Reading through this stuff about people quitting, it appears so perfectly similar to the fate of most author comics.
It starts out well, everyone contributes, a bunch of people silently fav the comic, some place very positive comments. Then, generally, a few people do most of the work, gaining stress, and the people commenting 'awesome', 'great comic', often feel no more need to repeat themselves. At this point, people usually start posting complaints (or suggestions for improvement, depends on interpretation).
So the ones keeping the comic up no longer like doing all this work, feel like no one enjoys the work, and, thanks to the speed of internet communication in general, rapidly decide to stop. No one, not even the quitters, expected this, so there were no preparations, leaving the leader(s) to just pick someone as the new leader and be off.
At this point, some (most?) of you are probably thinking I'm considering these awards a poorly prepared failure and that I might be accusing people of not pulling their weight.
That's not what I'm going for. This stuff about author comics is purely stated for reference material, so I can discuss something I have experience with. The Awards are not a comic, not all people act the same, there's sure to be differences. What I'm going for is the similarities. Please keep reading. : )
I have no idea who did what, so there may well be other causes for stress, such as the deadlines involved, the many decisions to make about 'quality', based on personal taste only, probably brings forth tedious discussions, there's sure to be more than that as well. Another difference would be the constant repetition throughout each year, knowing that when you don't like something, you'll be doing it again in 365 days.
Point being: there's enough to get stress from.
As has been mentioned before, this thread was specifically created for suggestions for improvement (or complaints, still depends on interpretation). I doubt anyone would describe the awards as perfect (many claim perfection doesn't even exist), so complaints (or suggestions for improvement) are guaranteed.
That brings us back to the author comic example, stress and apparently no respect when you read this forum. At this point you might want to read about Maslow's hierarchy of needs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow%27s ... y_of_needsAlright that's a lot of text about being stressed and under-appreciated, which you probably already realized. What you might not have realized, though, is that these two things were inevitable. So there's a problem. Or, as Americans apparently say: a challenge.
Now this might be wrong, but the real problem here seems to be that you're going through the complaints being stressed, leaving you with no positive emotions about the awards.
The first thing that comes to mind to solve this problem is avoiding tedious discussions through a discussion thread, and just let people post their suggestions (/complaints) and come back to it a month after the 2011 awards ended. Another option is to let a separate group of people deal with the complaints.
Other people may very well come up with better options.
Anyway, I hope this observation helps. Good luck solving the problem and making a great Smack Jeeves Awards 2012!
Oh, one more thing @ tezzle, one identical issue with author comics here was that you suddenly dropped the lead upon Afrohawkman. I'm sure you meant well, but at a next time, you might want to have that happen a bit slower, as to not completely shock whoever suddenly gets the leadership. I'd be shocked, if only by the sudden extra work, and would probably quickly think of leaving as well. Plus, leaders leaving gives a very strong 'this is the end' feeling if it didn't get to that point calmly and accepted. Once more, It's obvious you meant no harm. Just thought I'd mention this. : )