Scuba Steve

@dasho, the policy was pretty explicit and only deals with member/forums status because it's a lot more transparent. Sure, 4chan can be a shithole... but there is currently no forum ban on linking to 4chan. I'd also probably argue that a Doom wad that violates forum rules of conduct (stupid example: a project with map names featuring racial slurs) would also not be highlighted.

I think a lot of people would be fascinated to learn that many of the members aren't friends per se, it's really more of a professional working relationship. I like everyone who has been recruited, but people are more-often-than-not actually brought on board based on their writing output. Several members were noticed because they regularly contributed to the Megawad Club thread, or CardboardMarty because of the quality of his work and his knowledge of the gameplay mod niche of the community. Some members love slaughter, others adore barebones vanilla maps and one of them is a shallow artists who just like pretty things. Dew is there because nobody else knows what the fuck is going on with multiplayer. Such a diverse group of tastes helps self-correct the awards from being all about big-budget GZDoom endeavors or 10 Nicolas Monti maps. Additionally, more writers means the workload can be spread out in such a way that the awards can increase in scope and wordcount and cover more community happenin's. From the very beginning until today, the most important part of the awards is just highlighting as much of the community as possible. There were some really great people working on this unique project, so I knew it would be frustrating... but there just needed to be a policy in place regarding banned community members (in this case, forum). It makes me the bad guy, but it certainly doesn't stop anyone from playing DBP59... it just means it isn't in the article.

I think some of this is a byproduct of my failure to transparently describe exactly how the Cacowards traditionally operated and how they are currently organized. I've been working on this on-and-off for the past year and figured this year, being the 20th anniversary of the awards themselves, would be as good a time as any to talk about the process of managing so many projects and culling them into a final list. In this case, I think a specifically high-profile project, Bloom, was not listed and it felt like an intentional slight (I seem to recall the mod absolutely blowing up ModDB and several major gaming websites so we tried to select smaller, less prominent community releases to highlight in its place? We also recruited additional volunteers this year to write specifically about mods in order to give them more prominence.) Let's be honest; the silly little Cacowards garner a lot of eyeballs every year and it feels good to see your work highlighted, so if you don't know how everything shakes out behind the scenes, it's easy to assume the worst (it probably doesn't help that I administered the awards by myself for many years... while simultaneously including projects I worked on... I promise that I asked others to weigh-in and even had them write the articles about my work, but there were no attributions back them for individual articles.) After 20 years, it's pretty obvious the process works well since many other communities (Quake) have tried to have their own 'awards' and they always seem to dissolve by the following year. Some of the Doom Award problems might just be growing pains since they're trying to use voting... which I tried back in 2004 but quickly learned 1.) nobody actually votes and 2.) when they do, it's only to cast a vote for the one thing they liked. Additionally, 3.) Results can be gamed and the earlier a project releases, the more time it has to accrue votes. Ultimately, I learned that things just go much smoother when a core group of passionate volunteers collaborate to get everything done. I don't know if it's because they felt the need to rush their work because everything was so new, but it does seem like a lot of it was generated by AI. There's been a huge backlash against AI generated writing and artwork (I'm not a fan) and I'd wager they found themselves in the middle of the debate. Add to that there's probably some bad blood between people coupled with good-old-fashioned internet hostility, and it's a perfect recipe for a splinter ceremony to form. I don't think there's any real community drama, I think it all stems from the ongoing, collective debate about the ethical concerns over AI generated content.

Also, WTF, there are Eviternity Barons now!?!

@Dragonfly Maybe these changes should just be added to the base mod itself?

I have noticed this on my 21:9 monitor.

It's just the enforcement of 'terms-of-service.' It's no more "propaganda" or censorship than the enforcement of social rules in public spaces; if you're running around a public shopping center shouting profanity and hurling slurs at other patrons, you're going to be escorted from the building. We don't go digging into the internet history of every mod-maker, but if you're banned or censured on this site, there is no expectation your works will receive any publicity. More important, this also means you can be assured their maps aren't being snubbed because of any judge's personal vendetta. As evidence by the awards this year, the community is larger and more diverse than ever and we have no intention of encouraging speech and behavior that might drive away the next COTY. If you have questions, feel free to send me a PM, but I won't discuss it in this thread anymore because the policy is quite clear.

I'll answer that; we've been trying to decide for years what's the best way to handle the DBP projects and I finally just made the call to omit them. Because of past behavior and prevailing attitudes on the Doomer Boards, Doomworld has a stated policy allowing for the posting of DBP but disallows the promotion of their forums. As long as this policy is in effect, the DBP are not entitled to free publicity. DBP59 was a top ten release this year, but this is not a democracy, it's a curated community. Anti social behavior makes you a pariah and the most extreme examples can get you banned on Doomworld. The Doomer Boards can change their moderation policy at any time, but until such time, Doomworld's restriction extends to its hosted awards.

First post!

*Cacowards tomorrow* You mother fucker...

I think one of the greatest tragedies occurred right here on Doomworld; Ninja Doom vanished without a trace. Despite being hosted by this very website, there were no files recovered from 3DDownloads, no one seems to have any development builds, and no screenshots remain from years of development. There is also a 'lost wad' which was destroyed intentionally. My hosted site mentions a map I made in high-school... of that very same building. The map was completed in 1998, when I was a junior, however the Columbine shooting occurred the following year. I scrubbed the file from the internet (which was possible back then) and it will never be seen again.

RAMP - Map34: Four Comas is definitely inspired by MyHouse.