Similar to Doom community with well known annual Cacoward? May be it is time to establish some kind of Quakeward (my apologises for a cliche)?
It's been an idea passed around a bit! https://www.quaddicted.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=587
I think the hard part is judging them. Every award ceremony attracts a lot of negative feedback, since different people look for different things in Quake maps. I know myself, I wouldn't feel confident in selecting award winners that the community would be happy with.
But perhaps a year-end digital magazine where the year's top Quake content could be made. Not necessarily ranking things, but featuring the general top ones. It could generate hype, and give notice to people's hard work. Perhaps even modders themselves could say their mod was featured as kind of an award in itself.
This is a really good idea, and also takes away from the idea that it's too much of an awards ceremony type thing.In terms of timing, and since we're talking about it now, perhaps doing it for Quake's birthday (June 22nd) would be better than the end/beginning of the calendar year. Might help ease fatigue with all the other things going on in Northern Hemisphere winter, as well as lining up with other Quake-related events such as QuakeCon.
When someone all of a sudden wants to position themselves as the community consensus, shit gets flung. The Cacowards, for as much as people revere it outside of the community, still has a lot of general controversy about bias, certain writers and so-on within the Doom community itself. Making it something more neutral like a Year In Review thing would be in everyone's interest. What might also help with this is having a wide variety of writers, and generally getting the community to pitch-in somehow.I think a neutral-stance "Year in Review" sort of thing would be a better choice, that way no one gets the impression that map making is one big competition. That wouldn't be healthy for the community, I don't think.