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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

Kereb wrote:

Bob Johnson wrote:Essay question: how does use-mention distinction apply to Godwin's law

You have 30 minutes

godddd
giving me a TIME LIMIT to answer a forum post?
what is this, NAZI GERMANY?????

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.

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

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

Ollock wrote:Oh, wow, thanks! I will say that I couldn't possibly do this without my cohosts: Bianca, William, and even Tomás even if he hasn't shown up since episode 1. Me talking to myself for an hour is not something you want to hear. I also would thank DJP for donating LCS webspace and helping me get set up there, and all the people who emailed, commented, tweeted, or otherwise contributed ideas and content for the podcast. I couldn't have found half of the stuff we talk about without some help from the community.

I'll make sure to make a formal mention of this for the next recording. I'll probably quickly review all the other awards, too.

Congrats to all winners, and happy conlanging!