In the past few days the SBWI introduced the idea of Community Awards. There are several categories, in which you can vote your favourite players, streamers, casters, organizers/sponsors and users, as well as the people with the worst kind of behaviour in the past twelve months. The votings are done via google spreadsheet, to avoid multiple votes and should enable users of other platforms to vote as well.
Very important: Please add your TL.net or ICCup nickname at the end of the sheet, or it doesn't work. You can skip categories, if you don't care for them.
LaGFree: Brand new team, currently plays in the STL, organized by TerrOr. Already did some upsets by beating known names and showing the best management and preparation. Suggested by Jaevla
Fire Resist Yoba (FR): Formerly known as FRee FRiends Russia, organized by yoda himself, recently won the ICCup Clan League. Suggested by Zolotoi
trutaCz / eOnzErG: already explained in the original thread, now also featured in the user stream category. Suggested by Pauline.
vOddy: Nominated by Jaevla for Newcomer; very talented Swedish Terran, already showing promising games in the STL!
Sero: Apparently greatly improving player, known to play a show match soon against MVP and from streaming his training; Nominated by L_Master et al.
MCA64: Flaming Polish player who released the currently very popular MCA Launcher, which he also updates a lot. Many suggestions
2pacalypse-: Manages the BW part of Teamliquid and organizes various write up teams and helps out with CSS design stuff. Suggested by Mewka
Gecko: That's me, suggested by Pauline
MVP: 15 Year old angry Protoss, playing a grudge match against Sero soon. Suggested by Iway
NeMu: Quite oldschool Bulgarian Random player, known from trashtalking in TSL 3. Suggested by traceurling
Commenting on your votes is highly recommended. Please share your votes publicly - with a good reasoning!
I voted for Sero. This kid is definitely someone we will see in future tournaments/team leagues. As for best caster, I chose BisuDagger due to his dedication to streaming 7-8hrs of ICCUP Main Ladder Event games :D
Best player and Best zerg: Sziky. Kind of a no-brainer to be honest. Especially the first category. There are plenty of other talented zerg players in the foreign scene (both trutacz and technics have impressed me greatly during the last year), but at the end of the day, none of them have anything close to a decent W/L-ratio vs Sziky.
Best Terran: Skzlime. Terror is awesome when he shows up, and a great player for sure, but I'd want to see more of him before giving him my vote. Ramms is also very much deserving of his nomination, and he tends to go far in most events he plays in... but somehow, he always falls just short of the finish line. He does have every chance of dethroning Skzlime in the future though (next award-season maybe? ) It was a close call between Marwin and Skzlime for me, but in the end Skzlime's long-term accomplishments won, if barely. Gambit's Cup really opened my eyes for Marwin, and he's impressed me ever since.
Best Protoss: dRaW. Being a terran player by heart, I must admit that I'm not too knowledgeable here. Dragon has shown a lot of promise, but I'm a bit reluctant to call him the best protoss player, for the time being anyway. Lancerx has shown both amazing and... slightly less so, play during the last couple of months. He was probably the closest candidate other than dRaW.
Best Team: - There's too many of them for me to just pick one, so I didn't vote in this category.
Best User Stream: Shrinker This one was probably the easiest pick for me. I've been watching Shrinker's stream on and off for way longer than I'd care to admit. It's really cool to be able to watch a player improve over a long period of time, and I always enjoy watching Shrinker stream. To illustrate this with an example: 9 times out of 10 I pick his stream over the snipealot ones. ezpz. Also he has a great taste in music and I'm subscribed to his playlist on spotify ^^
Best Newcomer: Wallace As much as I wanted to put vOddy and shrinker up there, my vote goes for Wallace. But if vOddy keeps improving his terran he'll have this title in a couple of months ezpz (although, I guess he might not count as a newcomer by then Oh well, he'll just have to fight Skzlime, Marwin & co. for the "Best Terran" award instead )
Best Caster: - Couldn't make myself vote on this one, since I <3 Saylegant and Hacklemaster equally. Two slightly different styles of casting, same passion for all things BroodWar.
Community Effort: 2pac He does a terrible amount of work behind the scenes, and definitely deserves both respect and recognition for doing so. Same thing goes for most, if not all, of the nominees in this category. So, even though I voted for 2pac, it's not like the other nominees are selfish douchebags :p They all deserve, at the very least, a heartfelt "thank you".
Eric Cartman Award: - Didn't vote. I'm not really comfortable with throwing shit around, even when people are being idiots.
Han Solo / Princess Leia Award: Ninazerg This category was on par with, if not easier, to vote on than "Best User Stream". Aside from being one of the funniest and most talented writers I've had the pleasure of stumbling upon online (read her liquipedia user page and Giggly Girl E-Sports for starters, if you don't believe me), she also wrote a HUGE ZvP guide which I'm sure has helped many, myself included, in understanding the matchup. Frequently makes either insightful and thought provoking posts, or hilarious and high-quality troll material. Sometimes both at the same time. Also, ninazerg's blogs are awesome, and if you haven't read any of them yet you're actually a horrible person. Definitely a quality poster on TL, and coincidentally one who's also hosted events, been active on the strategy subforum and done all sorts of good for the community.