Avatar of the Month Award

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Revision as of 19:13, 15 December 2005

Avatar of the Month

An old practice among online communities in which nerds argued over who had the best avatar in use for that month. It was very common for people to change avatars frequently, either indicating issues with self perception, or just randomly stumbling upon images deemed "cooler" than their current one. Standard procedure dictated that a poll was made with options for different well known members of the community. After a pre-determined period of time (a week was normal, logically it would be less than a month) the poll would end and the winner was declared to be the member who received the most votes.

Compsci.ca's Avatar of the Month History

To date (December 2005), there have been three attempts to host an Avatar of the Month contest, started on:

May 24, 2003
Nominees:
bugzpodder
Asok
Tony
FwuffyTheBunny
ShadowStorm
Mint
Winner: None.
In truth, this wasn't an Avatar of the Month Award thread, but rather a "Coolest Avatar Contest" No poll was created, and interest seemed to fade shortly afterwards. The thread remains dusty and forgotten in the depths of CompSci.ca's past.

Oct 05, 2003
Official Nominees:
Amailer
Asok
Mazer
Catalyst
Tony
Dan
Winner: Unknown
The first true Avatar of the Month Award thread, this time featuring a poll. According to the statistics shown in the thread, the winner would have been the member known as Mazer, but there are no records to indicate him receiving any awards. Although Amailer managed to get a percentage of the votes, he was later disqualified after it was discovered that he was actually a 12 year old.

Feb 22, 2004
Official Nominees:
Paul Bian
Maverick
Shorthair
Mazer
Boarder16
McKenzie
Cervantes
Winner: Paul Bian
This was the last known Avatar of the Month Award thread on the CompSci.ca forums. Though there were many familiar names entered this time, the mood had changed dramatically from the previous contests. Most noticeable was the drastic change in Mazer's enthusiasm for the whole affair and wanted to leave it altogether. In the end, Paul Bian was the self proclaimed winner, but has yet to receive any kind of award.

Conspiracy Theory

When it became public knowledge that no winner of the Avatar of the Month Award had ever actually received an award, fear and panic began to spread, and with them, so did suspicion. Members began to develop theories as to what could be going on behind their backs. For instance, it seemed very stranged to a number of people that the only time an Avatar of the Month Award styled thread popped up was between the months of January and December. Some came to the conclusion that there never really was an award. Even though a picture of the award is available for anyone to see on the CompSci.ca forum, many argue that it looks like an obvious CG fake. Some believe that the whole contest was a trick played by the administrators to collect all of the money the members gambled and spend it on legal copies of Turing.