Mains, Runners-up, HMs (for reference)

[baja blast rd.]

Some people think there's a big (quality) difference between Cacowards, runners-up, and HMs, something like this:  

 

It's a lot more logical to think of it as something like below. (Numbers are used here for convenience; the feature itself isn't ordered.)

 

This relation is not tied to any particular set of preferences. Most people will find great to be less common as a whole than very good, which is in turn less common than pretty good, etc. -- even if they have strongly clashing ideas about which wads those are. 

 

The implied main range would be big because there's a big potential difference between "a very uncommon sort of all-time great; even with stingy ratings, this is a very high 9 out of 10 or something" and "very good." And the white space captures that anything in the feature at all is pretty high up there in a given year. (150+ wads are released a year, not even including things like standalone 3-hour speedmaps.) 

 

There are a lot of implications to this.

 

- Phrases like "only a runner-up" or "not even a runner-up" should be retired (they have always sounded very silly). I think since late 2021 this has been said a lot less, so that's a good sign. 

 

- For minimizing disagreement on what places where with the current structure: each year would have 1-3 main awards, 4-6 runners-up, and like 20-40 HMs lol. The other direction (more mains) has the opposite effect. (Luckily, it's obvious that minimizing disagreement is a silly aim.) 

 

- You should take an hour to put together your own commentated favorites lists. Those are fun and interesting to read and give your own preferences shine.

 

 

edit: after some hours without a response, I'll just use this for reference, since I'm actually not sure what discussion would be had anyway :P

Edited April 26, 2022 by baja blast rd.