Voting will soon open for the 2006 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Awards. This will be even more democratic than in the past. I am going to post the potential categories now. If you have any objections (be it suggestions for additions, removal or anything else), please post them ASAP. It is still possible to change these and feedback from last year has been taken into account. In no particular order:

Distribution of the Year
LiveCD Distribution of the Year
Database of the Year
Desktop Environment of the Year
Browser of the Year
Security Application of the Year
Web Development Editor of the Year
Shell of the Year
Messaging Application of the Year
Windows on Linux Application of the Year
Graphics Application of the Year
IDE of the Year
Text Editor of the Year
Mail Client of the Year
Office Suite of the Year
Window Manager of the Year
Multimedia Utility of the Year
Video Media Player Application of the Year
Video Authoring Application of the Year
Audio Media Player Application of the Year
Audio Authoring Application of the Year

Very soon I will post the list of nominees for each. You'll have a short time to voice your objections and suggest additions at that phase also. Thanks for your participation and enjoy.

--jeremy

How about some hardware categories, such as pc, laptop, and server vendor of the year?

How about a category for server-side software?

What exactly would "server-side software" entail?

--jeremy

Web servers, mail servers, file servers, etc. etc. I guess. Also server-side software like forums, wikis, CMSes etc.? I know many are not Linux specific, but LAMP servers do power a lot of websites. It would be an interesting addition.

Messaging Application of the Year = MTA or IM? If it's for IM, I don't see a category for MTA..

And I take it your removing Web Server since we all know Apache will win that by a landslide?

Including hardware would just open the flood gates I would think and really has nothing directly to do with Linux. If you added those three, I could imagine those wanting individual categories for hardware like Graphics Card of the Year, etc.

I'm still debating the hardware suggestion. I like it but I have some concerns. We removed most of those server polls as they were continually lopsided (ie. same winner 3+ years in some cases by 90+%).

--jeremy

I hate to ruin some people/member's fun but shouldn't we limit the voting to members who have a certain number of posts or were an actual member in 2006 at LQ? Kind of like the URL rules for spam.

For example, there have to be about a dozen or so members who voted for PCLinuxOS all in a row who all have just 1 post to their name. This seems like an unfair advantage that any project could post a link for their site members to come sign up, vote and probably never return. Either that or those with at least 1 post and have been a member before that start of the 2006 Member Choice Awards, since it is called the LinuxQuestions Member Choice Awards and not the anyone who can signup, vote and never come back awards. It should truly reflect the actual members of our community that were/was a member here in 2006 and not the internet community..

Just my two cents.. and to make the voting seem more fair, if something like this isn't put into place, it really doesn't seem like an Award worth giving or we should change the name of the Awards..

That doesn't seem at all in the Open Source spirit. We'll remain open to all, but do have back-end algorithms that weed out nefarious activity.

--jeremy

I understand the Open Source spirit but calling them the LinuxQuestions.org Member Choice Awards isn't suitable to those that sign up only to vote and never return, in my opinion. It's kind of like, allowing the world to elect our President in our own Presidential elections here in the United States, that's if the United States was Open Source..

It just wouldn't seem fair to those that actually are members here for the past year, they can vote for their actual choice but because someone linked to the awards on some project X's site, we get a huge surge of people sign up only to vote and then leave, to never return cause they just want their project to win the award, that to me doesn't indicate or reflect our own Member's choice of those that do in fact contribute more here than just a random type vote..

Just a thought, I'm not against opening it up to those who only have 1 post or just registered but it does keep those that will never return from voting. At least if it stays open to the masses who can register at anytime, perhaps the title of the awards should change since it apparently doesn't reflect the true members of this forum and site, or at least will impact the actual vote tallies of such members..

Once you join, you're a member...so it fits quite well IMHO. In the end, the number of people who register just to vote is small, the number who stay around after joining is more than you might think and the impact on the results is infinitesimal. What we want to prevent is multiple votes from the same people, malicious ballet stuffing, etc.

--jeremy

RE: hardware category.
I suggest a category of Easiest to Setup (for windows users) which would indirectly
include hardware issues. This of course could be refined somewhat.

In the next edition of this poll, I'd like to see "Most Promising FOSS project of the year" award.

Hello,

I have a suggestion for a new category: backup utility of the year.
Given the ever-growing importance of backing up one's stuff it could be worth it's own section. (My choice, btw, would be rsync.)