And personally as a side note, I think we should have an “Oscars for IF” which XYZZY kind of was in the past. I think the most difficult and labor-intensive part is the voting which usually is clunky because of the situation (this happened one year) where “Best Writing” solicits nominations and 20 worthy games each get one nomination, then two games get more than one and due to “statistical tie” there are only two nominations for best writing. We have a limited voting pool.
I’d humbly submit that there should be an award decided by a rotating “expert” committee - the community nominates games and then a rotating panel of experienced author/players review submissions, play and discuss privately, perhaps review, then decide which games get the award so it’s expert review instead of the whims of voting statistics.
That’s probably a way we might solicit people like Aaron Reed and Emily Short - who are tremendously busy IF “superstars” - to participate. They can’t look at 8000 nominees, but might be able to carve out time to check out five “finalists” and provide commentary since it’s much more of a short-term commitment.
(That was actually originally the de-facto “prize” concept for XYZZYs - the finalists and winner got “expert review” from IF veterans)