was by far the most competetive category! 18 votes were cast, and of those, HandsomeRob wins yet again, this time for his City of Norrilund map (PDF), with 6 votes. Congratulations!
Honorable Mentions: Nae's Maainm map and Vampireshark's money and passports etc. were right behind, each with 5 votes. Both deserve recognition and congratulations as well.


8. Best Topic - The highest vote-getters were three topics that received 3 votes apiece, out of 20 cast. This fails the N+1 rule for valid ties, requiring me in my capacity as Awards organizer for 2011 to cast a tie-breaking vote.

The contenders, as stated in peoples' votes, are:
Nortaneous, for How to design a non-European phonology
Sirred, for Con Comparison: What would they think of that?
Skomakar'n, for Help your fluency in a nifty way

All three are good threads and I'm glad we have all of them; on the other hand, none of the three matter much to me personally. So since I have no real personal choice, I note that Skomakar'n's topic has a spin-off version begun by Finlay, in C&C, which also received 2 votes; this, along with the high post totals in both, to me seems better demonstration of a good topic than anything else I can think of. Therefore I cast my vote for Skomakar'n, for Help your fluency in a nifty way.

The struckthrough text has been superseded by discussion below; the award now goes jointly to Skomakar'n and to Finlay for both threads, "Help your fluency in a nifty way" and "Help your conlang fluency", which when taken together garnered five votes. Congratulations! Sirred and Nortaneous receive official Honorable Mentions.


9. Best Newcomer - With 15 votes cast, all but 3 went to MisterBernie, making him our official 2011 Best Newcomer. Congratulations!


10. Nicest or Most Helpful ZBBer - The nicest or most helpful ZBBer is hereby declared to be Astraios, who received 6 votes out of 17 cast.


11. Best Quote - The winner for Best Quote, receiving 3 votes out of 12 cast, is Kereb, for

Special Award for Outstanding Services to Conartistry - Receiving all 11 of the votes that were cast, Ollock gets this award for the Conlangery Podcast! Congratulations, Ollock; the community clearly appreciates what you have done. Keep up the good work!

Congratulations to all our winners.

Sko's topic was actually a spin-off of the original Conlang Fluency thread, as far as I can remember, but whoever made that (it's a while ago now) had put it in Quickies – naturally, two weeks must have passed at one point and it dropped off the bottom, so I made a new one in C&C so that if it gets left alone for a while, we won't lose it this time. So I'm not quite sure which is the spin-off of which. In a way it's kinda special to me as well because (in combination with me finishing university and suddenly having a lot of time on my hands) it kinda goaded me into conlanging again after a hiatus of at least two or three years.

Oh crap. It looks like you're right - I didn't actually read Sko's first post, which makes clear that he was taking the concept from the original conlang thread. Whoops.

Since we don't know who made the original one, I will jointly award it to both you and Sko, for starting and maintaining the current threads. I hope you find that fair.

Nah, I'm not bothered/complaining, just musing around it...

Congratulations to the winners, in any case.

Congratulations to everyone who won.

_________________
Try the online version of the HaSC sound change applier: http://chrisdb.dyndns-at-home.com/HaSC

I'd like to congratulate Kereb for his excellent answer to my essay question.

Yeah, congratulations, everyone. Congrats especially to Eandil, whose great approach to magic has single-handedly inspired me to work out a few details of a alternate physics / magic system of my own. And Kereb's quote? Had me literally laughing out loud.

Congratulations. I vote for the winners

_________________


Languages I speak fluently
English, עברית

Languages I am studying
العربية, 日本語

Conlangs
Athonian

I already posted my response to this on the Conlangery Podcast thread, but I'd thought I'd quote it here for posterity:



Congrats to all winners, and happy conlanging!

_________________
George Corley
Producer and Moderating Host, Conlangery Podcast