I was also surprised by the low number of awards. I was expecting ~5-10x as many winners (50-100).
Also it’s interesting to note the low correlation between comment karma and awards. Of the (3 out of 6) public submissions, the winners had a mean of 20 karma [as of posting this comment], minimum 18, and the (9 out of 15) honourable mentions a mean of 39 (suggesting perhaps these were somewhat weighted “by popular demand”), minimum 16. None of the winners were in the top 75 highest rated comments; 8⁄9 of the publicly posted honourable mentions were (including 4 in the top 11).
There are 6 winners and 15 honourable mentions listed in OP (21 total); the top 21 public submissions had a mean karma of 52, minimum 38; the top 50 a mean of 40, minimum 28; and the top 100 a mean of 31, minimum 18. And there are 86 public submissions not amongst the awardees with higher karma than the lowest karma award winner. See spreadsheet for details.
Given that half of the winners were private entries (2/3 if accounting for the fact that one was only posted publicly 2 weeks after the deadline), and 40% of the honourable mentions, one explanation could be that private entries were generally higher quality.
I note that the karma figures are confounded by posting date (and possibly popularity of the poster), and a better system for showing them would likely have produced different results, as per the considerations Nathan Young outlines in the second most upvoted comment on the initial competition announcement. Also karma is an imperfect measure (so maybe the discrepancy isn’t that surprising).
I was also surprised by the low number of awards. I was expecting ~5-10x as many winners (50-100).
Also it’s interesting to note the low correlation between comment karma and awards. Of the (3 out of 6) public submissions, the winners had a mean of 20 karma [as of posting this comment], minimum 18, and the (9 out of 15) honourable mentions a mean of 39 (suggesting perhaps these were somewhat weighted “by popular demand”), minimum 16. None of the winners were in the top 75 highest rated comments; 8⁄9 of the publicly posted honourable mentions were (including 4 in the top 11).
There are 6 winners and 15 honourable mentions listed in OP (21 total); the top 21 public submissions had a mean karma of 52, minimum 38; the top 50 a mean of 40, minimum 28; and the top 100 a mean of 31, minimum 18. And there are 86 public submissions not amongst the awardees with higher karma than the lowest karma award winner. See spreadsheet for details.
Given that half of the winners were private entries (2/3 if accounting for the fact that one was only posted publicly 2 weeks after the deadline), and 40% of the honourable mentions, one explanation could be that private entries were generally higher quality.
I note that the karma figures are confounded by posting date (and possibly popularity of the poster), and a better system for showing them would likely have produced different results, as per the considerations Nathan Young outlines in the second most upvoted comment on the initial competition announcement. Also karma is an imperfect measure (so maybe the discrepancy isn’t that surprising).