Thread:Mark Otaris/@comment-4196050-20151218124621/@comment-4360159-20160512225108

This is a rather dated discussion (...that I somehow stumbled upon), but I wanted to make a suggestion:

Just get rid of the "User of the Year" poll altogether– for the end of this year and subsequent ones.

Among our younger-skewed wiki, this poll does not serve to increase good-faith activity throughout the year (I believe), but can create competitive ill-will towards the end of the year (as y'all have seen). Perhaps you just want to continue the tradition of awarding deserving users, which is entirely understandable, but there are other, less flawed ways to award them.

I would like to propose that this project (barnstars) be revived instead (in conjunction with the established achievement system). In this way, editors may be awarded throughout the year (for various reasons), and no one is clamoring over a single award.

i also want to point out that y'all may not exactly weigh this poll as much as the editors do. heck, I was nominated last year with basically only 5 edits– edits to my user page. that isn't really fair to the other editors who had actually been editing that year.