The FastDay Forum

The two ideas can both be used I would think. Opening a section called 'Hall of fame' could be done by @Moogie or perhaps one of the other mods? After that anyone could open a topic on his or her inspirator and indicate why this person is such an inspiring example. No additional work needs to be done, as this is really 'a bottom-up' process open to all members.

Next to that there could be a section with topics in specific categories, as @Carorees suggested. This could include public nominations by all members, followed by something like a poll once nominations are closed at an indicated moment in time. Again, should not be too difficult to organise.

Edit: I was typing this reaction at the same time as Moogie send hers, so there is some overlap that I did not take into account

Personally I don't think I'm deserving of an award for biggest loser, well not for this last year in any case. I'm only about 10kg down from this time last year.

ONLY 10 kg down?? Moogie, you get the award for understatement of the year!

[Moogie]

lol, now you put it like that wendyjane I feel a bit silly. Yes, being 10kg less now than last year can't be a bad thing and is an achievement it's true - it's just quite a lot less than others have lost in the same time, less than half a lb per week really. But I'm still happy

I think there should be an award for most inspirational setter-upper of a successful 5 2 forum - but where would we find such a person, @Moogie?

Well, we've got a bit of time to plan this out so I'm sure there's some way we can do it without it becoming to massive a task for anyone (and if you prefer not to 'take it on' Wendyjane I totally understand!

I think first of all we need to work out a selection of categories (I shall set up a forum where we can discuss this a bit more) and then perhaps have a topic per category where users can nominate other members for a limited amount of time. If someone doesn't want to post their nom publicly then perhaps they can send it to me or a mod and we can post it on their behalf. Once the noms have closed then we can set up a poll (again, for X amount of time) for each category to allow users to vote anonymously for their faves in each. We could have 1st-3rd place and maybe an honourable mention?

Some category ideas, in addition to Caro's fab suggestions:

Most inspirational story
Most inspirational photos/transformation
Most encouraging user

Will try to set up the forum for planning this out later.

If we do it with topics it shouldn't be too much trouble for me to run it, with a little help from my friends

This all sounds great! I assume the poll results would not be visible until the Announcements Ceremony?

In the interest of more inclusivity, perhaps each category could have one to x winners, but unranked. To illustrate what I'm talking about, if one poll's results were:
Member a. 133 votes
Member b. 127 votes
Member c. 120 votes
Member d. 23 votes
Member e. 7 votes
the award would go jointly to members a, b, and c.
But in the same poll if the 410 people voted as follows:
Member a. 309 votes
Member b. 9 votes
Member c. 6 votes
Member d. 3 votes
etc....
Then the award would go to member a only.
This requires a judgement call on the part of the person tallying votes, but I think that's okay.

Also, this system would allow for more than three awards in the "biggest loser" category. It seems like at least 10 people lost more than about 15 to 20 kg, and in my opinion they all have awards coming to them.

@P-JK's suggestion of an ongoing section for people to acknowledge their inspirations is a good one. But it shouldn't be called "Hall of Fame" because that's more apropos for the awards section. Maybe "Inspiring Members" or something like that - with posts that read "@Myrtle2014 has been a great inspiration to me because she...".

ALSO - I'm quite willing to be involved with the awards program, @Moogie et.al
I was just scared by the notion of getting 100s or 1000s of PMs to collate and make sense of ! It still seems like the PM method of collecting info would be more fun, because the award recipients would be less likely to know they were about to be honored. But if I don't want to be responsible for that, I'm guessing no one else would either.

Now I'm going out for dinner with my peeps, and I'll hopefully be able to stay away from you all till tomorrow