Slashdot is Giving Away $100,000

So to kick off the new year, Andover.Net decided that we ought to give away a lot of money. We're excited to announce the 2000 Slashdot Beanie Awards. No, we're not giving away 2000 beanies, but we are giving away prizes ranging from $30k for Most Improved Open Source Project to $10k awards for things like Unsung Hero and Best Community Advocate. You can read the awards index, where you can also discuss the categories as well as place your nominations. Or you can read on to see a list of awards and a description of the nomination and voting process.

Nomination

Let's be honest here. If Hemos and I sat down in a room and tried to pick the nominees for each catagory ourselves, either we would have the five members of Monty Python nominated for every category or only one of us would emerge from the room alive. And then whoever lived would get flamemail because we forgot to include Carol Cleveland (who really deserved to be nominated for Best Unix Eyecandy).

We didn't want to deal with that. So instead we've opened up the nominations. Each registered Slashdot user is allowed to nominate one person or project in each category. Each category will have a Slashdot discussion attached to it where you can chit chat about the nominees. And everyone can change their vote as many times as they want (until the nominations close in 2 weeks).

The nominations are blind... you can't see who is winning until...

Voting

Voting will function the same way. You can talk amongst yourselves, and each registered user is allowed one vote which can be changed all you want until we close the contest. The winners will be announced at the next LinuxWorld in New York.

The Categories

The Grand Prize ($30,000)

• Most Improved Open Source Project

Ten Thousand Dollar Awards

• Most Improved Kernel Module
• Unsung Hero
• Best Newbie Helper
• Most Deserving Open Source Charity
• Best Open Source Advocate

Two Thousand Dollar Awards

• Best Unix Desktop Eyecandy
• Best Unix Desktop Earcandy
• Best Desktop Theme
• Best Open Source-Related Book
• Best Perl Module
• Best Apache Module
• Best Open Source Text Editor
• Best Deserving of a $2,000 Award
• Best Designed Interface in a Graphical Application
• Best Designed Interface in a Non-Graphical Application

Why The Hell Nots (A Beanie, and a Hug from CowboyNeal)

• Best Dressed
• Favorite Slashdot Comment Poster
• Favorite Slashdot Author
• Best Slashdot Story of 1999
• Big Dumb Patent Bully
• Big Dumb Domain Bully
• Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism
• The Hemos Award (only Hemos is eligible)

Why not Most Interesting New Idea?

Seems to me that a large portion of the Open Source stuff out there is just rewriting things that've already been invented. The people who are inventing new things don't get the attention they deserve.

Why not give an award for new ideas? If Open Source wants to survive, it needs to innov... inn... innova... invent new things. (Sorry, couldn't bring myself to say it... the term has been tarnished forever...)

you know, I don't really like this idea

"Person most deserving $2000" What kind of award is that? Better to call it best ballot stuffer. Unsung hero? If no one knows about someone's work, who is going to know to vote for them?

I always hated school sponsored popularity contests, where all the jocks and cheerleaders get to give themselves awards and see who had the most friends. Is this really all that different? Doing stuff like this creates resent among all those who feel left out. Especially since most open source work is a group effort, to single one person out is a slap in the face to all those whose work is ignored.

I suppose none of this matters, since we already know who will get all these awards, Linus Torvalds, Alan Cox, Larry Wall, Apache, XFree86, etc.

A contest designed for Red Hat, Debian, and GNOME

Being some of the only Linux groups that get favorable postings on Slashdot, I'm sure members of the three groups in the subject will be pleased. And I'm sure the rest of us can go pound sand.

I, for one, will not be voting for this very reason. Slashdot occasionally presents an even handed view of the Linux landscape, but the congretation here is so biased I find it odd that Andover.net would authorize something like this contest to take place. It's like opening up a vote on whether gun control is a good idea knowing that only NRA members have received word of the contest. This contest is guaranteed to be skewed.

Don't even get me started on all the perl hackers out there who -- as we speak -- are customizing their scripts to help skew the results.

If Andover was serious about this contest, it would set up another web site (rumor has it that it's an Internet company, after all), leave the Slashdot moniker off of it, then let ALL Linux news sites carry word of its existence and let the community in general vote. Without that, I can't take this contest seriously.

Flame away...

Too bad it isn't run as a real contest

What's the point of retroactively awarding people? Why not use the money as an incentive to coders, like a contest?

Especially since there are glaring problems in the categories. The first issue is the ones where I can already pick the final winner.

Big Dumb Patent Bully == Amazon
Big Dumb Domain Bully == etoys
Clue Stick Award for FUD in Journalism = MSNBC

Is there any point to these, when all they'll do is attract flamebait?

Then there's the ones where 90% of the voters will go "Huh??". Like:

Best Perl Module
Most Improved Kernel Module
Best Newbie Helper

Does the standard Slashdot reader have any clue on these? Personally, I can't even suggest a single nomination off the top of my head.

So wouldn't this money be better served by using it for a CONTEST? That $30,000 for "Most Improved Open Source Project" is one hell of an incentive for the lone coder to get off their ass and start developing. Instead we'll probably just award some crappy half assed Microsoft UI imitator that has a lot of name recognition. *cough* KDE *cough* Go Slashdot!

best dressed, silly :-)

I was trying to think of what I'd qualify for. Most people don't know who the hell I am, and usually people aren't too kind to my postings (after all I don't like South Park ;-), so I figured that I have to qualify for best dressed. Why? Let me count the ways:

• my large collection of silk paisly shirts. Paisly is ALWAYS cool :-)
  
• black buttondown with black tie and somehow look neither goth nor Johnny Cash.
  
• proud owner of the Ugliest Jacket Known To Man(tm) . . . I'd show it to you, but you likely won't want to see it ;-)
  
• 1999 was the end of a long reign for one pork pie hat, and the beginning of a new one. Corderoy this time. How can you go wrong?!?!?!
  
• t-shirts ranging from O'Reily, to Sluggy Freelance, to Swans. Something for everyone
  
• because you know you should love me *bats eyelashes*
  

so vote for me. I'll give you a cookie. One per vote if I win :-)