Halo Fanon:Annual Halo Fanon Wikia Awards/2012

Welcome to the Fifth Annual Halo Fanon Wikia Awards for 2012. We are honoured by your attendance to this annual community awards election and celebration, the fifth, and hopefully, not the last of its kind. This project is coordinated by the Halo Fanon Wiki Administration, and we thank the Star Wars Fanon Wiki for donating the concept of this annual community ritual to us. We look forward to your participation in this community-wide celebration, and hope that you will all participate! Now, read the regulations, nominate your favourite articles, and vote!

New Rules and Categories
As you may know, there have been some new categories added this year. They have been listed in the sections below, but have also been placed here to save users the trouble of looking for them if they are already familiar with the old categories.


 * 1) An previous award winner is now permitted to win in a separate year if and only if it has evidently been improved upon drastically since then. Since there is no definite standard of "improved drastically", the eligibility of previous winners is left to the discretion of the award host. As a final note, an article may win in the same category for a maximum of three years in total. This does not mean that the article can only win three awards; for example, if an article can be nominated for the Best Canon Expansion category, along with its own category, and wins in the top three awards of the year, and does so for three separate years, the article in question can theoretically win nine awards in total (this is however highly unlikely).
 * 2) If an article is the only nomination in its category and receives fewer than five votes, it will be combined with another similar category after the voting process. This ensures that an article of mediocre quality does not win by default, if it happens to have no competition. However, if a great show of support is given to the article to indicate that it is deserving of the award, it will still be given even if there are no other nominations.
 * 3) The Breakthrough User of the Year award is for users who have contributed to Halo Fanon in commendable ways as a drastic change. This applies to outstanding new users as well as older users who have been previously struggling to find their place on the wiki. This award cannot be won by recipients of the Writer of the Year award. Furthermore, users cannot be nominated for this category while being nominated for Best Writer. This award is meant to encourage hard-working new users, or ones that have been living in the shadow of others, to display their true potential, and is not recommended for seasoned users to try out for.
 * 4) The Best Canon Expansion of the Year category is pretty self-explanatory; any article with the same or similar name as an article found on Halopedia and has been expanded upon vastly to be deemed the author's own work. As there is more original material to work with, an article under this category requires 18,000 bytes to be nominated for the award. On the upside though, any Canon Expansion nominee is permitted to be also nominated for another suitable category.

Regulations

 * 1) Nominations and voting begin at 12:00 AM midnight GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) on December 1st, 2012 and will conclude promptly at 12:00 AM midnight GMT on December 30th, 2012, at the time of the New Year! Exceptions to this are listed below. Final winners will be announced and receive their awards on January 1st, 2013!
 * 2) Voting Qualifications: Users eligible to nominate and vote must have been users for at least four weeks and have sixty or more mainspace edits in order to vote. Because of the style of this celebration, sockpuppets and sock masters are not invited, and will be promptly banned from the Wiki and barred from future voting.
 * 3) Nominations:
 * 4) You may only nominate articles for a category so long as it expressly fits the definition of each category . Articles that are not eligible for a category will be removed by the administration. You may request a clarification about the definition of any category from . You may not nominate an article for more than one category, with the exception of Best Canon Expansion. Articles that are not eligible for nomination will be removed without any notice if they are found to have "content issues" "Unrealistic", "Non-Canon Friendly", etc
 * 5) You may nominate an unlimited number of articles written by any number of other authors for any number of categories. However, you are restricted to nominating only one of your articles for only one category for the whole election, and you cannot vote for your own article for the placement awards. This is to promote professional sportsmanship. For categories pertaining to users ("Best Writer of the Year", "Breakthrough User of the Year"), you may not nominate yourself. You may only nominate yourself for one article in the entire election, and this does not pertain to self-nominating yourself as a user.
 * 6) Articles must be at least 9,000 bytes long, and novels must be at least 72,000 bytes long. Exceptions to this are the canon expansion category, which must be at least 18,000 bytes long, and the short fiction category, which do not have a specific minimum length requirement (however, it does has a maximum length limit of 27,000 bytes). You can check the length of a wiki page by going into its edit history and checking the number of bytes on the latest revision, between the "contribs" and "undo" links.
 * 7) "Recycled" articles will not be accepted into the nomination process. An article that has received minor or no edits for the duration of the year is not eligible for the event. Every article's edit history will be checked when nominated, and will remain valid for nomination only if it has received moderate to major changes/improvements throughout the year.
 * 8) You must nominate articles according to the proper format (listed below). Fill out all the fields when submitting a nomination, and post the completed nomination form underneath the category that you're nominating the article in question for.
 * 9) Perceived breaches of good conduct and professional sportsmanship will be prosecuted by the administration to maintain the dignity of this voting system.
 * 10) The author of an article may withdraw his or her own article from a nomination at any time.
 * 11) Eligible categories are decided in advance by the administration.
 * 12) Winning articles of the previous annual awards be nominated only if it's been improved upon drastically after receiving a previous award, for a maximum of three awards in separate years. This applies only to the articles, not the authors of the articles, who may only win the Best Writer or Breakthrough User award once. This does not mean that the article can only win three awards; for example, if an article can be nominated for the Best Canon Expansion category, along with its own category, and wins in the top three awards of the year, and does so for three separate years, the article in question can theoretically win nine awards in total (this is however highly unlikely).
 * 13) You are always allowed to contest in a category even if you won an article in that same category before with a different article.
 * 14) Voting:
 * 15) Eligible users may vote for a maximum of two articles in a given category, and may vote for up to two articles for placement awards. You may vote for only one of your own articles for the entire election, no matter how many articles you have in how many categories. You may not vote for yourself under a user-related category.
 * 16) Please sign your vote with a non-bubble text signature to verify your identity.
 * 17) You do not have to vote for an article you nominated.
 * 18) The voting process has two stages: categorical and placement. In the categorical vote, users will have from 12:00 AM GMT, December 1st, 2012 to 12:00 AM GMT, December 20th, 2012 to vote. Articles will be voted upon according to category, and the one article with the most votes from each category will be confirmed as the winner of that category and will be pitted against the other winners of the other categories (excluding collaboration, novel, short fiction, and writer). The placement vote will begin at 12:00 AM GMT, December 20th, 2012 to 12:00 AM GMT and end on December 30th, 2012. All categorical and placement awards will be given on January 1st, 2013.
 * 19) Any categories with ties by 12:00 AM GMT on December 19th, 2012 (24 hours before the end of the categorical vote) will be remitted from public voting and will enter private administrative ballot to decide ties. The results of the ballot will be announced afterwards. All administrators with a registered email will have twenty-four hours to decide ties.
 * 20) Any articles with ties by 12:00 AM GMT on December 29st, 2012 (24 hours before the end of the placement vote) will be remitted from public voting and will enter private administrative ballot to decide ties. The results of the ballot will be announced afterwards. All administrators with a registered email will have twenty-four hours to decide ties.
 * 21) Winning:
 * 22) The article for the most votes in a given category will be formally acknowledged as the winner for the category, and the article and its author will be commended by an official award granted by the administration approximately by January 1st, 2013 and the end of the ceremony. Three winners from the placement vote will also be given their placement awards at the same time.
 * 23) In the event of a tie, a tiebreaker will be performed, and the winner will be decided by private administrative ballot. The ballot's content will be disclosed at the end of the ceremony.
 * 24) If an article is the only nomination in its category and receives fewer than five votes, it will be combined with another similar category after the voting process to avoid "winning by default", and votes will be counted accordingly.
 * 25) Questions: Please address if you have any questions whatsoever.

Nomination Process
Please fill out the following form for any nominations and file underneath the appropriate category:

ARTICLENAME ()

 * Name: ARTICLENAME
 * Author:
 * Nominator:

Voting (NUMBEROFVOTES)
For the Most Unique Concept of the Year category, the special application to be used is as such:

ARTICLENAME ()

 * Name: ARTICLENAME
 * Author:
 * Nominator:
 * Description: DESCRIPTIONOFARTICLE

Voting (NUMBEROFVOTES)
For the Best Canon Expansion of the Year category, the special application to be used is as such:

ARTICLENAME ()

 * Name: ARTICLENAME
 * Original Article:
 * Author:
 * Nominator:

Voting (NUMBEROFVOTES)
For the Best Writer or Breakthrough User of the Year category, the special application to be used is as such:


 * Name:
 * Nominator:

Characters

 * Best SPARTAN of the Year — Any character enrolled in any SPARTAN program.
 * Best UNSC Personnel of the Year — Any character associated with the UNSC Marine Corps/Navy/Army/Air Force or any of its subordinate commands. Does not include SPARTANs.
 * Best Covenant Character of the Year — Any character of any of the Covenant Loyalist/Separatist species.
 * Best AI Character of the Year — Any AI (Artificial Intelligence) character of any species.
 * Best Unaffiliated Character of the Year — Any character that does not fit into any of the above character categories; includes, but is not limited to, Forerunners, Precursors, Flood, Hybrids, etc...

Technologies

 * Best Starship of the Year — Any classification of spacecraft or individual vessel capable of extended extra-atmospheric travel.
 * Best Planetary Vehicle of the Year — Any classification of vehicle or individual vehicle capable of atmospheric or ground travel.
 * Best Weapon of the Year — Any weapon system of any allegiance and application.
 * Best Technology of the Year — Any physical object or knowledge paradigm used to influence an individual's interaction with the environment, including, but not limited to, defensive systems, non-weaponized combat equipment, etc... Does not include weapons.

Societal

 * Best Event of the Year — Any event that occurs, including a military engagement (battle, campaign, or war) between any contenders for any length of time, or a non-military event.
 * Best Location of the Year — Any discreet location, including, but not limited to, planets, cities, structures, buildings, etc...
 * Best Organization of the Year — Any organization, including, but not limited to, governments, militaries, military subdivisions, civilian corporations, etc...
 * Best Species of the Year — Any sentient species of beings, including both singular races and races that are members of an alliance (such as the Covenant); alliances are not covered in this category, but instead are covered in the above "Best Organization of the Year" category

Story

 * Best Novel of the Year — Best long literary fiction. A nominated novel does not have to be completed but substantial progress should have been made. There is a general minimum length threshold for novels to be considered. Does not include roleplays.
 * Best Short Fiction of the Year — Best short literary fiction. Short fictions can be nominated in groups or collections. It is recommended that the nominated fiction is completed.

User

 * Best Writer of the Year — For literary excellence in writing articles, fictions, roleplays, and/or productions.
 * Breakthrough User of the Year — For newfound outstanding participation and contribution on the wiki and friendly interaction with the community.

Miscellaneous

 * Most Unique Concept of the Year — A never-before-seen concept used in Halo Fanon Wiki. Must give proper reasoning as to why this idea should be deemed "Most Unique" in the "Description" field.
 * Best Canon Expansion of the Year — A well-written article based off a canon element or article that has strong connections to canon as well as the author's own creativity.
 * Best Collaboration of the Year — Any singular collaborative work, including but not limited to, roleplays, expanded universe, alternate universe, or other type of article written by two or more people that does not qualify for any of the above categories.

Placement

 * Third Place Article of the Year — The article with the third most number of votes in the "placement" stage.
 * Second Place Article of the Year — The article with the second most number of votes in the "placement" stage.
 * First Place Article of the Year — The article with the most number of votes in the "placement" stage.